No London Blitz

I'm not sure how plausible this is, but here goes.

I read in "The Century" that the London Blitz of 1940 only started when a German bomber accidentally dropped a bomb downtown instead of on the military target it was aiming for. Churchill hit Berlin in response, and everything escalated from there.

Suppose there are no errant bombs. Are the civilian sectors of London still attacked? If not, how would the hesitation of attacking civilians play out during the rest of the war?
 
I'm not sure how plausible this is, but here goes.

I read in "The Century" that the London Blitz of 1940 only started when a German bomber accidentally dropped a bomb downtown instead of on the military target it was aiming for. Churchill hit Berlin in response, and everything escalated from there.

Suppose there are no errant bombs. Are the civilian sectors of London still attacked? If not, how would the hesitation of attacking civilians play out during the rest of the war?

Bombing on both sides was not accurate enough to spare civilians. If not London then anyone of several British ports were suffering inaccurate raids leading to civilian casualties.

The end result would have been the same - area bombing was the only practical strategic use for heavy bombers until much later in the war when the principle of "breaking the will2 of the opposing population was entrenched.
 

Deleted member 1487

Yeah, it was an excuse. The British could well tell it was accidental and reported it as such internally, but were looking for an excuse to hit Berlin without looking like the bad guy in the escalation game, as it was the British who hit German cities first after the Germans bombed the defended military target of Rotterdam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotterdam_Blitz#Battle_for_Rotterdam)
, which the British presented a civilian target and terror raid, something that still permeates the historiography of the war.
The excuse would have come up anyway, as bombing Berlin successfully during the Blitz was an major propaganda coup during a period when Britain was going to be bombed heavily.
The failure of the attempt to gain air superiority for Sea Lion was pretty much already apparent and Sea Lion had no hope of success anyway, so it really doesn't change a thing.

The only way to prevent a London Blitz was to have a pre-war plan to attack Britain from the air and stick to it (as there was sort of such as plan, but it was quickly abandoned) and the only profitable targets once France fell were the Western Ports. I realize I push this idea on any thread about bombing Britain, but it was what the pre-war plan advocated and Luftwaffe intelligence kept advocating, but was ignored. So have the Luftwaffe focus on a trade war by bombing and mining ports instead of focusing on industry and London and then no London Blitz.
 
I'm not sure how plausible this is, but here goes.

I read in "The Century" that the London Blitz of 1940 only started when a German bomber accidentally dropped a bomb downtown instead of on the military target it was aiming for. Churchill hit Berlin in response, and everything escalated from there.

Suppose there are no errant bombs. Are the civilian sectors of London still attacked? If not, how would the hesitation of attacking civilians play out during the rest of the war?

The Germans weren't trying to hit a military target, they were trying to hit an industrial target - which happened to be the Thameshaven oil terminal, very close to wide built-up areas of London. They tried this at night, in the full knowledge that their targeting was not good enough at night to guarantee they wouldn't bomb the city. Nor did they send enough bombers on this mission to actually cripple the terminal, if they had hit it.

In other words, the Germans were making up a poor excuse. The purpose of the mission was to frighten British civilians, Londoners, by having the sirens wake up them at night - without, however, actually and openly targeting the city. It was a practice the Luftwaffe had learned and applied before; choose a legimate military or industrial target, but make sure it also hurts either the civilians' morale or the actual civilian buildings.

As it was wont to happen, the German bombers peppered the city. Luftwaffe fanboys will tell you that the wily British used this opportunity to shift the focus to city bombing, and maybe that this is the reason why the Luftwaffe was soundly beaten in the Battle of Britain.

Actually, it was already clear the Germans could not win in the daylight air battle. They couldn't keep up with their own losses. The strategy of attacking the airfields wasn't producing the desired result.

And, it was only a matter of obvious political expediency that once the enemy bombs your capital, if you can, you'll bomb the enemy's capital. The actual words of Churchill to the Air Staff were: "Now that they have begun to molest the capital, I want you to hit them hard, and Berlin is the place to hit them".

There's more. If we swallow the line that the city bombing tit for tat developed either by mistake or by a mistake compounded by the supremely cunning British riposte, all of that could well have remained a night campaign. Instead we had the September 15 daylight attack. Why?
Because the ban on bombing London had been lifted, and Kesselring was very much aware he wasn't achieving victory. Dowding was committing his fighters conservatively; the British fighters were regularly outnumbered by the forces they were sent to attack, yet they managed to give more than they took. At the same time, the Germans weren't destroying any operational fighters on the ground, nor were they damaging the airfields permanently and enough to really hamper operations.

