Between 24th July and 3rd August 1943, Hamburg was subject to seven Anglo-American air raids, which had transformed the blossoming Hanseatic town at the effusion of the river Elbe to North Sea into ruins, dust and ash. As the consequence some 45,000 citizens were killed, 37,439 wounded, 250,000 homeless and over one million of them had left the town, because they have either lost their home or their working place, or - in most cases - both.
British and Americans had two basically different ways of bombing. RAF Air Marshall Arthur Harris was sending his four engine Lancasters, Stirlings, Halifaxes and two engine Mosquitos to carpet bomb German towns during the night in order to decrease their own losses as much as possible. The American USAAF General Ira Eaker directed his B-17 Flying Fortresses and B24 Liberators to daily raids on factories, harbors, railway centers, refineries, bridges and similar strategic objects. The Americans relied on their precise Norden bombsight, with which they aimed well, even if they flew higher than the British. However, their aiming became inaccurate, if the target was obscured by clouds or smoke, if they were subject to violent antiaircraft fire, which was usually the case, or if German fighters, who spotted them much easier in daylight, were attacking them. Due these three "ifs" they suffered four times bigger losses (in percentage) than the British, who kept bombing in the darkness of night. American losses started decreasing not earlier than toward the end of 1944, when the Mustang or Lightning fighters were accompanying their bombers all the way to the target.
In the RAF night raids the British usually sent some 500 to 1000 mostly four engine bombers, which could carry 4.5 tons of bombs each. This was three times as much as each of the 515 German two engine HE-111 bombers carried on their raid of 14th of October 1940, when they completely obliterated the British town Coventry. The German bombs had killed 568 citizens and wounded more than that. In this, the most massive attack of the British town, it became evident that incendiary bombs mixed with a relatively small quantity of high explosive bombs cause much more damage than the HE bombs alone. The enormous conflagration caused by the raid, continues the devastation, because it is too extensive for the firemen to master it, and prevents the rescue of the victims many hours or even days after the bombers have flown away.
By summarizing, the RAF planes were intentionally directed to carpet bomb the towns, thus causing the majority of victims amongst the civilians. This should - besides "dehousing" the factory workers - undermine their morale. In the long run they were expected to overthrow the Government and ask for capitulation. Over the German towns the British also dispersed leaflets, where »Get rid of Hitler and the bombing will stop«, or similar demoralizing slogans were printed. However, Marshal Harris had forgotten that the German bombing of British towns did not undermine the morale of the population in any way. On the German side, the numerous members of NSDAP, Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst, kept the population of Third Reich almost under a total control. Hitler was blind to the victims amongst the civilians, no matter how numerous they were.
Contrary to RAF the USAAF bombers were aiming mostly at strategic objects, which should basically minimize the victims in the civilian population (although this was mostly not the case). But, gradually also the Americans acquired the British way of bombing and even surpassed them in their night raids on Japan (not considering Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
On 24th July at 10.00 PM the first wave of 791 RAF bombers, loaded with 2,300 tons of mostly incendiary bombs started taking off, heading toward Hamburg, where they arrived three hours later. Some bombers, which started 30 minutes ahead of them, were dispersing aluminum strips in length one half of the wavelength of the Würzburg ground radar. These German radars were used to direct their anti-aircraft fire, and lead the fighters toward the enemy bombers. The strips, called Window, which the RAF was using for the first time, had completely blinded all Würzburg radars as well as the Lichtenstein radars of the night fighters. Some other bombers sowed longer strips to jam the long range Freya radar. These strips created the impression that big swarms of bombers were also on their way against other German towns. Due to resonance effect any single strip floating high in the air caused a spot on the German radar screen equal to a bomber plane.
All these strips in the air had so utterly confused the German air defense, that all RAF bombers could drop their deadly load to the northwest residential area of Hamburg undisturbed. Their aiming points were marked by the light flares on the ground, which were dropped previously by the leading pathfinders group.
The fires, which raged some half an hour after the raid, prevented the flight of those, who managed to crawl out of ruins, because they could not walk on the softened and burning asphalt pavement. Another obstacle was the hurricane wind (Feuersturm) caused by the enormous conflagration. Those, who had survived the raid, but could not escape the ruins, suffocated from carbon monoxide, emanating from the glowing coal stocked in the cellars, or for the lack of oxygen, which was consumed by the fire, raging over so vast an area. Those in the internal area of Feuersturm were burned alive, because the temperature exceeding 1000 °C even melted bottles and jars in their makeshift air raid shelters. In case the bombs had damaged the main water supply pipes, the unfortunate people either drowned or were slowly cooked alive. The fire brigades were powerless, because the devastated water supply system was of no use, and too many deep bomb craters on the burning streets prevented moving of their vehicles. Many unexploded, delayed action bombs, filled with metallic splinters disturbed their rescue actions.
The Americans sent 123 Flying Fortresses on the 25th of June and which began dropping their bombs on the Howlandswerke shipbuilding yards at 4.36 PM. Since they were aiming more accurately, each bomber carried only half as many bombs as the RAF planes. Lighter, these planes could fly at 10,000 m, so the German anti-aircraft guns could not reach them. Shortly before reaching their target they descended lower in order to aim more accurately. The flight by day subjected them to massive fighter attacks and they lost 18 planes.
In the following days up to August 3rd Hamburg was subject to one more USAAF- and five RAF raids, which had completely destroyed the whole town. The devastation of such enormous proportions had frightened the Ministers Josef Goebbels and Albert Speer. Both warned Hitler that the Reich could not withstand such raids in the long run. They urged him to visit the town and raise the morale of the population. Contrary to Churchill, who visited bombed British towns, Hitler never visited Hamburg (where he was frequently seen before the raid), nor any other bombed German town.
The book displays in full details an important example what are the consequences when a total war (originally initiated by Hitler) is pushed to the extreme.
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