Fire and Fury by Randall Hansen

Author:Randall Hansen [Hansen, Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37238-3
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2008-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

20 | Germany’s Achilles heel

Oil had been on target lists from the earliest days of the war, but the major refineries were out of the range of early RAF bomb runs and the few raids on closer targets produced little. In February 1944, Spaatz became a convinced advocate of new attacks on oil. As air attacks on the Luftwaffe produced early results, Spaatz ordered the formation of a USSTAF planning committee to consider future targets. With Spaatz urging them on, the committee produced a report on March 5. It called for combined RAF–American attacks on oil targets across Germany and into central Europe. If fourteen synthetic oil plants (which extracted oil from coal) and thirteen refineries could be destroyed, 80 percent of German production and 60 percent of readily usable refining capacity would be destroyed.

Spaatz’s urgency was driven by the British as much as the Germans. Solly Zuckerman, who had been fully behind Spaatz’s attacks on the Luftwaffe, had been studying attacks on communications in the Mediterranean theatre. He became convinced that the best way to weaken Germany in the run-up to D-Day was through destroying the country’s transportation system, and above all its large railway centres and rolling stock.1 Sounding rather like Harris on cities, Zuckerman argued that a country’s railways were its nervous system: if you damaged one part of it, you could cripple the whole.2 Specifically, destroying these transportation nodes would paralyze the Germans as they tried to ship men and matériel to Normandy. Zuckerman calculated that about 40 percent—45,000 tons out of a total pre-invasion program of 108,000—of all Allied bombs should hit communication targets. The work would be roughly divided between the RAF and the Eighth and Ninth air forces. Zuckerman presented his conclusions, which were not radically different from those of a 1943 report by the Ministry of War Transport, in early 1944.3

The plan went before a newly formed Allied Air Forces Bombing Committee on January 10, passed through several other committees, and finally reached Eisenhower and Tedder on February 1. The plan proposed attacks on rail targets. They liked it. The report convinced Tedder of the merits of attacking transportation. Eisenhower was similarly won over, but one of the plan’s merits had nothing to do with bombing at all: the integration of all available air forces nicely complemented Eisenhower’s assumption of overall command. As the plan circulated, the battle lines quickly became clear. Eisenhower, Tedder, Leigh-Mallory, and Zuckerman supported the plan; the prime minister, the bulk of the War Cabinet, the War Office, the Air Ministry, Bomber Command, and the USSTAF opposed it.4

Added to this mix was an institutional debate. Tedder was given the job of reconciling differences between Eisenhower, who wanted total control, and Portal, who wanted autonomy for RAF Coastal, Fighter, and Bomber Command. Tedder—who saw air power as complementary to the Army and Navy—was able by April to get all parties to agree to a compromise.5 Eisenhower would have overall direction of the strategic air forces for a limited period, only until September 1944.

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