The Germans thought they had to destroy Fighter Command in the air, but they couldn't do that if the British fighters only arrived in small numbers and piecemeal. They wanted a big battle, the Götterdämmerung of Fighter Command.
The Germans thus put their hopes in a last-gasp maximum effort over London. They thought the British would be forced to send all their few (?!) remaining fighters to defend the capital, and that they would be destroyed.

Final tally for the day: 56-28, a neat 2:1 kill ratio in favor of the British.
 
Even if the Germans completely opted out of the Battle of Britain (saving air sterngth to attack the Soviet Union lets say). The British are going to start bombing once the Germans attack the Soviet Union.

The British aren't going to sit back and watch the Soviets get crushed and the Germans do their worst on the Soviet civilian population without striking back with the only weapon they can, and with the Luftwaffe committed east, there is little fear of retaliation.
 
Even if the Germans completely opted out of the Battle of Britain (saving air sterngth to attack the Soviet Union lets say). The British are going to start bombing once the Germans attack the Soviet Union.

The British aren't going to sit back and watch the Soviets get crushed and the Germans do their worst on the Soviet civilian population without striking back with the only weapon they can, and with the Luftwaffe committed east, there is little fear of retaliation.

not necessarily, at the beginning there was that unwritten agreement not to bomb cities, same way no one used biological or chemical weapons in europe - the fear that the other side will retaliate.
 
Don't worry that joke isn't lost on everyone. ;) Personally I find that a rather unusual name for an Amerifootball team.

Well given that the name is double, it's actually very clever. Given that Blitz is a reference to not only the famed London Blitz, but also the defensive play, also known as the blitz, in which two defensive players pincer the Quarterback.
 
The British government decides air should be a bigger priority during the inter-war years with Whittle being given substantive funding and support. This could theoretically accelerate jet aircraft development to the point you have jets defending the UK airspace and theoretically enough built to bounce back a German aerial attack
 
I'm not sure how plausible this is, but here goes.

I read in "The Century" that the London Blitz of 1940 only started when a German bomber accidentally dropped a bomb downtown instead of on the military target it was aiming for. Churchill hit Berlin in response, and everything escalated from there.

Suppose there are no errant bombs. Are the civilian sectors of London still attacked? If not, how would the hesitation of attacking civilians play out during the rest of the war?

Blitzing cities like London was pretty much what everyone expected before WW2 anyway. They also expected poison gas. The surprise was that the Blitz took so long to happen.

The story of the errant German bombs and the British over reaction sounds good but misses the point. London and Berlin were going to get bombed anyway. The Luftwaffe had launched terror bomb attacks since Guernica. In 1939 they bombed the hell out of Warsaw and in 1940 Rotterdam. All cities contain some military or transport targets and so the excuse is always there if needed.

Hitler didn't have London blitzed for dozens of nights just because he was angry that a few RAF bombers dared to hit Berlin. It was because he had no other weapon to use against Britain after the cancellation of Sealion and the defeat of daylight Luftwaffe offensive. He hoped relentless bombing would damage industrial production, paralyze transport and above all crack civilian morale. He hoped this would force the UK to the negotiating table before he invaded the USSR.

The UK bombed German cities because they felt they had no other weapon to hit back directly and show they were serious. Until late 1941 the RAF were mostly dropping bombs on farmers fields anyway.

The problem for the Luftwaffe was that they used terror bombing with planes designed for tactical support. They had to have planes capable of supporting their huge armies on the field and so development of strategic bombers was low on the list of priorities. The UK could afford to divert resources to a strategic bomber arm which meant that in the end they caused more destruction to cities than the Luftwaffe.
 
not necessarily, at the beginning there was that unwritten agreement not to bomb cities, same way no one used biological or chemical weapons in europe - the fear that the other side will retaliate.

At the beginning, yes. But already before the Blitz against London, cities were being bombed. Bomber Command was still trying to carry out surgical strikes against specific industrial, military or transportation (=rail yard) targets within cities, but after all that was what they did over Berlin during their first bombings of that city, too; they were targeting the Siemens plants and such like.

For instance, Turin was bombed on June 11 1940, Kiel on July 2, Hamburg on August 10. Münster suffered 14 (!!) small raids during the Battle of Britain. Again, these were targeted in theory against specific small non-residential targets, but it's not as if the British bombers were able to carry out such precision strikes at night in 1940.
 
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