Massive German Bombing Raid on Warsaw

On September 24th, 1939 the German Luftwaffe (air force) conducted a massive bombing raid on Warsaw. A common figure given for this raid is an attack by 1,150 bombers. I was skeptical because the first source that gave that figure also gave the Germans only 850 bombers for the entire campaign. The book “Men of the Luftwaffe” by Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. (Presidio, 1988) confirms the 1,150 figure and gives the Germans barely enough bombers to mass that many in an attack if you count Stuka dive bombers and planes assigned to the western front with France. It helpfully adds that the “bombers” included 30 Ju-52 transports carrying 2 pound incendiaries that were literally shoveled out the door by two men in each plane equipped with potato shovels. In part because of the smoke from the resulting fires, german ground troops were killed by stray bombs provoking an argument between army and air force that had to be settled by Hitler himself. Hitler said keep on bombing as before.

In “The Luftwaffe War Diaries” ( Doubleday, 1968) Cajus Bekker states that the Germans made 1,176 bombing sorties (one flight by one aircraft). He also gives the date for the attack as September 25th and gives it credit for the subsequent surrender of Warsaw. I am inclined to believe Bekker on the sorties (the Stuka’s e.g. could easily have attacked multiple times in the same day) but not on the date or the raid’s impact. So this was probably not the first “thousand bomber raid” nor a raid that decisively broke an enemy’s resistance. Warsaw had been bombed and shelled for days as well as subjected to ground attacks. Food, ammunition and even drinkable water were in increasingly short supply. There is no doubt that this and other bombing attacks contributed to the end of Polish resistance but Bekker is hogging all the credit for the Luftwaffe and possibly distorting the chronology to bolster his case.

The Condor Legion

The Condor Legion was Nazi Germany’s most notable contribution to Francisco Franco’s Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Hitler also contributed weapons, natural resources etc. but the Condor Legion was the only significant military unit sent to Spain by Germany.

I was in high school when I first heard the term “Condor Legion”. It immediately conjured in my mind visions of a large, fierce and formidable air force. It was only later that I learned that a Condor is a vulture, albeit a distinctively large and spectacular  one.

And so it was with the Condor Legion. You might think of it as a decisive force in a campaign to promote fascist ascendancy and solidarity throughout Europe. Not quite. Hermann Goering testified at Nuremberg that Hitler was at first reluctant to commit significant forces to Spain but when Goering pointed out the learning opportunities the Fuehrer brightened at the prospect.

It has also been argued that Hitler was careful to make sure his intervention, quantitatively much less than was provided by Mussolini’s Italy, didn’t end the war too fast i.e. before Italy’s role in aiding Franco thoroughly destroyed any remaining good relations Italy had with Britain and France.

The first German intervention was a small unit of Junkers Ju-52 transport planes which were used to ferry troops and supplies of the Spanish Army of Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain past the Spanish navy which had by and large remained loyal to the government and was blocking transfer by sea. The Army of Africa was an elite force which possessed most of the recent combat experience in the Spanish army putting down rebellions both major and minor in Spain’s African possessions. It included Moroccans who fought fiercely for the  Nationalists.  (Although they had never flown  before and  suffered extensively from air sickness, the Germans had to post guards to prevent the Moroccans from sneaking onto and overloading the transport planes.) It also included the (at this time almost entirely Spanish and all volunteer) Spanish Foreign Legion whose motto was “Long Live Death” – Francisco Franco was the Legion’s first Deputy Commander at its founding in 1920. These troops were decisive in giving the Nationalist revolt a firm footing in 1936.

Very shortly thereafter the first German volunteers were sent to Spain posing as a tourist group of photographers, engineers and salesmen. Once in Spain this thin pretense was dropped and the volunteers were incorporated into the roles available under the Condor Legion organization which contained five major groupings.

