Professional Documents
Culture Documents
8 December 2010
CHAPTER 18
FIRE IN WORLD WAR II
Mass fires, both intentional and accidental, have
always played a role in warfare. In WWII, fire bombing
became a major contributor to damage in both Europe
and Japan. Some sixty five Japanese cities suffered
losses of roughly half their structures from USAAF
firebombing. Similar devastation was caused in earlier
firebombing in Germany by the British RAF.
The Role of Fire in Warfare
Fire has always played a dominant role in warfare, even in
ancient wars. Invaders invariably torched cities, burned villages
and systematically set fire to crops. In times of crisis, whether it
is earthquake, civil strife or other disruption, fire generally
increases damage, whether as intended by a combatant force or
as an incidental result of the chaos engendered by natural
disruption or human conflict.
Moscow burned as Napoleon entered, but it is not clear how
much of the fire was set by French troops. Napoleon did order
the Kremlin torched. Evacuees left the city largely unattended, so
when fires broke out, they were not always fought successfully.
In addition, the mayor of Moscow made efforts to deny the French
supplies and shelter, and ordered the city burned, which, in those
years, was dominated by wooden structures.
Most great cities of the past have been burned during time
of war, some repeatedly – Rome, Berlin, London, and Moscow –
even Washington. British troops burned the White House and the
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every other urban area in the Nazi country, most Germans found
themselves too busy fighting fires and repairing damage to
quarrel about their leadership or the conduct of the war. In a
book about Goebbles, the author quotes the Berlin Police
Commissioner:
The terror of the bombings forged men together.
In rescue work there was no time for men to ask one
another who was for and who against the Nazis. In the
general hopelessness people clung to the single
fanatical will they could see, and unfortunately Goebbels
was the personification of that will. It was disgusting to
see it, but whenever that spiteful dwarf appeared,
people still thronged to see him and felt beatified [sic] to
receive an autograph or a handshake from him.2
Still, many allied leaders felt that most of the German people
would be discouraged by the devastation brought by the air war,
and that most were hoping the air raids would lead to an early
end to the conflict.
British reconnaissance photography in 1941 showed that
nearly eighty percent of British bombs were falling more than five
miles from their intended targets, and over the heavily defended
Ruhr only one bomb in ten landed within ten miles of its intended
target. Since fully a third of the British war effort was going into
strategic bombing, but causing such poor results in attacking
German industries, the doctrine was altered to attacks on
urban/industrial centers instead of specific installations or military
targets 3.
One inadvertent example that illustrated the effectiveness of
the RAF tactic can be found in the effort to destroy the submarine
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Early in the air war, German cities in the east of the country
were beyond the reach of Allied bombers. And their fighter
escorts were unable to make the long flights to those more
distant cities, leaving the long-range bombers at the mercy of the
German antiaircraft and fighters. So Berlin and many eastern
German areas escaped attack until later in the air war.
Eventually, fighter aircraft, especially the USAAF P-51s, when
equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks to extend their range, were
able to escort the bombers and protect them on their missions to
Berlin and beyond.
Because of their earlier success with firebombing, the British
expectation was that they could burn Berlin as they had other
cities in the Ruhr and elsewhere in western Germany. But, even
with ever more intensive firebombing of Berlin as the war
progressed, the Berlin raids never succeeded in generating mass
fires.
“Promising the British people that "Berlin will be
bombed until the heart of Nazi Germany ceases to
beat," Sir Arthur Harris (whose enthusiasm for bombing
civilians dated back to the Third Afghan War in 1919)
[31] unleashed the RAF's heavy bombers on 18
November. In a new strategy that the Germans called
Bombenteppich or "carpet bombing," the Lancasters,
flying in dangerously tight formations, concentrated
their bomb loads on small, densely populated areas.
