Текст книги "Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943"

Автор книги: Keith Lowe

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

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.

* * *

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.

While the stricken plane was making its long descent to the ground, something unusual happened in the skies above. As the fifty or so remaining bombers were making their way back to the coast they were joined by nine strange B-17s, which tried to slot themselves into the American formation. They had none of the usual markings of an American plane, such as the call and identification letters, and their waist-gun windows were closed. When one tried to join 351st BG the other crews became suspicious and fired a few warning rounds at it. It turned immediately and headed back into Germany. Presumably they were captured planes that the Luftwaffe hoped to slot into the American formation either to gather intelligence or to attack it – German records for that day are somewhat patchy and do not mention what they were hoping to achieve. Whatever the case, the strange B-17s turned away after the Americans had crossed the coast and returned to Germany, accompanied by two twin-engined fighters. ¹²

There was only one other loss for the Hamburg force. On the way home a second plane from 91st BG ran out of fuel and had to land in the sea. Its pilot, Lieutenant Jack Hargis, took the plane down gently, and the crew got into their dinghies without much trouble. They were eventually brought home by an RAF rescue launch (which also had to tow home the two Walrus seaplanes that had originally come to rescue them, but which were unable to take off again due to rough seas).

The Hamburg wings had been incredibly lucky. Their loss of just two planes and one crew made this one of the cheapest bombing raids the Eighth Air Force had ever flown over Germany. The wings that had flown to Hanover that day were not so lucky. Like the Hamburg force on the previous day they had attracted most of the German fighters, and sixteen B-17s had been shot down. A further six had been lost by a wing that never made it to Hanover, but bombed Wilhelmshaven, Wesermünde and a convoy off the Frisian Islands. The huge losses took the shine off the Hamburg ‘milk run’: the loss rate was still 12 per cent of the effective planes, well over twice what was considered sustainable.

Over the coming days such losses continued. On Wednesday, 28 July, twenty-two American planes were shot down over Kassel and Oschersleben. Another ten were lost on Thursday, and twelve more on Friday. By the end of the week eighty-eight Flying Fortresses had gone, with another dozen so badly damaged that they had to be scrapped. Nearly nine hundred American airmen were dead, wounded or missing. The following weekend VIII Bomber Command retired to lick their wounds, and for the next two weeks the American B-17s ceased flying. Despite some good bombing results, including those at Hamburg, their attempts to make their mark in the skies over Germany had only left them depleted and demoralized. This was one battle that the Luftwaffe seemed to have won.

14. The Eye of the Storm

First the left and then the right!… But he’s held to his feet, held to the ropes, looked to his corner in helplessness!

Clem McCarthy ¹

The attacks by the USAAF on 25 and 26 July shocked Hamburg. The city had not seen a daylight raid since the beginning of the war, and it had certainly never seen American planes fly over it: that formations of Flying Fortresses were now daring to approach Hamburg in broad daylight suggested that Germany’s enemies felt a new confidence.

Despite their losses in the air, the Americans had been able to do considerable damage to the port. The Blohm & Voss works had suffered quite badly, with severe hits on the construction, the ship-fitters’ and engine-erecting shops, the boiler-house, power station, foundry and tool stores. Two of the dry docks had also been heavily damaged. In the Howaldtswerke factory several furnaces were now out of action, as were the shipbuilding and machinery sheds, and the diesel engine works. The USAAF had also scored direct hits on the power station at Neuhof, the oil stores beside Rosshafen and many of the nearby railway sidings. ²

While none of this would have directly affected most people in Hamburg, the effect on their morale is incalculable. They were still seriously shaken by the Saturday-night bombing, and that they would now have to endure daylight attacks as well was alarming. Rudolf Schurig was out in the centre of Hamburg when the alarm went off for the first American raid, and remembers how frightened everyone suddenly was: ‘The sirens sounded once more – the Fliegeralarm. Terror and dismay played across people’s faces all over again. Women grabbed their children, men grabbed their wives, and they hurried to the nearest air-raid shelter where whole crowds were gathering. I have never seen the people of Hamburg running in such panic because of an air-raid siren!’ ³

