Operation Backstroke

[Chris Oakley]

In the spring of 1940 Nazi Germany appeared to be on the verge of finally achieving Adolf Hitler's long-standing dream of dominating continental Europe. The Netherlands had surrendered in the face of the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg in the West, Belgium and France were on the verge of collapse, the British were on the defensive, Italy and Spain were ruled by pro-Hitler regimes, the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union was still in effect, and the United States was declining to intervene in the war in Europe thanks to the large isolationist faction in Congress. But on May 24th Hitler issued a directive that would change everything: he ordered the Wehrmacht's surging panzer divisions in France to halt outside the town of Dunkirk. Sensing an opportunity to implement a top secret plan he was convinced would enable the Allies to regain the initiative on the battlefield, newly appointed British prime minister Winston Churchill directed the RAF to activate Operation Backstroke-- and in doing so threw a monkey wrench into the Reich's plans of conquest.

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Hugh Trenchard, the principal architect of Operation Backstroke.

Operation Backstroke had actually been around since 1920, when it was conceived by then-Chief of the Air Staff Hugh Trenchard as a theoretical study about the feasibility of using pre-emptive air attacks to disrupt an enemy's ground operations in the event of a future war in Europe. In the political climate of the '20s and early '30s, it had seemed destined to remain theoretical forever; once Hitler re-militarized the Rhineland, however, Whitehall began to take a more active interest in the plan. Even as he was proclaiming "peace in our time" to jubilant airport crowds in London in 1938, Neville Chamberlain surreptitiously instructed the RAF to have bomber squadrons ready to put Operation Backstroke into action if the Munich Agreement collapsed.

When the Second World War finally broke out in 1939, many in the RAF's upper echelons thought Operation Backstroke would be implemented right away to halt the German army's march across Poland. But logistical difficulties and the swiftness of the Wehrmacht's advance across the Polish countryside rendered it unlikely that Trenchard's plan would be put into action in time to prevent Poland's collapse, and so it was kept on the back burner for the time being. Weather troubles prevented the RAF from employing the plan during the Norway and Denmark campaigns, and some RAF commanders began to doubt if it would ever be put into action. But Hitler's decision to halt the Wehrmacht's panzers at Dunkirk 14 days into the invasion of France started a chain of events that would see Operation Backstroke come to full fruition and then some....

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Chris Oakley]

Operation Backstroke Part 2

From the moment London received confirmation that the German army had stopped its panzers' advance outside Dunkirk, the race was on to get the RAF's bombers ready to carry out Operation Backstroke. The Air Ministry and the headquarters of RAF Bomber Command became beehives of activity as targets were chosen for the first series of air strikes. While hitting Germany itself was for the moment out of the question, the panzers near Dunkirk and the infantry columns supporting them were considered fair game; if a Wehrmacht general or two got blown to bits in the process, so much the better.

Sir Arthur Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command at the time Operation Backstroke was launched.

On the evening of May 25th, 1940 RAF bomber crews all over southern England were hastily summoned to emergency briefings for what their senior officers described as "a special operation of the utmost importance". Though most of the details about this "special operation" were at that time kept hush-hush for security reasons it was clear even then to the airmen that something big was up for the next morning. They realized just how big when their commanders read them a telegram from Harris himself stating that nothing less than the future of Britain hinged on the success of their mission. It was a moment they would remember the rest of their lives, however long or short those lives might turn out to be.

At the crack of dawn on the morning of May 26th the first squadron of Vickers Wellingtons took off for Dunkirk, accompanied by escort flights of Hawker Hurricane fighters. For the next few hours the drone of bomber engines would be heard at countless breakfast tables in England, and as the sun rose over the English Channel sailors involved in Operation Dynamo would stand on the decks of their ships watching the legions of Wellingtons, Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys, and Bristol Blenheims pass overhead. At Dunkirk itself frustrated German tankmen sat waiting for permission to resume their advance-- permission that would come too late....

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Terranoso]

Please do keep going.

 

[Chris Oakley]

Operation Backstroke Part 3

The clock had just struck half past eight in Dunkirk when the first RAF bombs fell out of the sky and onto the unsuspecting German panzer crews. While lacking the precision targeting gear available to modern military airmen, the British bombardiers managed an impressively high accuracy rate; one particularly skilled Handley Page bomber crewman succeeded in hitting two out of every three Wehrmacht tanks he aimed at. While the bombers unleashed pure hell against the panzers, their Hurricane escorts fought a take-no-prisoners battle against the Messerschmitt 109s that had been hurriedly launched to try and fend off the bomber strikes. By 10:00 AM an entire division's worth of Pz Kw IVs had been annihilated and many more were damaged enough that their crews had to abandon them.

