Selling Schweinfurt by Brian D. Vlaun

Author:Brian D. Vlaun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Photo 4-3. August 17 Schweinfurt Raid Approximate Bomb Plot.

Reprinted from Central Interpretation Unit, “Interpretation Report No. S.A. 466,” RAF Medmenham, 17 August 1943, AFHRA

Elsewhere in Washington that week, two air staff plans officers attended a peculiar meeting. Rather than rendezvous in their typical war department spaces, however, they convened privately at the office of Mr. Batt, who was continuing his leadership duties with both the War Production Board and SKF Industries. Batt argued that the ball-bearing industry in the United States grew limited in “certain important articles … due to the labor difficulties in the industry,” but that these articles could be purchased from Sweden, which “would deny them to the enemy.”135 Further, Batt sought an arrangement for additional military aircraft able to transport the ball bearings out of Sweden. When the planners brought this information to their boss, Brigadier General Kuter, he replied skeptically, “If there is a real requirement for these ball bearings or if it is proved that damage could be done to the enemy by our purchase rather than letting them become available to the enemy. [O]ne, two, or three C-47’s can and naturally will be made available for this purpose.”136 Batt’s motives were anything but transparent, but Kuter was not going to take any chances that the Swedes were taking pressure off of Schweinfurt.

Economists from British RE8 continued their own trend of conservative estimates, and they pulled no punches as they countered the OSS and A-2 assessments with an even more pessimistic outlook: “The attacks on the ballbearing plants at Schweinfurt caused relatively light damage. … This amounts altogether to a loss of about 1 week’s supply of total anti-friction bearing output available to Germany. … Both plants will have been ready for re-attack immediately after the raid, since the reduction in the rate of output at each was very small.”137 They confidently concluded from the same source material that the raid accomplished negligible results. As they saw it, the raid had not been worth the lives of the many airmen who had perished or even the more fortunate fate of those who had parachuted into harvest wheat fields—probably the only ones who were grateful the RAF had not followed up with a night raid.138

Hitler’s Vengeance and the Blue Hour

“Bomber” Harris had not simply opted out of the AAF’s first attack on ballbearing plants. In fact, his Bomber Command launched its own massive raid under the lunar glow of 17–18 August 1943, and it did so en masse. However, Harris received a competing priority from an unusual targeting source—Winston Churchill himself—and the highly secretive target had nothing to do with the Pointblank directive. The target was too challenging to attack even with the help of the RAF’s radio navigation (OBOE) and the bombers’ onboard radar (H2S). Each of these technological inventions warrants brief discussion.

OBOE used ground stations to transmit a signal that a single bomber could process and echo back to the ground; the system could achieve impressive accuracy of just a few hundred yards,

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