Mission performance was measured simply by urban
acreage destroyed. Explosive with the deliberate aim of
killing firefighters, rescue workers, and refugees
followed up incendiary attacks. In line with the
Churchillian doctrine of targeting Weimar's Red belts to
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the most devastating. The RAF raids that day and night most
confounded and overwhelmed the firefighters with attacks on the
center of Hamburg as well as peripheral areas.13 The result was
the now-infamous “firestorm”. The intense and nearly
simultaneous burning led to the consumption of everything
combustible in the fire area. The inferno generated high winds (~
150 mph) and very high air and smoke temperatures in the
streets (~ 1500 degrees Fahrenheit).14 The asphalt in the streets
burst into flames, and people in those streets were sucked further
into the inferno with their clothing torn away and their bodies
burned and charred. It was estimated that some 80% of the
casualties were due to carbon monoxide poisoning for people who
sought shelter in basements. Long after the fires subsided, the
heaps of ruins and ashes remained hot. Such intense fires
generated high winds that toppled trees dried out and charred
foliage and tore away roofs, thus exposing more combustible
interior material.
Perhaps for the first time, the German High Command was
greatly impressed by the devastation in Hamburg. In regard to
the Hamburg holocaust, Hans Speer told USSBS interrogators
after the war:
“I reported for the first time orally to the Fuehrer that if
these aerial attacks continued, a rapid end of the war
might be the consequence.” 15
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beyond, and so the RAF and USAAF were able to carry the air war
deeper to eastern German cities.
On 13 February 1945, the British RAF bombers attacked
Dresden in a night raid. It was after a snowstorm. For some
reason, that night, German fighters were not sent aloft to
challenge the British bombers, and antiaircraft batteries were not
activated, so the lead bombardiers and the following flights had
no distraction or interference as they flew over the target. Led to
the city’s old center by an expert pathfinder navigator, the
firebombs fell in a high concentration over an old part of the city
of Dresden. That section of the city was crowded with old
multistory buildings along narrow streets. The resulting holocaust
in Dresden was unusually fierce, and cold air and snow made little
difference. On the following day, a raid by USAAF bombers found
Dresden still in flames or ashes after a firestorm of intensities not
created since the Hamburg holocaust of more than a year
previous.
Perhaps because the German authorities believed that
Dresden had, for most of the war, no important war-related
industries or functions, they had not built adequate air defenses
nor had they provided adequate shelters for the populous.
Consequently, the citizens were left largely without fire-fighting
resources or air raid shelters.
In an aside, the difficulty in bombing the selected targets
was illustrated by that USAAF raid the day after. Most of the
American bombers got to Dresden in spite of the fact that the
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pathfinder aircraft that were to lead them to the city got lost.
They thought they had Dresden in their sights, but bombed
Prague in Czechoslovakia instead. In fact, cloud cover and bad
weather were frequent causes of confusion for bombing raids in
both Germany and Japan throughout World War II. Near the end
of the war, radar began to help see through the obscuring clouds,
but those early radars were still far from perfected.
A further exacerbation to the tragic loss of life in Dresden
that night and the USAAF raid the next day was the fact that the
city was crowded with refugees fleeing from the advancing Soviet
Army. At the time, the Russians were fighting the retreating
German army in the eastern part of the city. In fact some
evidence suggests that Stalin had requested the British and
American attack on the city of Dresden, since it lay on the Soviet
Army’s path to Berlin. Stalin had met with Churchill and
Roosevelt at their Yalta Conference, a meeting that ended just
two days before the Dresden raid. Dresden’s rail yards and an air
base were important logistics centers for the struggling Germans.
Nevertheless, targeting the old center of the city of Dresden
made little sense as a strategic objective for the British and
Americans and even the Soviets. It was an ancient cultural
center, previously not considered of great strategic significance
by German defenders or by the Allied attackers. Its rail yards had
previously been bombed by the RAF or the USAAF in a daylight
raid on 7 October 1944 and again on 16 January 1945. But in the
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getting the job done. To make their effort even less successful,
key German industries were recovering from the air attacks quite
rapidly, and their production was not being cut off, nor even
reduced for long.