These were (1) the bomber group – initially composed of Ju-52s which were considered suitable as bombers at the time; (2) the transport group – Ju52s in their air transport role ; (3) the fighter group  – Heinkel He51s a fighter design that was considered obsolete well before 1939;  (4) The flak group for antiaircraft defense and (5) a small ground force for airfield security. In keeping with the small German presence the Spanish provided some personnel. For example, the flak personnel were Spanish commanded by Spanish officers under overall German supervision. Aircraft maintenance was provided by Lufthansa civilians already working in Spain.

I won’t do a campaign history here. There are books for that. A good source is a book that I relied on heavily for this mini-essay i.e. Peter Elstob’s “Condor Legion” which is weapons book no. 35 in the Ballantine’s Illustrated History of the Violent Century series.

So what did the German’s learn at Spanish expense and for a relatively small fee in blood and treasure as these things go? First, they needed better planes. After the first encounters with Russia’s agile biplane fighter the Polikarpov I-15 out went the He-51s and the Ju-52’s were consigned exclusively to the transport role. The new German fighter was the very successful Messerschmidt Me-109B (later also the C and E series) and the bombing was taken over by He-111’s and Dornier Do -17’s.

The Germans practiced dive bombing, first with the Henschel Hs 123A and later with their world war II mainstay the Ju-87 Stuka. They practiced aerial bombing of cities, most infamously, thanks to Pablo Picasso, Guernica. More practically and frequently they bombed Madrid and other fiercely defended Spanish towns and cities. It was in Spain that they practiced the sequence of a first wave of attack with 2000 pound bombs aimed at the largest buildings, a second wave with 500 pound bombs to break up the rubble and smaller buildings and make them burn more readily, a third wave with incendiaries and, after an interval to let people come out to fight the fires, a fourth wave armed with anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.

Shortly after the initial formation of the Condor Legion, the Germans added a small but high tech ground force composed of tanks, machine gun units and flak in a ground role. This allowed the Germans to practice the employment of tanks, close air support techniques and the use of flak as an anti-tank weapon. (It always stuns me to recall that the first German General Staff paper on the anti-tank potential of the 88mm anti-aircraft gun was written in 1919.) The Germans also operated in cooperation with Spanish infantry and artillery.

Despite my snarky comments at the beginning of this essay (vultures etc.) the Condor Legion was helpful to the Nationalists all out of proportion to its small numbers. Once the Germans grasped the value of Spain as a learning laboratory for Blitzkrieg, the volunteer system was scrapped and Germany’s most promising military personnel, officers, pilots and others, were assigned to and rotated through the Condor Legion to hone their skills

The Nationalist Chinese Air Force

There is a book waiting to be written – perhaps it has been but I haven’t seen it- on the Nationalist Chinese Air Force in World War II. The story of the official Chinese Air Force begins with an American training mission in 1932.  The American mission ends in December 1934 when the contract expires. Although the Japanese apply pressure to end the American connection – rumor has it that Chiang makes a show of conciliating the Japanese while retaliating against the Americans for failing to engage in combat to help Chiang  put down an attempted coup by a warlord in Fukien province in 1934.

Whatever the real reason, the American mission is superseded by an Italian one. The Italian mission’s flying school boasts a 100%  graduation rate. Chinese pilots, it seems, never wash out under Italian tutelage. The  Italians also sell aircraft to China and establish  a badly run factory for producing Italian aircraft in China.

When war with Japan begins, the nominal Chinese air force is 500 aircraft and 350 pilots. However when you subtract the planes that are either trainers, mechanically unserviceable or existing only on paper it amounted to about 100 combat aircraft and perhaps 150 pilots able to fly them in combat.

For airplanes, the Chinese had a mix of  types including Curtis Hawk biplanes, Boeing P 26s, Vought Corsairs, (the biplane) as well as Heinkel, Breda and Fiat fighters.  For bombers they had some Junkers, Capronis and Savoia Marchetti 81s and a few Martin 139s and Northrop attack planes – a single engine light bomber type.

