PART III
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On 13 February 1945, bad weather over Europe prevented any USAAF operations, and it was left to
RAF Bomber Command to carry out the first raid. It had been decided that the raid would be a double strike, in which a second wave of bombers would attack three hours after the first, just as the rescue teams were trying to put out the fires.
[51] As was standard practice, other raids were carried out that night to confuse
German air defences. Three hundred and sixty heavy bombers (
Lancasters and
Halifaxes) bombed a synthetic oil plant in
Böhlen, 60 mi (97 km) from Dresden, while 71
de Havilland Mosquito medium bombers attacked
Magdeburg with small numbers of Mosquitos carrying out nuisance raids on
Bonn, Misburg near
Hanover and
Nuremberg.
[52]
...
On the morning of 14 February 431
United States Army Air Force bombers of the
Eighth Air Force's 1st Bombardment Division were scheduled to bomb Dresden near midday, and the 457 aircraft of 3rd Bombardment Division were to follow to bomb
Chemnitz, while the 375 bombers of the 2nd Bombardment Division would bomb a
synthetic oil plant in
Magdeburg. Another 84 bombers would attack
Wesel.
[67] The bomber groups were protected by 784
North American P-51 Mustangs of the Eighth Air Force's
VIII Fighter Command, 316 of which covered the Dresden attack – a total of almost 2,100 Eighth Army Air Force aircraft over Saxony during 14 February.
[68] The smoke plume over Dresden by now reached 15,000 ft (4,600 m) and was plainly visible to the approaching raid.
[65]

USAAF
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers over Europe
Primary sources disagree as to whether the aiming point was the
marshalling yards near the centre of the city or the centre of the built-up urban area. The report by the 1st Bombardment Division's commander to his commander states that the targeting sequence was the centre of the built-up area in Dresden if the weather was clear. If clouds obscured Dresden but Chemnitz was clear, Chemnitz was the target. If both were obscured, they would bomb the centre of Dresden using
H2X radar.
[69] The mix of bombs for the Dresden raid was about 40 per cent incendiaries—much closer to the RAF city-busting mix than the USAAF usually used in precision bombardment.
[70] Taylor compares this 40 per cent mix with the
raid on Berlin on 3 February, where the ratio was 10 per cent incendiaries. This was a common mix when the USAAF anticipated cloudy conditions over the target.
[71]
...
German defensive action
Dresden's air defences had been depleted as anti-aircraft guns were requistioned for use against the Red Army in the east, and the city lost its last massive flak battery in January 1945. The Luftwaffe was largely ineffective, with planes that were unsafe to fly due to lack of parts and maintenance and a critical shortage of aviation fuel; the German radar system was also degraded, lowering the warning time to prepare for air attacks. The RAF also had an advantage over the Germans in the field of electronic radar countermeasures.
[82]
Of 796 British bombers that participated in the raid, six were lost, three of those hit by bombs dropped by aircraft flying over them. On the following day, only a single US bomber was shot down, as the large escort force was able to prevent Luftwaffe day fighters from disrupting the attack.
[83] ...
...
An RAF assessment showed that 23 per cent of the industrial buildings and 56 per cent of the non-industrial buildings, not counting residential buildings, had been seriously damaged. Around 78,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged but readily repairable.
[8]
During his post-war interrogation,
Albert Speer,
Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, said that Dresden's industrial recovery from the bombings was rapid.
[93]
...
The unease was made worse by an
Associated Press story that the Allies had resorted to
terror bombing. At a press briefing held by the
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force two days after the raids, British Air Commodore
Colin McKay Grierson told journalists:
First of all they (Dresden and similar towns) are the centres to which evacuees are being moved. They are centres of communications through which traffic is moving across to the Russian Front, and from the Western Front to the East, and they are sufficiently close to the Russian Front for the Russians to continue the successful prosecution of their battle. I think these three reasons probably cover the bombing.
[113]
One of the journalists asked whether the principal aim of bombing Dresden would be to cause confusion among the refugees or to blast communications carrying military supplies. Grierson answered that the primary aim was to attack communications to prevent the Germans from moving military supplies, and to stop movement in all directions if possible. He then added in an offhand remark that the raid also helped destroy "what is left of German morale". Howard Cowan, an Associated Press war correspondent, subsequently filed a story claiming that the Allies had resorted to terror bombing. There were follow-up newspaper editorials on the issue and a longtime opponent of strategic bombing, Richard Stokes
MP, asked questions in the House of Commons on 6 March.
[114][115]
...
Falsification of evidence
Holocaust deniers and pro-Nazi polemicists—most notably by British writer
David Irving—use the bombing in an attempt to establish a moral equivalence between the war crimes committed by the Nazi government and the killing of German civilians by Allied bombing raids.
[141] As such, grossly inflated
[142] casualty figures have been promulgated over the years, many based on a figure of over 200,000 deaths quoted in a forged version of the casualty report,
Tagesbefehl No. 47, that originated with
Hitler's Reich Minister of Propaganda
Joseph Goebbels.
[143][144][145] Irving himself grossly exaggerated the death toll in his book
The Destruction of Dresden, arguing that the allied bombing killed 135,000 inhabitants; these figures were initially widely accepted, but are now considered to be wildly inflated.
[146]
...
A report by the U.S. Air Force Historical Division (USAFHD) analysed the circumstances of the raid and concluded that it was militarily necessary and justified, based on the following points:
[8]
- The raid had legitimate military ends, brought about by exigent military circumstances.
- Military units and anti-aircraft defences were sufficiently close that it was not valid to consider the city "undefended".
- The raid did not use extraordinary means but was comparable to other raids used against comparable targets.
- The raid was carried out through the normal chain of command, pursuant to directives and agreements then in force.
- The raid achieved the military objective, without excessive loss of civilian life.
The first point regarding the legitimacy of the raid depends on two claims: first, that the railyards subjected to American precision bombing were an important logistical target, and that the city was also an important industrial centre.
[8] Even after the main firebombing, there were two further raids on the Dresden railway yards by the USAAF. The first was on 2 March 1945, by 406 B-17s, which dropped 940 tons of high-explosive bombs and 141 tons of incendiaries. The second was on 17 April, when 580 B-17s dropped 1,554 tons of high-explosive bombs and 165 tons of incendiaries.
[8]
As far as Dresden being a militarily significant industrial centre, an official 1942 guide described the German city as "... one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich," and in 1944, the
German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops that supplied materiel to the military.
[40] Dresden was the seventh largest German city, and by far the largest un-bombed built-up area left, and thus was contributing to the defence of Germany itself.
[149]
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The Wiki article is VERY long, and I've tried to present only the more essential details and excerpts here. Any who want further context and perspective are encouraged to read the full link,
en.wikipedia.org