Six months after the war’s end, I was stationed in Bremen to
manage the communications on the airfield. Bremen airfield,
after the war, was the entry point into Occupied Germany for the
USAAF. When the British troops reached the Bremen Airfield,
they found the Folcke-Wolf aircraft factory adjacent to the field in
ruins – nothing but twisted steel and broken concrete. Yet there
on the taxiway were two FW-190 fighter aircraft in final assembly
stages.
To avoid the frequent bombing raids on the airfield, the
Germans had dismantled and redistributed the factory machinery
throughout the city of Bremen. A lathe in this basement, and a
milling machine across the street, repeated all over the city,
managed to make airplane parts. Only for final assembly and fly-
off were these partial assemblies carted out to the airfield, and
hastily bolted together to be flown off runways that were a
checkered mess of hastily filled craters.
In contrast, the British night-time fire raids started so many
fires that near the end of the air war Germany cities were still
being devastated by fire even with thousands of German
firefighters actively fighting those fires in the major cities during
and after each raid. Heroic efforts may have limited fire spread
outside the bombed area, but little of the German firefighting
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and some potential insight into the thinking and planning that
guided those enormous armadas of bombers over Europe during
WWII. Even then, the question was raised as to why the USAAF
failed to credit fire and incendiary weapons with effectiveness in
the Air War against Germany.
Recently, I learned of the interest one of Marc Peter’s
daughters had in his papers, so, via a mutual friend, I sent them
off to her in Switzerland (after copying for myself some of the
more obviously interesting ones).
A few assorted statistics regarding the WWII air war in
Europe are gleaned from a somewhat controversial account by a
German writer, Jörg Freidrich, in a book entitled The Fire: 32
Some 635,000 German civilians died as a result of the
attacks on German cities.
The most used incendiary weapon was a 4-lb cigar-shaped
liquid-fueled bomb – 80 million of them were dropped.
The RAF crews lost some 55,000 during those attacks.
Nearly two thirds of the bomber crews failed to survive their
required thirty combat missions.
World War II – U. S. Army Air Force Air Raids on Japan
In the early months of 1945, while the aerial bombardment
of Germany was reaching its peak, the bombardment of Japanese
cities by the big new B-29 bombers had also begun on a large
scale. At first, in late 1944, these bombers had to fly long
distances from bases in China, but after American forces retook
the Philippines and occupied the Marianas, raids on the Japanese
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would be able to suppress fires from any future raids, that their
leaders informed the Emperor of their confidence.
But then, less than two weeks later, on 10 March 1945, the
air war in Japan really had a significant new beginning with
another larger B-29 raid on Tokyo. LeMay, having found that
Japanese air defenses were largely ineffective, had his B-29s
descend to low altitude and to drop mostly incendiary bombs. A
fleet of more than 300 B-29s firebombed an area of about a third
of Tokyo. The fires started by this raid merged to create a
massive fire that spread before the wind and burned completely
some 15 square miles of Tokyo (about 40% of the central city)
and also spread into the adjacent city of Yokohama in one huge
uncontrollable fire front. In this latter raid, the active firefighters
were completely overwhelmed and largely ineffective. This first
large-scale low-altitude raid concentrated on an area that covered
less than a third of the city of Tokyo, but the conflagration, driven
by surface winds, spread into another third of the city. That one
raid unloaded 1,667 tons of incendiaries on the city. Some 125
Japanese firefighters were killed or wound as a result of the raid.37
Describing the onset of the new fire raid tactics, Commander
Orville J. Emory, USNR from the Office of Chief of Naval
Operations wrote in a chapter of Bond’s 1946 book:
“The B-29 saturation incendiary raids, which
began in March 1945, did not follow the pattern
expected by the Japanese. The B-29s did not fly over
Japanese cities in formation, but came singly and in
groups of three at low levels from all directions at
intervals of 20 to 45 seconds and continued the
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for refuge looked for protection in the canals and rivers, but soon
the canals were full of people. Those who did not drown were
showered with burning embers, sparks and smoke. Fire-fighting
equipment proved totally inadequate.