Hiltgunt Zassenhaus remembered sheltering the next day during the second American attack. In the shelter everyone was even more nervous than usual because of the destruction they had already witnessed:

Shortly after ten we heard a distant hum over the clouds; the sound came nearer, became a roar. The sirens had failed, but the doom-laden drone in the heavens was warning enough. We hurried down to the cellar of the Institute. Professors, students, women and children, men in blue work overalls, covered with dust from labouring in the debris. The room had no windows. The power had failed. We stood pressed up close to one another in the dark and listened to the noise outside. It sounded like they were attacking the harbour. Then there was a crash nearby. We huddled together in breathless silence. Even the children said nothing. ⁴

It was the incessant nature of the attacks that made them so difficult to bear. By attacking so soon after the British raid, the Americans had seriously hampered the rescue effort – and since the entire city was engaged in putting out the old fires there was nobody to deal with the new ones caused by the B-17s. To make things worse, the RAF had sent six Mosquito bombers to Hamburg on Sunday night, and again on Monday, with the sole purpose of causing as much nuisance as possible. After what had happened on Saturday night, nobody was taking any risks, and the entire city had huddled inside its air-raid shelters for several hours on both nights. Among their obvious material woes, the whole population was now suffering from severe sleep deprivation.

It was not until Tuesday that the people of Hamburg got any peace. In the lull that day, the city authorities were finally able to get a clear picture of the damage that had been done. It was not a pretty one. Worst hit were the areas around Altona and Eimsbüttel in the west of the city where whole districts had been burned to the ground. Barmbek was also fairly heavily damaged, and the port area on the south shore of the Elbe had been hit by all three raids in succession. With the damage to power lines, and the destruction of Neuhof power station, electricity was now limited. The gas and water mains had been breached in countless places, which hindered the fire services’ efforts to extinguish the fires. The transport systems in the worst hit areas were now non-existent, although the main train lines in and out of the city were still functioning. There was major disruption to the telephone network within Hamburg, and after the destruction of the long-distance exchange in Rotherbaum all lines to the rest of Germany were defunct. ⁵

Almost all of the fires had been brought under control, which had required a Herculean effort. However, according to Hamburg’s chief of police, by the evening of Tuesday, 27 July, there were still fifty large fires burning across the west of Hamburg, and a further 1,130 smaller ones that the fire-fighters had been unable to put out. Despite heavy reinforcement from other northern German fire units, the sheer number of fires had been overwhelming. At the height of the crisis eighty-seven kilometres of street frontage had been ablaze in the west of the city alone. There were several singlefires that covered an area of four square kilometres or more: such conflagrations were simply too big to deal with. The best the firemen could do was put out smaller outbreaks at the edges, and stop the blaze spreading. By nightfall on 27 July, almost every fire-fighter in Hamburg was still working in the west of the city. Most had had no rest and little food for three days. But the situation, broadly speaking, was stable. ⁶

* * *

With the fires under control, the heavy pall of smoke that had smothered the city all day on Sunday began to disperse. Hiltgunt Zassenhaus described the scenes of utter devastation she encountered as she walked into the university on Monday morning to attend her physics exam:

Along the way furniture was piled up outside the burning houses. Cushions and mattresses were singed, mahogany scratched and scorched. Their owners sat beside them, as if they were waiting for removal vans. But no vehicle could have come along the torn-up streets; and where the streets were clear cars and lorries drove through at top speed. Their vibrations sent a trembling through the broken walls; façades crumbled together and blocked off one street after another. ⁷

The threat of falling façades was not the only danger she encountered as she tried to pick her way through the city:

Rubble blocked the streets, so we had to go round it; we climbed over broken walls and charred wood, one after another, like a line of ants… ‘Watch out!’ shouted a voice from the side of a mountain of rubble. ‘There are unexploded bombs all over here!’ But in blind indifference the crowd continued. What was the point of closing off the way? There were unexploded bombs everywhere. Each step back was just as dangerous as each step forward. ⁸