A rare in-flight photo of one of the RAF bombers that took part in the first phase of Operation Backstroke.

Any relief the surviving panzer crews might have felt when the first wave of bombings ended was quickly erased by the arrival of the second wave of bombers. Anti-aircraft gunners desperately tried to knock the RAF planes out of the sky only to find their positions getting strafed by those Hurricanes that weren't otherwise occupied dueling with the Messerschmitts. It seemed as if the Germans were cursed-- nothing was going right for them in their efforts to defend themselves against the RAF onslaught. And the Allied artillery barrage that erupted just after 11:30 AM certainly didn't help matters any. Scores of Wehrmacht tanks that had just barely survived the first two waves of bomber attacks were wiped out in the artillery bombardment.

It was in between the second and third waves of RAF bomber raids that the Wehrmacht lost one of its most brilliant field commanders. Erwin Rommel, a major general who had distinguished himself as a first-rate tactician during his stint as commander-in-chief of the 7th Panzer Division, sacrificed himself to save the life of a corporal who otherwise might have fallen victim to an RAF Hurricane as it was strafing the corporal's AA position. Despite field medics' best efforts to revive him, Rommel was dead within just an hour after the Hurricane's machine guns riddled his body with bullets; impressed and deeply moved by Rommel's heroism, Hitler ordered that Rommel be posthumously promoted to field marshal and arranged for him to receive the most lavish funeral possible.

The RAF onslaught finally ended at 2:30 PM that afternoon when the fourth and last wave of bombers received their recall orders and turned to make the flight home. They left behind them hundreds of burning German tanks and a radically altered tactical situation for both the German and Allied armies...

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Just Leo]

I presume this Trenchard character is from a galaxy far, far away, because our Trenchard had a strict doctrine against interfering in an army battle with his pulverizing bomber force. Bomber Harris was given his position by the man, Portal, who should be, and was in this position, because he advocated an entirely different kind of bombing from that presented here. Another personality switch?
Hampdens were the best of the three big RAF bombers for daylight operations, but their low level operations were curtailed previous to this timeline. Blenheims were the only ones deemed sacrificial, being unsuitable for anything else. The Wellington bomber chosen as representative of the RAF attacking force is actually an RCAF B mk.III, the most depicted Wellington ever, by far, depicted on Airfix box art, etc. It was shot down on the Marne river April 14/15, 1943, having been in sevice from summer 1942, and the crew is buried in Mussey sur Marne Communal Cemetery. As to level bombers taking out several tanks, some Blenheims attacked some Japanese aircraft carriers, and missed. Maybe if they had Henleys.....

 

[sagittario]

because every previous british tactical bombing attack turned out so well! Hamptons plinking tanks?

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Yeah, this just drove straight into fantasy territory. Level bombers were completely inadequate at smashing panzer divisions even late-war under conditions of WAllied air supremacy and levels of intelligence and preparation that this operation is completely lacking (as the situation on the ground was very fluid at this time and the British were still trying to develop a coherent picture of the front) their just as likely to bomb their own troops as they are the Germans.

The accuracy rate is particularly ASB for WW2: not even attack aircraft ever achieved this level of accuracy and they were vastly more accurate then level bombers.

 

[CalBear]

Great idea, but...

2 of 3, in a medium bomber?

You would be happy to get that with a Warthog.

Still an interesting concept. Be interested to see where you take this.

 

[Insider]

Great idea, but...

2 of 3, in a medium bomber?

You would be happy to get that with a Warthog.

Still an interesting concept. Be interested to see where you take this.

Well, the OP, states that it was ONE incident of such accuracy during the whole air raid. It is unplausible, but such feats of incidental accuracy hapen to both sides from time to time. Reminds me debut of a V1 cruise missile... one of the first hit secret war office in London. Not bad for an unguided missile.

And then of course comes propaganda machine and their demand for heroes. If there are none, some have to be made.

I guess that if this whole raid destroyed two dozen tanks, and twice as much softskined vechicles it was amazingly succesful but still stayed on the good side with ASB.