In all, some 22 USAAF bombers were lost. Of course, the
fact that American wartime industry and U.S. military logistics
managed to get hundreds of new B-29s and millions of incendiary
bombs thousands of miles across the ocean to newly constructed
airfields on these remote Western Pacific islands in time of war is
a tribute to more than just the brave crews of LeMay’s bombers.
Then, two days later, the B-29s attacked Nagoya also at low
altitude, destroying two square miles of that city.
Only four days after the first successful Tokyo attack at low
altitude, a similar raid was made on Osaka (Japan’s second
largest city). The destruction was equally impressive with some
sixty percent of the city burned out. Then, a week after the
devastating Tokyo raid, the bombers returned to attack Kobe and
destroyed more than 70,000 homes, leaving a quarter of a million
people homeless. 40 Within ten days, a some 31 square miles of
urban area were obliterated.
A month later, another raid was made on Tokyo with further
destruction of buildings and property. But fewer lives were lost,
since residents were able to avoid the fires by retreating to the
previously burned over areas, and many citizens had already
been evacuated or voluntarily left the devastated city. Before
the attacks on Tokyo, the population of the greater Tokyo area
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was about 7.5 million, but by war’s end with casualties, people
fleeing and being evacuated, the population was reduced to the
order of only 3.5 million.41 The destruction or dislocation and
dispersal of four million citizens certainly brought the war home
to the Japanese leaders and surely contributed to their ultimate
decision to seek its end.
In some ways, the air war on Japan was similar to that on
Germany, in that cloud cover and bad weather often limited
bombing success. The destruction of the Japanese aircraft engine
plant (Nakajima Musashino) took 14 missions and the loss of 58 B-
29s. Then, with clear weather, a single raid managed to
thoroughly demolish the Mitsubishi Tamashima assembly plant.42
But in the Japanese air campaign, the USAAF change in
tactics from pinpoint bombing to fire bombing of entire cities led
to vastly greater destruction of large fractions of Japanese cities,
culminating in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Needless to say, many war-essential industries and military
facilities were destroyed in the process.
The Switch to Firebombing
It is not clear how much the analysts for the Japanese air war
were aware of the history of large-scale fires in Japan.
History shows that Japan had had a number of great fires in
its past, suggesting the inadequacy of fire-fighting facilities and
the combustible nature of much Japanese construction. Some
fires, such as the 1923 Tokyo fire were the result of earthquake
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beyond the area already involved. On the other hand the fire-
induced high winds insured that everything combustible within
the burning area would be completely consumed. And often,
large firebrands were carried aloft to drop out into unburned
areas well beyond the fire perimeter.
By the war’s end, some sixty-five other Japanese cities had
been attacked, causing 40 to 60 percent destruction of the built-
up area in each. Still, in keeping with Air Force prime objectives,
these fire raids were alternated with daylight attacks on
important military targets, using mostly high explosive bombs.
Accuracy from these low altitude raids (at 5,000 to 15,000 ft)
rose to a level where 30 to 40 percent of the bombs landed within
one thousand feet of the designated targets.
The USSBS report on the air war in the Pacific lists the
tonnage of bombs dropped as follows:
Targets Tonnage Dropped
Urban Areas 104,000
Aircraft Factories 14,150
Oil Refineries 10,600
Airfields 8,115
Arsenals 4,700
Various Industries 3,500
Table 15-4. Tonnage dropped on Japanese Targets44
As the fire raids continued in the first half of 1945, the
Japanese increased their fire-fighting efforts. They began to clear
wide strips through cities in order to create firebreaks. But these
were often of little value when large-scale fires developed that
could spread across wide-open spaces or when bombing raids
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The Survey Group was to study the air war that was still
going on in Europe as well as the anticipated aerial bombardment
of Japan. The Japanese campaign did not seriously begin until
late February 1945. By that time, islands like Tinian had been
captured and airfields constructed that would allow large numbers
of the new B-29 bombers to reach the Japanese homeland.