Because of the widespread destruction to electricity cables and gas and water mains, even those living outside the worst-affected areas found their lives beset with difficulties, as Dr Franz Termer described in a letter to a friend at the time:

Organization has quickly fallen apart. A shortage of bread is now beginning to take hold. One cannot cook, there is no gas as yet; one can only wash sparingly as there is no water in our homes. We cook at a neighbour’s house – she has an electric oven. We have the advantage that on one of the plots in our road there is a pump in the garden, to which the entire neighbourhood traipses. My wife pushes the pram with water containers, I carry buckets. ⁹

In devastated districts the daily journey to the water hydrant was not only depressing, it was downright dangerous. Just south of the Hagenbeck zoo a coal depot on Steenwisch was still ablaze, as was a floor-polish factory that had suffered a direct hit. The

polish was flowing down the road: residents had to step barefoot through the hot liquid to get water from the hydrant on the other side of the road. ¹⁰

There were other blows to morale. Thousands of people’s homes had been destroyed, but so had the places where they worked, shopped, or spent their leisure time. In all the cutbacks ordered by Joseph Goebbels after his proclamation of ‘Total War’, Germany’s cinemas and theatres had remained unrestricted, because the Nazis recognized how important they were for keeping up people’s spirits. ¹¹Now many of Hamburg’s best-loved theatres lay in ruins. The Opera House in St Pauli was completely burned out, as were parts of the Staatstheater, and the front of the Thalia-Theater in the town centre had been seriously damaged by a bomb that had exploded opposite. Many cafés and dance-halls, such as the Trichter dance-hall in St Pauli, were now little more than rubble. Even the theatre museum in Altona had been destroyed. ¹²

One of the most poignant episodes in this tragic period involved the famous Hagenbeck zoo, which was hit in the British attack on Saturday night. Four keepers died during the struggle to put out the fires, and five more were killed when the zebra house received a direct hit. But it was the animals that suffered most. A hundred and twenty large animals were lost during the night, along with countless smaller ones. When an 8,000-pound blast bomb landed near the big-cat house several of the occupants escaped: two jaguars and a Siberian tiger had to be shot the next morning. All the big cats that stayed inside burned to death in the fire.

In the zoo’s official report the writer’s weariness is plain:

Everything that was not burned down was destroyed by explosive bombs: the main buildings, both restaurants, the cattle sheds, the deer and goat house, the aviary, the walkways and superintendent’s house, the zebra stalls, the ticket office, the country house opposite the main entrance, the business yards, the baboon enclosure, the monkey bath, the Rhesus monkey enclosure, the aquarium. The remaining buildings were partially destroyed by fire and explosion, and have been provisionally repaired by hand. ¹³

Curiously, none of the animals was driven wild by its experiences, and few tried to escape from their broken cages and enclosures – it is probable that they were every bit as shocked as their human counterparts. There were a few exceptions: some of the monkeys escaped into the surrounding area, and a stallion used his new-found freedom to play with a circus mare, even though he had lost an eye.

In the following days, the animals were either rounded up or shot. The most valuable beasts were put on to a train to be transported to safety in Bavaria. They never made it. While their train was in sidings in the east of the city it was caught in the next air raid, and the animals perished. ¹⁴

The city’s spiritual institutions did not fare well either. In destroying the city’s churches, the RAF had succeeded where Hitler had failed. Christuskirche on Holstenplatz was a wreck, as was St George’s church to the east of the Alster. ¹⁵The huge Gothic Nikolaikirche was so badly damaged that Hamburgers to this day swear that it was the main aiming point of the British attack. The claim is without basis: the RAF Pathfinders were told simply to mark the area between the Alster and the river Elbe, and could not possibly have made out the spire of the church from 20,000 feet in the dark. But the church was, and is, such a potent symbol for the city that it was easy to imagine that the RAF would use it as their main target. In July 1943 many such rumours were born; indeed, the vicar of Michaeliskirche in the west of the city claimed after the bombings that hischurch was ‘undoubtedly the main target of the enemy attack’. ¹⁶The area around it was so badly damaged that he could not help but take the raid personally. In fact the ‘Michel’, as the church is affectionately known, was the only major church in Hamburg to survive the war intact.

