That day’s Hamburg raid was, again, just one part of a bigger plan involving several attacks on German territory. Three other combat wings would attack a rubber factory in Hanover and, just as on the previous day, one was supposed to fly a feint off the German coast to draw the fighters from their airfields prematurely. There would again be a series of diversions over northern France and the Low Countries by a force of light bombers under fighter escort. Each of the various combat wings and diversionary forces would aim to cross into Europe simultaneously, but at different points, in the hope of splitting German defences.
The American planners had done all they could to protect their forces. Now it was up to the individual crews. It was a tired and apprehensive group of men who left their various briefings and made their way to their planes. Unlike the day before, they now knew exactlywhat was waiting for them in the skies over Germany. Some were plainly demoralized, which might have influenced events later that morning.
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The two Hamburg wings took off at around 9.00 a.m. into the hazy sunshine of another warm summer’s day. They were in trouble almost immediately. While one wing managed to assemble without too much difficulty, the other was a shambles from the start.
The 303rd BG, which was supposed to be leading the Klöckner wing, failed to find either of its two accompanying groups, although it came across several unidentified formations of B-17s. Eventually the 303rd BG leader, Major William Calhoun, gave up looking for them and fell in behind the Blohm & Voss wing. 6
Meanwhile, the 379th BG spent half an hour wheeling and dispersing with various other groups of planes over the English coast but eventually gave up looking for its leaders and returned to base. The other missing group, the 384th BG, ended up following one of the Hanover wings most of the way across the North Sea, then turned back. It would have been possible for it to bomb Hanover instead of Hamburg, but the group leader was worried that, unlike his group, the formation he was following might be equipped with long-range fuel tanks. Given the possibility of the entire group running out of fuel over the sea on the way home, he took the sensible decision to abandon the mission. So it was that only four bomber groups, rather than six, approached Hamburg. Thirty-nine planes had turned back because they had been unable to form up properly.
However, they were not the last planes to drop out. The number of abortive flights, which had so concerned VIII Bomber Command Headquarters the night before, was escalating. In the 303rd BG, five planes aborted their mission – a quarter of the number dispatched. In the 351st BG, nine planes turned back, and in the 91st BG, eleven – just over half. In fact, of the 121 Flying Fortresses that took off for Hamburg, only fifty-four reached the target. Just one of the sixty-seven planes that turned back did so because of damage caused by German defences. 7
One might be forgiven for asking what could have caused such a phenomenal drop-out rate. It was normal for there to be a few engine problems in any mission, but the number of technical malfunctions for the Hamburg wings that day was twice what it was on any of the other wings. Some of the excuses for turning back were woolly at best: engines that were running a little rough, an erratic turbo, loose fittings on a pilot’s oxygen hose and so on. A few of the reasons given appeared to be outright inventions. For example, one 351st BG crew claimed that they had returned because of a malfunction in one of the supercharger regulators, but when the station mechanics investigated they were unable to find anything wrong. The number of ‘pilot illnesses’ that occurred frankly defies belief. The only real explanation is that many of those who had experienced the previous day’s ordeal could not face the thought of going through it again. They had simply lost their nerve. 8
The four bomber groups that approached Hamburg around midday on 26 July were so badly depleted that they were in serious danger. Had the defences been anything like as ferocious as the day before they might have suffered even worse casualties. But they were lucky – most of the German fighters had been deployed further south to tackle the B-17s that were flying on Hanover. While those wings were attacked mercilessly, the Hamburg force was allowed to fly across Germany relatively unmolested. That is not to say there were no fighters around – on the contrary, thirty or forty were waiting for the Hamburg force as it crossed the coast – but unlike yesterday they seemed happy to sit back and wait for the flak to do its work, then pick off any stragglers later. Fortunately for the Americans, however, the flak did not do nearly as much damage as it had the day before, and almost the entire force reached the target and returned without sustaining any serious damage. 9
Once the four bomber groups had arrived at the city, the next challenge was to find their targets. This was easier said than done because, once again, the docklands were immersed in clouds of smoke. Unlike yesterday, however, most of this smoke was not caused by the fires in the city: instead it was a deliberate screen produced by German smoke pots on the ground. This time the Hamburg smoke-screen units had not been caught unawares; much of the panic in the city had died down during the last twenty-four hours and they had had time to prepare for the coming bombers. Blohm & Voss was completely obscured, as were several other areas of the city. In the event, the Blohm & Voss wing chose to attack Howaldtswerke again, as they had yesterday, because this target was clearly visible beneath them. They scored several direct hits on the shipyard, as well as on the MAN diesel engine works. 10
The 303rd BG wisely chose not to attempt an attack alone on the Klöckner factory, but instead flew over the Neuhof power station, just south of the targets the other bomber groups were striking. One of its bombs scored a direct hit, putting the plant out of action for more than two weeks – probably the single most important effect of the raid. This group then fell back in with the other bomber formations and turned southwards for the long journey home.
Unlike the RAF raid two nights previously, which had lasted almost an hour, this bombing run took just a minute to execute. There were so few planes, and they were flying in such close formation, that as soon as the lead bomber had dropped his bombs the rest of the formation were able to follow suit. More than 126 tons of incendiaries and high explosive fell in the minute between 11.59 and midday, and then it was over. This was exactly the way precision bombing was supposed to go: the all-important dock
areas received dozens of direct hits simultaneously, but apart from those who were in the area at the time, most of the civilians in Hamburg barely knew that the bombing had happened.
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The journey home was potentially even more dangerous than the previous day’s withdrawal flight. Their route would keep the Americans over German territory for almost twice as long, and by flying between Bremen and Oldenburg they would attract the attention of both flak and fighters all the way out. It had been a calculated risk on the part of the planners: the Hanover forces would also be flying through this area, and the USAAF were gambling that the Luftwaffe would not be able to attack both forces in great numbers. In the event, it was the Hanover wings that continued to suffer the brunt of the German storm. The Hamburg group was barely bothered at all – since the formation had held up to the flak remarkably well, it was merely escorted out of German territory by a fighter force that was unwilling to do much beyond hover at the edges waiting for stragglers.
In the end, only one B-17 was unable to keep up with the others – an unfortunate plane called Nitemare, piloted by First Lieutenant James W. Rendall Jr, which had been hit by flak on the way into the target and on the way out. 11With two of its engines on fire, it was only a matter of time before it was forced to drop away from the formation. German fighters lost no time in dealing with it, attacking the plane three and four abreast. The radio operator was killed by their machine-gun fire, and the B-17 was so badly damaged that there was no option for the rest of the crew but to bail out. The ball-turret gunner did so, but his parachute failed to open and he died when he hit the ground after a fall of 26,000 feet. The navigator and bombardier reached the ground safely, but were shot while trying to escape shortly afterwards. They died from their wounds in hospital. The rest of the crew survived to become prisoners-of-war. Nitemarecrashed near Nindorf, ten miles south-east of Rotenburg.