Bombing of Peenemünde in World War II

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Operation Hydra
Part of World War II
Date August 17/18, 1943 Location Peenemünde, Germany Result not effective[1]
Combatants
RAF Bomber Command	Luftwaffe
Commanders
Group Captain J. H. Searby	Josef Kammhuber, Hubert Weise[2]
Strength
Hydra: 324 Lancasters, 218 Halifaxes, 54 Stirlings[3] Whitebait: Intruders:28 Mosquitos, 10 Beaufighters[4] Airdrop: tbd Halifaxes	tbd German fighters
Casualties
Hydra: 23 Lancasters, 15 Halifaxes, 2 Stirlings, tbe KIA, tbe WIA, tbe MIA/POW	tbd German fighters, 500-750 civilians killed (mostly Polish)[3][5]

Operation Hydra attacked the Peenemünde Army Research Center after midnight of August 17/18 1943 and opened the Strategic bombing phase of the Anglo-American Operation Crossbow against the German long-range weapons programme.^[6] The raid was a first for RAF Bomber Command, with low level attack tactics being used to achieve precision bombing. The British Official History is the attack 'may well have caused a delay of two months', which is consistent with the German assessment by Joseph Goebbels of 'six to eight weeks'.^[7]

Contents 1 Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) 2 Bomber Command Operation Order No. 176 3 The Attack 3.1 Operation Whitebait 3.2 First Wave (Target: Sleeping & Living Quarters) 3.3 Second Wave (Target: Factory Workshops) 3.4 Third Wave (Target: Experimental Station) 3.5 Losses 4 Results 4.1 Fabricated Damage 5 References

[edit] Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations)

Various British intelligence sources regarding German long range weapons, such as the Oslo report, reconnaisance photographs, and human intelligence (including reports from POWs and the Armia Krajowa), culminated in a pivotal meeting on June 29, 1943 of the Cabinet's Defence Committee (Operations) in the Cabinet War Room.^[8] Duncan Sandys opened with an address and introduced the photos of Peenemünde, followed by Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, who expressed weighty arguments regarding an ‘elaborate cover plan’ by the Germans and against the credibility of the reports and the existence of the rocket. After Cherwell's arguments, Winston Churchill turned to Reginald Victor Jones: "Now Dr. Jones, may we hear the truth!" Jones commenced to discredit each of Cherwell's counter-arguments, and by all accounts Churchill enjoyed himself hugely, commenting to Cherwell throughout Jones' accurate defense (including how Cherwell had introduced Jones to him).^[9] The Committee recommended a heaviest-possible Peenemünde attack on the first occasion with suitable conditions, but to avoid any further Peenemünde aerial reconnaissance flights, which might alert the Germans.^[10] At 10 Downing St on July 15, the Chiefs of Staff, Herbert Morrison, Lindemann, and Churchill examined the plan for the Peenemünde attack, and the attack was ordered for the earliest opportunity presented by moon and meteorological conditions.^[11]

[edit] Bomber Command Operation Order No. 176

596 aircraft of RAF Bomber Command were used for the attack.^[3][12] Air groups involved were 5 Group, 6 (Canadian) Group and 8 Group.

Bomber Command's orders were to destroy the facility, and its aircrews were told that if they did not destroy it on the night of 17/18 August, they would go back every night until they had.^[13] This was a deliberate measure which, as well as telling the crews the operational reality and importance of the mission, was also designed to scare them into giving their all first time around.^[14]

The geographical distance of Peenemünde from the RAF's bases in Britain meant that they could not use their radio navigation beams - the raid would have to be executed by moonlight.^[5] As this was to be a precision raid rather than the standard area bombing which Bomber Command was more used to, the crews would have to drop their bombs from roughly a half of the normal altitude - 8,000 feet instead of 19,000 - to ensure accuracy.^[14]

Bomber Command's chief, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, recognised that this would be a difficult mission. The RAF had almost no precision bombing experience, and that which it did have was of raids consisting of a small number of bombers during daylight.^[14] Additionally, the target was difficult in itself. Peenemünde was around 600 miles from the most easterly British airbase, and the facility was spread over a wide area and was protected by smoke screens.^[14] To ensure success, Harris abandoned the small-scale raid approach and committed the whole of Bomber Command to this objective.^[14] In another move to counter their lack of experience in precision bombing, the RAF conducted practise raids on areas similar to Peenemünde. In the first practise, margins of error of up to 1000 yards were recorded - by the last this was down to 300 yards.^[14]

The raid was to have one primary objective and two secondary objectives. The primary objective was to kill as many personnel involved in the research and development of the V-weapons as possible by bombing the workers' quarters. The secondary objectives were to hit the experimental station and the rocket factory, in order to render Peenemünde unusable as a research facility and to destroy all paperwork documentation of the project.^[12]

The plan also called for a third outing of a new concept in Bomber Command's tactics - that of the "Master Bomber" - first used by Wing Commander Guy Gibson in the Dambuster Raid.^[15] This role was given to Group Captain J. H. Searby, of 83 Squadron, 8 Group, whose job it was to fly in continuous circles above the target maintaining command and control. He was to be given command of the whole raid while it was over the target, and in his hands was placed the responsibility of ensuring that the pathfinders had designated the correct targets, or calling in new beacons if they did not. ^{[5] [3]}