Rumours flew round the shocked and anxious city. People claimed that Churchill had given Hitler an ultimatum: capitulate, or Hamburg will be bombed into oblivion. ¹⁷Others said that Turkey had declared war on the Axis powers, or that Romania and Hungary were looking to make peace with the Allies. ¹⁸In the absence of any proper newspapers it was difficult to know what was fact and what was merely speculation. ¹⁹The real news that Mussolini had resigned was scarcely more extraordinary than the stories. With such large parts of their city in tatters it was easy for Hamburgers to believe that the entire Reich was falling apart.

Some of the most potent rumours concerned the RAF’s foil-paper strips of which intact bundles had landed all over the city. Nobody had the slightest idea what they might be. Children gathered them up enthusiastically, just as they collected shrapnel splinters, but adults were more wary. When Martha Bührich was waiting for a tram on Monday afternoon she saw that ‘The ground was covered with silver strips which the aeroplanes had dropped. A woman from the bank explained that a professor had said we should not touch them, as they had been covered with typhoid bacillus. I told her that I had picked up countless strips on Sunday morning, and that she should not spread such rubbish.’ ²⁰Fredy Borck, who was eleven at the time, remembers being told not to play with them because they were poisonous. ²¹In the end the Hamburger Zeitungused precious space on its single sheet for an article entitled ‘The Paper Strips are Harmless’. ²²The following day it was entreating people not to believe those who claimed that the RAF had dropped threatening leaflets, or that the water supply had been poisoned. ²³That the city’s only functioning newspaper had been driven to print such articles is a measure of how panic-stricken the people of Hamburg had become.

* * *

To prevent things getting further out of hand, the city’s gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann, declared a ‘State of Major Catastrophe’ early on Sunday morning, and a previously prepared disaster plan came into effect. Police battalions were called in from surrounding areas to prevent civil unrest, and signs across Hamburg stated that looting would be punishable with death. The worst-affected areas were cordoned off to stop people getting too close to the fires that were still alight and to prevent looters helping themselves to the piles of personal belongings that now lined the streets. While the appearance of the SS on the streets caused widespread resentment among Hamburg’s distraught civilians, there is no doubt that it did much to ensure the smooth running of the disaster plan. ²⁴

Next came the clearance of the hospitals to make way for the casualties. At first, everyone with a non-serious condition was told to go home – although when the night-raids began again even the serious cases were evacuated in ambulance trains. In the meantime, most people were treated at one of the seventy-two air-raid-shelter clinics that dotted the city. Dr Wilhelm Küper worked at one of these first-aid posts, and was surprised that, in general, people looked after themselves remarkably well: ‘The vast majority of the dressings were so professionally applied – evidently the fruit of many training courses – that one could leave them as they were, if their usage was not for some of the more serious wounds. ²⁵

With the bursting of the water mains, and the requisition of all emergency supplies by the fire service, the supply of drinking water became an immediate problem. People who had been hidden in shelters for long periods needed water urgently, yet they were frightened to take it from the reservoirs in case they were arrested. ²⁶Emergency pumps and hydrants were made available around Hamburg, the city’s many private wells were brought into use, and specially commissioned lorries brought clean water to various locations. ²⁷

Emergency rations of food and cigarettes had been issued, and were handed out across the city. For those who had lost houses and apartments financial help was available, and a special ration of clothes and shoes to tide them over until more permanent replacements could be arranged. ²⁸In the meantime, arrangements were made to evacuate those who had lost everything. By the evening of Tuesday, 27 July, 47,000 homeless people had been sent out to Schleswig-Holstein by train. ²⁹

Despite the seemingly gloomy picture that the city presented, Hamburg’s disaster plan was working well. In some of the lightly affected areas a measure of normality had already been restored, and work on returning the gas and water mains to service was well under way. Had they been able to continue, the city authorities would probably have been able to put Hamburg back in order within a matter of weeks.

They were not allowed that luxury. Even as they were working, RAF Bomber Command was preparing to make another, even bigger strike on the city.