“American veterans of 25 missions over Germany later said that it was the toughest day of their war.”
By Joe Molyson
PRUSSIAN Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke said that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. For the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Britain, on August 17, 1943, the plan was for a complex raid on German aviation industrial targets deep in southern Germany. It called for two bombardment wings of four-engine Boeing B-17 heavy bombers to conduct the dual strike.
The Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid was only one facet of the Allied plan to defeat Germany in the west — the first real step in bombing Hitler to force a surrender.
Soon after the United States entered the war, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall called for an early invasion of northwestern France to engage and defeat the German army. What followed was two years of negotiations with the British on the timing of the cross-Channel ground invasion. What the Soviets thought of as the “Second Front” and the Americans thought of as the direct path to Berlin was to the British the main highway to disaster.
Even before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. joined the campaign to defeat the German navy in the Atlantic and open the sea routes from North America to the United Kingdom. This allowed relatively free passage of North American resources and personnel to build up sparse Allied forces in Britain. I covered the Atlantic Campaign in my first book, Six Air Forces Over the Atlantic. (See “Air Corps vs. Navy — How Decades of Inter-Service Rivalry Left the U.S. Ill-Prepared for the Battle of the Atlantic,” Military History Now, April 22, 2024.)
Marshall sent one-and-a-half million men to Britain in the two years prior to D-Day. These included not only ground forces but also the U.S. Eighth Air Force. Several subordinate headquarters were part of the Eighth Air Force, including the VIII Bomber Command (VIII BC). The main weapon of the VIII BC was the four-engine heavy bomber. Despite necessary diversions of airpower to the Pacific and Mediterranean, on August 17, 1942, 12 VIII BC B-17’s hit the Rouen-Sotteville railroad marshalling yards in France.
Two days later, 24 B-17s bombed Abbeville-Drucat airfield in support of an amphibious assault on the port of Dieppe, France. The long daylight battle between American heavy bombers and the Luftwaffe had begun. Without the whole-hearted support of the Royal Air Force (RAF), this would have been impossible at so early a date.
American airmen hoped that the strategic daylight bombing of German industry, first in France and the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) and later in the German heartland would cripple Hitler’s war effort and force a German surrender. This might avoid a costly invasion and subsequent land campaign. Medium and light bombers were also sent to VIII BC, originally to support the eventual American ground army with indirect attacks on enemy support facilities. Their role expanded long before D-Day, hitting the same kinds of industrial and transportation targets in France, Belgium and the Netherlands as the heavy bombers were intended to hit in Germany.
At the Casablanca Conference in January, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill approved the round-the-clock bombing of the German homeland. On January 27, 1943, VIII BC flew its first daylight raid on the German homeland, hitting the port of Wilhelmshaven. Located on Germany’s North Sea coast, Wilhelmshaven did not require a long-duration route over German territory. Ninety-one four-engine B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators were sent, with 58 of the B-17s finding the assigned target and dropping 138 tons of bombs on naval facilities. Three of the bombers were downed while the Germans lost seven fighters to the defensive machine guns of the bombers. The Schweinfurt-Regensburg attack would be the first daylight deep penetration raid of the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), also called Operation Pointblank. Heavy bombers of the VIII Bomber Command would attack critical German industrial facilities by day and RAF bombers would burn German cities by night.
August 17, 1943 was the one-year anniversary of the Rouen-Sotteville attack in France. Since that time, VIII BC had gained more bombers, crews and experience. About 376 B-17s were dispatched, divided between two Bombardment Wings. Most of the VIII Bomber Command B-24 Liberators were needed in the Mediterranean and were unavailable.
The plan was complex. The 4th Bombardment Wing (4th BW) would fly its 146 bombers to Regensburg, Germany. The target was the Messerschmitt Bf 109 assembly plant there. The B-17s were equipped with “Tokio tanks” (contemporary spelling for Tokyo), extra fuel cells which extended their already significant range. These tanks were designed to allow the bombing of Japan from the Chinese coast but had been diverted instead to Britain. The extra fuel allowed them to fly south from Regensburg to recently liberated North Africa rather than back to Britain. They would land at U.S. Twelfth Air Force African bases there.
The 230 bombers of the 1st Bombardment Wing (1st BW) would follow closely behind the first attack, meaning they must launch as soon as possible after the 4th BW. The target for the second force was the vital ball bearing manufacturing facility at Schweinfurt. These bombers had no Tokio tanks, so they had to return to their British bases along the same route as their approach. The planners expected that the German fighters would be exhausted by the 4th BW assault and confused by their withdrawal to the south. They would also have to land, refuel and rearm. After bombing Schweinfurt, the 1st BW could return to Britain over relatively undefended skies.
The 4th BW, the Regensburg force, was the first scheduled to launch. In the foggy early morning, the bombers were late getting off and then circled above the overcast some two hours before heading towards Germany. All this time they were visible to German air defense radars. The alerts began to go out to Luftwaffe airfields and flak batteries in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The German fighters would be scrambled when the bombers came within range and the flak would be radar-directed.
The penetration or approach escort included 87 P-47 Thunderbolts. It was intended that the escorts would cover both the 4th BW and the 1st BW following closely behind. The P-47s covered the bombers from the coast to Eupen, Belgium. Eupen was about 15 miles west of the German border. Beyond that point, the bombers bristling with machine guns and their 10-man crews were on their own. The approach escort, low on fuel, returned to base. The 1st BW then had to sit on the ground while these planes were reserviced, further delaying their launch.