 

[merlin]

The 'plausibility' factor is practically at ground level it's so low! Trenchard and this 'operation' don't seem compatible, Ludlow-Hewitt was AOC Bomber Command rather than Harris. Bomber sorties at that time in the morning would have been heavily hit by 109s & 110s, and the Hurricanes wouldn't have had time for strafing!

The case for using Wellingtons & Whitleys, against the German Army can I think be made - but not this time or place - personally I go for pre-dawn attack north of the Meuse when Sedan is under threat.

 

[zert]

Well ASB as some may feel, I would not mind seeing this continued. Even if played out more RAF planes are lost and damaged, killing off Rommel and valuable Panzer IVs is a good thing for the Empire.

 

[Chris Oakley]

Operation Backstroke Part 4

It was an infuriated Adolf Hitler who convened an emergency meeting of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht at 4:00 PM on the afternoon of May 26th, 1940. To Hitler, the successful RAF air strikes at Dunkirk represented an intolerable personal affront as well as a potential threat to the German foothold at Sedan; he vehemently berated his generals(with the conspicuous exception of his ever-reliable toady Alfred Jodl) as "incompetent" and "stupid" and threatened to have them all court-martialed or even shot. Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Goering came in for a particularly fierce tongue-lashing, getting subjected to a vicious tirade in which Hitler essentially accused him of having been an accesory to murder in the death of Erwin Rommel.

A scene from the 2003 movie Dunkirk re-creating Adolf Hitler's outburst at Hermann Goering shortly after the RAF bombing raids.

Even Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, the Kriegsmarine C-in-C who usually enjoyed Hitler's full confidence, found himself on the receiving end of Hitler's rage despite the fact that the navy hadn't had anything to do with what happened at Dunkirk. The OKW meeting was punctuated by Hitler's repeated demands for Raeder's resignation; in his postwar memoirs Raeder would distinctly recall that he actually flinched under the verbal hammerblows of the Fuhrer's diatribe. The duration of the conference felt like an eternity to most of those present, but it reality it was over after just 40 minutes, ending with Hitler's brutal directive that the British should suffer a retaliatory blow every bit as devastating as the one they had inflicted on the Wehrmacht panzers at Dunkirk.

In the meantime the RAF was turning its attention to Sedan, which had fallen to the Germans on May 15th. With the Wehrmacht's carefully organized blitzkrieg strategy having been thrown into disarray by the air strikes at Dunkirk, Churchill's top military advisors sensed an opportunity to split the German front in France in two, and they were itching to take advantage of it...

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[zert]

Interesting to see some of the fall out of the RAF strikes. If Raeder is out, who at this time would take over the KM?

Look forward to what the LW targets for retaliation.

How well will the attacks on Sedan go and will the French be in a position to assist in the attacks?

 

[Chris Oakley]

Operation Backstroke Part 5

The second phase of Operation Backstroke got underway at 7:00 PM on the evening of May 26th with the largest bomber attack any air force had mounted up to that time. The target: German troop and supply concentrations at the city of Sedan. Nicknamed "the 1000-bomber raid" because it involved at least a thousand Allied aircraft, the attack was timed to coincide with a Royal Army artillery barrage aimed at the most vulnerable sectors of the German lines. If all went well, Allied infantry and tanks would begin their own attacks against the Germans within an hour after the artillery barrage and air strikes ended. From his seat in the Cabinet War Room back in London, Winston Churchill awaited the first reports by his intelligence advisors about the outcome of the assault.

In Berlin Adolf Hitler paced the halls of the Reichschancellery, still ranting and raving about what had happened at Dunkirk. He was threatening to have the entire Luftwaffe high command-- Goering included --executed by firing squad for their perceived failure to anticipate or thwart the preemptive RAF strike. At least one Luftwaffe officer had already paid a stiff price for letting the British bombers get through: Adolf Galland, a fighter squadron commander who'd been awarded the Iron Cross just four days earlier, had been arrested by the Gestapo on Hitler's direct orders and was sitting in an SS prison cell awaiting court-martial for dereliction of duty, incompetence, and treason.

The only known German photograph of the "1000-bomber raid" on Sedan. Taken by a Wehrmacht cameraman at the height of the bombing, it was thought to be lost forever until it turned up in the archives of a Belgian library in the late 1960s.