Perhaps it was coincidental to the primary purpose of the
bombing survey, but these Air Corp Officers evidenced the same
desire as the Air Force planners to not appear as “mass
murderers”. The planners had insisted that they were able to
destroy important military targets from the air without also
devastating large parts of surrounding or nearby cities and their
civilian populations.
The USSBS reports, issued in classified form after the war,
thoroughly documented the air war in Europe and in Japan, but
retained the same tendency to discount the effectiveness of fire
and firebombing. Even so, they did devote considerable attention
to the effects of fire. In that regard, it is unfortunate that their
investigative teams did not include many fire damage experts,
and did not make obvious use of the expertise accumulated
within the analysis staffs both in England and the Pacific, with the
exception of Major Sanborn, who did serve on the USSBS staff.
Among the reported findings, Maj. Sanborn listed eleven
tactical factors that influenced firebombing effectiveness: 48
1. Daylight raids are more successful than night raids.
(Better visibility leads to greater accuracy.)
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marine life traces came from beaches north of Tokyo. 57 With that
information, the Air Force targeteers found, from aerial
photographs, the industrial plants that were generating the
hydrogen for the balloons. After the B-29s destroyed two of the
three plants, the balloon operation was terminated in April 1945.
By that time, Japanese troops had been forced out of all their
captured territories, and were fighting in Okinawa using
Kamikazes to attack the U.S. Navy ships. The isolated and
ineffective attacks on a distant continent must have appeared
fruitless and not very meaningful by that time.
However, some coincidence may be noted in the fact that on
March 10, 1945, one Japanese balloon descended near the
Hanford reactor site. It caused a power interruption that
endangered the reactor cooling system and threatened the
continued production of plutonium for the bomb to be dropped on
Nagasaki five months later.58
In retrospect, it is surprising that more damage and injury
did not occur from the possible 1000 balloon bombs that reached
America. Their design included high explosive bombs as well as
incendiaries. In one case, near Hayfork in northern California,
some 40 miles west of Redding, a Japanese balloon was spotted
by local citizens. It was descending, and became lodged on the
crown of a dead fir tree. The hydrogen-filled gas bag exploded,
but the payload survived with one HE bomb and four incendiaries
aboard.59
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46. Bond, p. 174 [Tactical and ground factors influencing fire] [p.
622]
47. Ibid., p. 177 (Fire susceptibility versus occupancy)
[p. 625]
48. Ibid., p. 188 (U.S. and U.K. both committed to policy of destroying enemy
cities by war’s end) [p.
625]
49. Ibid., p. 90 (There were twice as many civilian casualties as military
casualties in Japan)
[p. 625]
50. Eden, Lynn, Whole World on Fire, Cornell University Press, 2004, (Ch. 2)
[Bureaucratic tendentiousness and failure to make changes] [p.
625]
51. http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_than_air/Airships_in_WWII/
LTA10.htm [impact of Japanese incendiary balloons]
[p. 626]
52. Rogers, J. David, How Geologists Unraveled the Mystery of Japanese
Vengeance Balloon Bombs in World War II, p.2
http://web.umr.edu/~rogersda/forensic_geology/Japanese%20vengenance
%20bombs%20new
[p. 627]
53. loc. cit., p. 6 [balloons reached as far east as Michigan and Iowa] [p.
627]
54. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon, p.4 [the only balloon fatality] [p.
627]
55. Rogers p.2 [Discovery of source of balloons] [p.
627]
56. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon, p.5
[Power failure at Hanford due to balloon] [p. 628]
57. http://www.militarymuseum.org/Hayfork.html
[One surviving balloon payload] [p.
628]
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