Two Air Battles for Berlin
Berlin, the capital of Hitler's empire, was arguably the most important prize in WWII. In the final days of the war, the "Red Army" had the dubious "honour" of capturing the city. Yet the Western Allies fought two air battles for Berlin - losing the first but winning the second.
The first Western Allied "Battle for Berlin" was launched by Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, the C-in-C of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command in 1943. After seeing the dramatic impact of his "thousand bomber" raids on the Ruhr and particularly the destruction of Hamburg in a fire-storm ignited by British bombers, Harris believed a strategic bombing campaign against Berlin could prove so successful that it would force the Germans to sue for peace and make a costly, bloody land battle on the Continent of Europe unnecessary. Writing to the Chief of Air Staff, Harris famously claimed:
We can wreck Berlin from end to end if the USAAF will come in on it. It will cost us 400 to 500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war.
Although the United States Army Air Force declined to take part, RAF Bomber Command launched a bombing offensive intended to bring the Nazi government to its knees. It was the British equivalent of Hitler's Blitz against London early in the war. Between September 1940 and May 1941, the Luftwaffe made hundreds of raids on Britain's capital (126 in 1940 alone), dropping roughly 28,000 bombs to deliver 18,000 tons of high explosives and killing approximately 43,000 British civilians, while seriously injuring a further 71,000 and rendering 2.2 million people homeless. Yet Britain did not sue for peace. That fact alone should have warned Harris that his assault on Berlin might not have the effect he wanted.
But Harris was obstinate (as always). He started his attack on Berlin in late August 1943 with a spate of raids ending 9 September, and then launched his main offensive on 16 November 1943. He then pounded Berlin intensively until the end of March 1944.
While the Germans had had only small twin-engine bombers with limited bomb capacity during the Blitz of London, Harris was able to deploy heavy bombers, mostly Halifaxes and Lancasters, which routinely carried a bomb load of 14 tons a piece. Harris sent his bombers over in large raids involving 400 to 500 aircraft a night, although on the night of Feb. 15/16, 891 aircraft were send against Berlin. Thus the nearly 11,000 sorties were concentrated in 19 raids which delivered 30,000 tons of explosive, or roughly 50% more destructive power than the London Blitz.
On the ground, the RAF assault on Berlin cost 10,000 civilians their lives, substantially less than the German Blitz had cost the British, largely due to better air raid shelters and lower population density in the large, spread-out city of Berlin with its lakes and forests. Aircrew losses, meanwhile, were exceptionally high and unsustainable. In total 625 aircraft were lost. The human cost was 2,690 aircrew killed and more than a 1,000 men taken prisoner after abandoning their doomed aircraft.
Harris had been wrong. The Battle had cost Bomber Command substantially more aircraft and men than he had anticipated, and Germany was no closer to surrender than before the air assault. (Below the Sportspalast where Goebbels gave his famous speech calling for "Total War."
This is not to say that the battle had no military benefits for the Allies. It tied up massive numbers of anti-aircraft guns and their crews, while Luftwaffe fighters that might otherwise have been active on the Eastern Front remained in the West. It is not insignificant that the intensive phase of the RAF bombing offensive against Berlin was contemporaneous with the Soviet destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the most effective anti-aircraft guns in the German arsenal were the 8,8 flak guns -- also infamous as tank killers. In this sense, the RAF air assault on Berlin did serve as a "Second Front" which relieved pressure on the Soviet Union's armed forces enabling them to be victorious. Yet the bottom line is that this air assault ended in defeat
Yet just four years later, in 1948, the RAF launched a very different kind of "Battle for Berlin." It was a battle against aggression and for self-determination and democracy. It was a battle in which the RAF delivered bread rather than bombs to Berlin -- and it succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its originator, RAF Air Commodore Reginald Waite.
It was the Berlin Airlift.
The Berlin Airlift began on 26 June 1948 in response to a Soviet blockade of the Western Sectors of Berlin. At stake was the welfare -- and political loyalty -- of 2.2 million German civilians. The Soviets, determined to throw the Western Allies out of Berlin, chose to target the civilian population rather than the Allied garrisons, whose right to be in Berlin was part of wartime agreements signed by Stalin. To attack the Western garrisons directly risked a shooting war, and in June 1948 only the United States possessed nuclear weapons, and the Soviets were not suicidal.
The Soviets thought that by instead starving the Berliners in the Western Sectors of food, electricity, heat, and other necessities, they could induce them (the Berliners) to chase the Western Allies out. The Soviet expectation was that the desperate Berliners would rise up in anger against the West, demanding that they withdraw their troops and so end the blockade. The Western Allies check-mated the Soviets by proving capable of delivering -- by air alone -- enough food, coal and other materiel to keep the city alive. It was a dramatic victory for "air power" in a non-violent context.
The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a series of novels starting with Cold Peace.
Berlin 1948.
In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War Three is only a misstep away.
My novels about the RAF in WWII are intended as tributes to the men in the air and on the ground that made a victory against fascism in Europe possible.
they took the war to Hitler.
Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent.
Their average age was 21.
This is the story of just one bomber pilot, his crew and the woman he loved.
It is intended as a tribute to them all.
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MORAL FIBRE is the WINNER OF A HEMINGWAY AWARD 2022 and was a FINALIST for the BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD IN HISTORICAL FICTION.
"Where Eagles Never Flew" was the the winner of a Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction and a Maincrest Media Award for Military Fiction. Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/where-eagles-never-flew
For more information about all my aviation books visit: https://www.helenapschrader.com/aviation.html
Ahh, the Berlin Airlift. How quickly people forget.
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