[edit] The Attack

[edit] Operation Whitebait

To divert German night fighters from Operation Hydra, a group of de Havilland Mosquitos concurrently conducted the small Operation Whitebait air raid on Berlin.^[5] At 10:56PM British time (scheduled for 11:00), the first Mosquito of Operation Whitebait^[16] was over Berlin. Each Mosquito was to drop eight marker flares and a minimum bombload. Three men and a convict labourer were killed by a bomb in one of the suburbs.^[17] Additional Operation Hydra activities included two Long Range Intruder waves by the 25, 141, 410 RCAF, 418 RCAF, & 605 Squadrons, which attacked Luftwaffe airfields (Ardorf, Stade, Jagel, Westerland & Grove) and fighters (e.g., take-off/landing). A concurrent mission used Handley Page Halifaxes to supply Resistance groups in Europe, and the German attacks on the Hydra/Whitebait bombers provided cover for airdrops in Denmark.^[18]

[edit] First Wave (Target: Sleeping & Living Quarters)

At 12:10AM British time, the first red spot fire was started, one minute later sixteen Blind Illuminator Marker aircraft commenced marking runs with white parachute flares and long-burning red target indicators (T.I.'s). However, patches of strato-cumulus cause uncertain visibility in the full moon, and the H2S radar had not discerned Rügen as planned, resulting in the red 'datum lights' spot fires to be inaccurately placed on the northern tip of Peenemünde Hook instead of burning as planned for ten minutes on the northern edge of Rügen. The two mile error later caused early yellow T.I's to be misplaced at Camp Trassenheide. Fortunately, Searby noticed one subsequent yellow marker for the scientists' settlement 'very well placed' and orders more yellows as close as possible: four of six are accurate, as well as are three Backers-up green indicators. At 12:27 the first wave withdraws after facing light flak, including a few heavy flak pieces from a ship a mile offshore and guns on the Western side of the peninsula (but no fighters). One third of the 227 attacking aircraft were led astray by the false marking of Camp Trassenheide.^[19]

[edit] Second Wave (Target: Factory Workshops)

The second wave began by using 'Aiming-Point Shifters' to mark the second aiming point via a bomb-sight offset back (Northwest) along the bomb run from the first wave marking. However, the correct solitary marker used for the first wave bombing was ignored, and Searby noticed the overshoot and notified the remaining Backers-up, as well as the bombing force of 113 Lancasters.

[edit] Third Wave (Target: Experimental Station)

At 12:48, a Backer-up accurately places a green flare load in the heart of the Development Works for the third wave by No. 5 Group and No. 6 Group, and a few bombloads cause serious laboratory and office damage. As during the Friedrichshafen (Operation Bellicose) raid, blind bombing after a timed run had been planned from Rügen in case of smoke concealing the green target indicator. Unfortunately, the Lancasters and Halifaxes droned twenty and even thirty seconds past the timing point to the visible and inaccurate green markers from the six 'Shifters' and 3 Backers-up, landing 2000-3000 yards beyond the Development Works in the concentration camp. At 12:55, due to timing errors, 35 straggler aircraft were still waiting to bomb.^[20]

The initial attack was supposed to hit the workers' quarters.^[3] Instead, due to the pathfinders placing markers in the wrong place, the first bombs hit Peenemünde's dedicated forced labour camp at Trassenheide.

Around 1,800 tons of bombs were dropped in the raid, of which approximately 85% was high explosive.^[3][12]

[edit] Losses

Bomber Command lost 40 aircraft: 23 Lancasters, 15 Halifaxes and 2 Stirlings. This was 6.7% of the total force dispatched for the raid - a far higher casualty rate than RAF Bomber Command could sustain over a long period of operations, but judged acceptable given that the attack was a successful moonlight raid against a top priority target.^[3] Most of these losses were incurred by the final wave, which was attacked in force by German night fighters who had realised the deception at Berlin.^[3]

[edit] Results

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) concluded that the attack of 17/18 August was "not effective",^[1] coming too late to stop the creation of V1 weapons and delaying the V2 by a negligible amount of time.^[14] Arthur Travers Harris claimed that the raid made the Germans think twice about their V-weapons programme.^[15] A year later on July 18,^[21] August 4,^[22] and August 25,^[23] 1944, the US Eighth Air Force^[24] conducted the three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production.^[25]

The raid did serve to push the programme into greater secrecy thus hampering further offensive efforts against it.^[12] Despite contemporary British efforts to spin this attack as a great success, the results were probably 'far less brilliant than they seemed'.^[26]

Estimates of how many scientists and technicians were killed vary wildly from 150 to around 700. ^{[3] [15]} It is plausible that the number could be towards the lower end of that spectrum, given that the scientists had the warning of Trassenheide Camp being bombed. ^[5] One certain success was that a prime target, German Head of V-weapon Development Dr. Thiel, was definitely killed. ^[26]

The Luftwaffe was embarrassed by the success of the raid, and on the 19th of August Luftwaffe General Hans Jeschonnek, the Chief of Staff, committed suicide as a result of the criticism he received.^[27]

[edit] Fabricated Damage

After Operation Hydra, Peenemünde fabricated signs of bomb damage by creating craters in the sand (particularly near the wind tunnel), blowing-up lightly damaged and minor buildings, and according to Peenemünde scientist Siegfried Winter, "We … climbed on to the roofs … and painted black and white lines to simulate charred beams"!^[28] Operation Hydra also included the use of bombs with timers set for up to three days, so along with bombs that had not detonated (e.g., because of the sandy soil), explosions well after the attack were not uncommon and hampered German salvage efforts.^[29]

[edit] References

• Long article on all aspects of the attack, from intelligence and inception to aftermath and consequences
• BBC Factfile on Peenemünde Raid
• Official RAF history site about Bomber Command
• La Coupole, German V-weapon launch pad in Northern France

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