The raids on Kiel and Bremen

On Sunday 13 June 1943, Whit Sunday, heavy bombers of the US Eighth Air Force attacked the submarine-building yards at Kiel and Bremen in broad daylight. The operation, designated Mission No. 63 in VIII Bomber Command’s records, ended with the heaviest losses the American air force had yet suffered over Europe: German fighters and anti-aircraft guns destroyed 26 B-17s, 22 of them from the formation that flew to Kiel. Among the dead was Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest III, the first American general killed in action in the European theatre.

Daylight raids on the shipyards

From the outset the Americans intended to bomb Germany by day, aiming at specific plants rather than – like the British RAF Bomber Command – at whole urban districts by night. After the first raid on Wilhelmshaven in January 1943, the commander of the Eighth Air Force, General Ira Eaker, sent his formations again and again against Germany’s North Sea coast: to Wilhelmshaven, Emden, Vegesack, Bremen and Kiel. The top priority was the submarine yards and bases, because it was the U-boats that posed the greatest threat to the Allies at that time in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Kiel was the Kriegsmarine’s main Baltic base and home to three large shipyards on the east bank of the fjord: Deutsche Werke, Howaldtswerke and Krupp’s Germaniawerft – one of the main builders of U-boats. The Americans had already bombed it on 14 and 19 May 1943, losing 8 and 6 aircraft respectively. In Bremen there was the Deschimag AG Weser works, which also built submarines. Although in May the U-boats had suffered a defeat in the Atlantic that forced Admiral Karl Dönitz to withdraw them from the North Atlantic, the Germans were still building new boats, and Allied planners regarded the shipyards as one of the key targets.

In the spring of 1943 the Eighth Air Force was growing fast. In May three new bomb groups – the 94th, 95th and 96th – entered combat under the 4th Bombardment Wing; it was they who flew to Kiel on 13 June. This was not their baptism of fire, however, as is sometimes stated: they had been flying missions over France and Germany since mid-May. The bombers still flew without fighter cover over the target. The P-47 Thunderbolt fighters, which had been accompanying the raids since the beginning of May, had the range to reach the German border at most. Beyond it the Flying Fortress crews had to defend themselves, relying on the dozen or so machine guns of each aircraft and a tight formation.

The mission

On the morning of 13 June two formations took off from airfields in eastern England. The larger, made up of 151 B-17s from seven groups of the 1st Bombardment Wing, flew to Bremen; 122 aircraft dropped their bombs on the shipyards and the port. The defences there were relatively weak, and the Americans lost four aircraft. The smaller formation – 76 bombers of the 4th Wing – flew over the North Sea and the Jutland peninsula towards Kiel. The Kiel force was led by Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest III, chief of staff of the Second Air Force, who had come to England as an observer to gain combat experience. He was a great-grandson of the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. He flew in the lead aircraft of the 95th Bomb Group.

Forrest had the aircraft arranged in an experimental flat formation, almost wingtip to wingtip, instead of the stepped “boxes” the Eighth Air Force had used until then. This was meant to concentrate the defensive fire of the gunners in a single plane. In practice the formation proved difficult to hold and hampered mutual protection, and after the mission it was judged to be one of the causes of the losses. It was used for the first and last time.

Over Schleswig-Holstein and over Kiel itself the bombers were attacked by Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters of several Luftwaffe fighter wings, supported by night fighters and by a test unit that was trying out new methods of fighting bombers. American reports later spoke of the fiercest fighter attacks the Eighth Air Force had encountered to that date. Sixty aircraft reached the target. The formation broke up under the blows, and aircraft that fell out of formation were finished off one by one – including on the way home over the sea.

Forrest’s bomber, already damaged before the target, was shot down in the Kiel area. According to the other crews, parachutes were seen opening; the aircraft exploded. The general was listed as missing. In September 1943 the sea washed his body ashore on Rügen, where the Germans buried him in a small cemetery at Wiek. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross – according to the citation, for leading the formation to the target despite the damage to his aircraft.

Losses

Of the 76 bombers sent to Kiel, 22 failed to return – almost one in three. One more was fit only for scrap, and 23 others were damaged. The 95th Bomb Group lost the most – ten aircraft, the most any Eighth Air Force group had yet lost on a single mission. According to the American tally, over Kiel three airmen were killed in aircraft that returned, 20 were wounded and 213 were listed as missing; some of them survived and were taken prisoner, while many died in the sea. Over Bremen 32 airmen went missing. In all, 26 B-17s and some 250 men were lost.

The gunners claimed 39 German fighters shot down over Kiel and two over Bremen. Such figures were the rule in the Eighth Air Force – in the chaos of combat several gunners would claim the same aircraft – and far exceeded reality. According to tallies based on German records, the Luftwaffe lost seven aircraft and two pilots that day. Damage to the shipyards proved limited; the bombs did not halt submarine construction for long.

Unescorted over Germany

Kiel confirmed what earlier missions over the German coast had already shown: a tight formation of heavy bombers was not enough to survive the attacks of a determined defence without escort fighters. Losses of more than ten per cent per mission meant that within a few weeks a unit could lose most of its crews. Eaker pressed Washington for more aircraft, crews and long-range fighters.

The answer came in the form of a new directive. The Trident Conference had approved a plan for a combined bomber offensive in May, and in June the Pointblank directive was issued – on 10 June according to most sources, on 14 June according to some. It put first not the shipyards but the German fighter force: the factories producing aircraft and engines, and the fighters themselves in the air. Attacks on U-boat bases slipped down the list; the raid on Kiel was one of the Eighth Air Force’s last major strikes aimed primarily at the submarine fleet.

Significance

Mission No. 63 opened the hardest period of the American daylight offensive. In the summer of 1943 the Americans again flew unescorted deep into Germany, this time – in line with the Pointblank directive – against aircraft and ball-bearing factories. In July they struck Hamburg – by day, between the RAF’s night raids of Operation Gomorrah – and Kiel again, and on 17 August and 14 October they lost 60 bombers each time over Regensburg and Schweinfurt. After these defeats the command suspended unescorted raids deep into Germany. The breakthrough came only with long-range fighters, especially the P-51 Mustang with drop tanks, which from early 1944 could accompany the bombers all the way to the target and won the battle for air supremacy over Germany against the Luftwaffe – a precondition for the invasion of France.

Forrest’s death became for the Americans a symbol of the price paid for daylight bombing. At the same time, the British bomber force under Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris was waging its night-time Battle of the Ruhr, just as costly for the crews and far more destructive for German cities.