Meanwhile, after a tough approach fight the surviving 131 bombers of the 4th BW accurately dropped almost 300 tons of bombs on Willi Messerschmitt’s factory just before noon and then headed south. The fog delay, however, had ruined the plan. By the time the 1st BW was launched, assembled and headed to Schweinfurt, the Regensburg force was already headed towards North Africa. The German fighters had time to land, refuel, rearm and replace damaged aircraft as necessary. As they prepared for a second battle, German radar warned of the approach of the tardy 1st Bombardment Wing.
The approach escort for the 1st BW included 96 Spitfires and 88 Thunderbolts. The refreshed Germans fought through the approach escort, losing eight aircraft to the RAF and two to the P-47s. They continued to savage the bombers all the way to Schweinfurt. At the target, 183 surviving bombers dropped over 424 tons of bombs on the ball-bearing complex. They then regrouped and headed northwest for home.
The German interceptors, including not only Bf-109 and Fw190 dayfighters but also Me 110, Ju 88 and Do 217 nightfighters continued to attack the American bombers as they withdrew. One German veteran recalled he could see 60 parachutes in the air at one time, some German. The route home for the 1st BW was marked by the burning pyres of American bombers and German fighters from the previous hours of battle. American veterans of 25 missions over Germany later said that it was the toughest day of their war.
The American fighter force approach escort had landed in Britain, refueled and was returned to Belgian skies to form a withdrawal escort. As they neared the enemy coast on their second mission of the day, they were joined by short-range RAF Spitfires which accompanied them as far as Antwerp. All the American fighters carried half-full 200-gallon pressed-paper drop tanks. The tanks were not especially robust and reduced the maneuverability of the Thunderbolts, which made them a hazard in air-to-air combat. Therefore, the Eighth Air Force fighter pilots were ordered to drop them as they crossed the enemy coast.
As the German interceptors were launched from northern bases, they struggled for altitude to climb above the retreating American B-17s. It was already a long day of combat, the Luftwaffe pilots were tired but determined to discourage the viermots, four-engine bombers, from striking deep into the Reich during daylight hours. The Luftwaffe fighters were heavily loaded with 66-gallon drop tanks and BR-21 air-to-air rockets. They were focused on killing bombers, not fighting allied escorts.
The bright spot on this dark day was the action of the 56th Fighter Group. Instead of jettisoning their Thunderbolts’ drop tanks as they crossed the coast of Holland to meet the bombers, they kept them on and ambushed a group of German fighters 15 miles east of Eupen, the bomber rendezvous point. The German fighters were focused on bomber interception, not air-to-air combat against six-ton P-47s swooping down from the west out of the sun. The attack was a specialty of the Thunderbolt, its heavy airframe giving it tremendous energy in the dive. The Germans were hammered, losing at least 11 fighters while downing only three Thunderbolts. More than that, it gave some respite to the battered Fortresses returning home.
Loss and victory claims vary by source, but it can be said that 55 B-17s were lost over German territory. Of the 550 crewmen aboard these aircraft, about half became prisoners in Germany or interned in Switzerland. The remainder were killed or missing in action. Allied fighters claimed about 10 German fighters downed by the approach escort and 21 by the withdrawal escort, mainly by the 56th Fighter Group. Three P-47s and two Spitfires were lost.
The greatest effect of the raid was the impact on German war production. Albert Speer, Reichsminister of Armaments, estimated Schweinfurt lost about 38 percent of its ball-bearing production for a month. He was, however, able to offset losses using reserve stockpiles. The more important effect was his emergency order to disperse aircraft component and assembly facilities throughout Germany. Professor Willi Messerschmitt, whose factory was hit hard at Regensburg, was among the manufacturers affected. Later he estimated that Speer’s dispersal order cost Germany some 50 per cent of the production possible if the factories had remained unmolested.
In hindsight, the raid was a bloody victory for Allied airpower, but a victory they could ill-afford to repeat. Yet they did Schweinfurt again in October, with similar losses. This led to the development of improved range for the P-47, the return of longer-ranged P-38 fighters to Britain and the development of the P-51 Mustang as a long-range escort fighter.
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Albert Speer, the author of the aviation industry dispersal order and therefore the best authority on the effect of Allied air power on Germany’s war effort, was the best witness on the decisive effect of Allied air operations on Germany’s eventual defeat. He gave air power credit for starting a “second front” two years before the invasion of German-occupied Europe. Speer said that the day and night Allied bombing forced Germany to keep a million men on the “West Wall” at anti-aircraft stations, fighting fires and repairing bomb damage to weapons production.
When the invasion was finally deemed necessary and feasible, Allied airpower helped cripple and isolate the German field armies occupying France and the Low Countries. My book Air Battles Before D-Day chronicles not only the Combined Bomber Offensive but the other Allied air operations conducted to prepare Occupied Europe for invasion across the English Channel. Extensive maps are provided to inform the reader on the geographic factors that controlled much of the air campaign and the subsequent invasion.
Col. Joseph T. Molyson Jr. (RET) is the author of Air Battles Before D-Day. He’s a 30-year U.S. Air Force veteran who spent most of his service in intelligence. His most recent book was Six Air Forces Over the Atlantic: How Allied Airmen Helped Win the Battle of the Atlantic. He lives outside Atlanta, Georgia.