So the Nationalist air force began with a very mixed bag of planes for a limited supply of pilots. However, their most important air asset was acquired in a semi-fortuitous way. There was always a faction of the Nationalist leadership that regretted the departure of the Americans and wanted to bring them back. In 1936 a Chinese general traveling in America observed an American army aerobatic team led by a Captain Claire Chennault. The Chinese offered Chennault more money and – more importantly – more freedom, responsibility and authority than he could ever hope to have in the American Army Air Force to serve as adviser to the Chinese on air force matters. Before the Flying Tigers, Chennault devoted his efforts to getting the best out of China’s mixed bag of dubious air assets including new foreign aid – most notably two bomber and four fighter squadrons provided by the Soviet Union in late 1937.

When the war with Japan began, Chiang committed his air force to the battle for Shanghai where the Chinese developed a reputation for weak flying skills and great courage and devotion. Their attacks were pressed home ferociously. They even raided Japanese bomber bases on Formosa. However, their attacks achieved little except the exhaustion of the Chinese bomber force.

Chinese fighter pilots were more effective defending Chinese cities against Japanese bombing raids. Using tactics developed by Claire Chennault, the Chinese inflicted heavy losses on unescorted Japanese bombers, refuting the theory that bombers would always get through and could only be countered by even more powerful bombing attacks. Even when the Japanese changed tactics and started sending strong fighter escorts the Chinese pilots held there own.

Of course it could not last. The Chinese effort was not sustainable. What saved the Chinese from the Japanese air force was the Japanese need for more aircraft for the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The Soviets stopped helping the Chinese first because of their nonagression pact with Japan’s ally Germany. Then because they needed every plane to defend themselves against those same Germans. The Americans felt their own industrial and logistical resources were best spent establishing an American air presence in China.

Still, there is a fascinating story here. Has anyone told it? Is it available in English? If not, here is an idea for some aviation enthusiast’s book project. If someone writes it, I’ll certainly read it.

Japanese Aerial Bombing of Cities

There haven’t been many big events of late. Of course the battle of Shanghai is still being furiously fought. But it is also the case that the Japanese are bombing Chinese cities from the air, particularly Nanking the Nationalist Capital. In doing so the Japanese aren’t being particular about what they hit beyond the city itself.

The Japanese may have been influenced by the ideas of Italian air power theorist Giulio Douhet . Douhet believed in the power of an aerial offensive that could not be countered except by a greater aerial offensive. Ground armies would be of only secondary importance and bombers could not be stopped from getting through to their targets.

More ominously he believed in the morale effect of strategic bombing. Terrified civilians would demand that their government make peace if it could not protect them. Douhet justified his advocacy of what was essentially terror bombing of civilians by arguing that the quick and decisive results achieved would reduce overall suffering caused by the war. In a few cases where the outcome was already clear such as the Netherlands in 1940 and Yugoslavia in 1941 something approaching Douhet’s theorizing did occur. Mostly it did not and the bombers did not always get through. The suffering of civilians was only increased.

In China, the Japanese air force was simply spitting into the ocean that was China’s vast area and population so Douhet’s theories were not vindicated in China. The Japanese employed two bombers in their campaign. One was the army’s Mitsubishi type-97 “Sally” which could carry a maximum of 1,600 pounds of bombs and the other was the navy’s Mitsubishi G3M “Nell” which could carry up to 1,700 pounds of bombs. These kinds of bombloads could do a moderate amount of general destruction but could not accomplish a strategic result. By comparison the maximum bombload of the American B-17 “Flying Fortress” was 16,000 pounds albeit less over long ranges.

So the Japanese accomplished very little except to produce photogtaphs of piles of dead civilians or terrified women and children which did nothing to improve world public opinion, including American opinion, on the relative merits of the two sides. After some initial losses to Nationalist Chinese fighter pilots due to flying unescorted bomber missions, the Japanese added fighter escorts and wore down the Nationalist Chinese air force. More on the Nationalist air force later.