The Wehrmacht men occupying Sedan scarcely knew what hit them. While there is still some dispute as to whether the Royal Army's artillery shells or the RAF's bombs reached the German lines first, historical accounts of the events at Sedan agree almost unanimously that the bombers inflicted horrific casualties on the German forces in the opening minutes of the raid; estimates by modern European defense analysts indicate at least a third of the Wehrmacht personnel occupying Sedan perished in the opening minutes of the raid alone. Luftwaffe night fighters hastily launched to deal with the attackers, but there was little they could do to stop the RAF and the Armee de l'Air from inflicting serious damage on their Wehrmacht comrades....

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Well, leaving aside the ASBishness of such raids and their success, breaking the encirclement is huge. It means the French Army, instead of being forced to surrender, can dig into a new defensive line.

 

[zert]

If Sedan can hold out, would France be able to bring up more troops to break the siege?

Would not the Germans have had warning of the coming raid and have the troops in foxholes and AAA on alert?

 

[Sior]

Royal Army?
Even though there is a Royal Navy and a Royal Air Force since the time of Oliver Cromwell there has never been a Royal Army only a British Army as it is an instrument of Parliment not the Royal's.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Hello Chris

A few notes

Firstly that level of CAS ability and coordination is not something that any airforce had trained for nor had the ability to conduct in 1940

Also it would have to see a massive attitude change among the air commanders of the day

Now in my opinion this story could still be done but perhaps have the focus being a greater understanding of the threat of the Battle of Sedan and the Meuse Crossing by the 15th May 1940 and then for the British and French air commanders to attack the bridgehead and those Heer units in the area with everything that flies.

An all out, frantic, confusing, very costly and often tragic effort (ie Fairey Battle squadrons still try to attack the Bridges with near total losses) by the Allied Bomber units that none the less results in greater casaulties and 'friction' among the leading German units than the levels experianced OTL

Have Gen. Ironsides meet with Gen Billotte and Blancharde earlier than OTL and have him recognise that they had both become ineffective and effectively take over at the critical moment - have a larger battle of Arras as a result.

Coupled with more powerful better organised allied units in the area coupled with a weaker German Van - a far more favorable (if indecisive) result for the allies is gained.

Meanwhile German commanders having lost control of the Panzer armee - and now seeing both the losses suffered in teh crossing at Sedan and the losses suffered at Arras (multiplied in their eyes) bottle it and have the surviving units pull back towards Sedan.

Also for the pedants among us - there is no such thing as the 'Royal Army'

Royal Navy...Check (Plus Royal Marines)

Royal Airforce...Check

Royal Army...ah no.. (Edit - been Ninja'd)

Its confusing I know as many of the regiments are 'Royal' something or other - ie Royal Artillery, Royal Tank Regiment - but its just The British Army.

The reasons are largely lost to time but are mainly to do with the English Civil war and the events that followed.....way back in the 17th C

Other than all that.....

 

[Viper81]

I'm sorry, but to be taken seriously on this board, you'll have to at least attempt plausibility. In addition to what has already been stated:

The first 1000-bomber raid didn't take place until 2 years after, due to a lack of aircraft and the means to organize them (they had to pull Coastal and Training Command aircraft even then). I can't find a good order of battle for Bomber Command at the time (which you had better have making such a claim), but even including the French Air Force I don't think you'll be able to pull those numbers.

This is before many navigation aids that made finding and hitting cities in inner Germany possible with any reasonable accuracy. All the extra bombs are going to do is tear up more French countryside, with most being miles off aimpoint. Not to mention bombing a populated city, you're going to have far more French civilian casualties than German military.

 

[Just Leo]

I don't want to spend more time on research than the author, so I gathered just a few snippets of OTL for comparison. In the first 6 months of war, BC sent 262 night sorties out and lost 5 missing and 8 crashed. In daylight, 173 a/c were used, 31 were lost. In the event of a German advance, Air Staff wanted a "massive" attack on the Ruhr to destroy German industry. Ludlow-Hewitt was against it, so he was replaced by Portal. On May 15, he ordered a major attack by 78/99 (depending on source) bombers, and 24 claim to have found their targets. On 17 may, 12 Blenheims of 82 squadron attacked Gemblaux in daylight. One returned. With all this concentration of massive legions, who's protecting the anchorage at Scapa Flow against the inevitable attack from German carrier aircraft?