Customer Reviews

TARGET LEIPZIG: The RAF's Disastrous Raid of 19/20 February 1944

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I ordered this book after seeing it on an English website. From today's perspective, the events of WWII can be dry statistics or good oral history. 'Target Leipzig' is the former. Compared to the Middlebrook volumes on Berlin, Hamburg and Nuremberg, this looks like post-interview notes. It needs organization, either chronological, by technology employed, or the units engaged. Some is just disorderly and poorly edited.
Page 95 is an example: "The Bhuthner facility, formerly a piano-making factory, but now an ammunition boxes assembly plant, was in the heart of Leipzig and close to aircraft factories and a 'buzz' bomb plant. It was completely destroyed by fire after being bombed. They had been forced to stop making pianos by the Nazi Government but in 1990 following German reunification they again went back to being a private company making pianos." This is distracting.
Farther down, why does this paragraph stand alone? "The production losses caused were later traced to fifty-one fuselages and two weeks' production capacity." Whose?

WWII was a test of Stanley Baldwin's prediction that 'the bomber will always get through' tied to the theory that bombs can break the spirit of an enemy workforce. In a macabre experiment, political leaders pursued revenge attacks (although eventually Allied planning staffs revised target lists to prioritize the industries feeding the German war machine: Petroleum, ball bearings, aircraft plants, submarine yards and railroads). BEFORE YOU REVISIONISTS OBJECT: THE NAZIS NEVER HAD A SIMILAR LIST AND THEY BOMBED AREA TARGETS FIRST.

Hard as it is to envision, those Lancasters and Junkers 88s were the most advanced weapons systems available to the militaries of their countries. Why didn't Alan Cooper show us drawings of the aircraft electronic systems to find (or avoid) while flying insanely close to other planes loaded with explosives? Devote a chapter to the German command system to alert, concentrate and lead night fighters into the bomber stream. Examine the kinds of British aiming-markers laid to guide the inexperienced bombardiers. Show the blast effects of typical 1,000 and 4,000 pound bombs. Locate Leipzig's bomb shelters and flak sites. As sometimes pointed out, this was a contest of measure and counter-measure. Why didn't Cooper contrast democratic -vs- Nazi industry? Maybe we would understand the bombers' lack of effect on Hitler's cowering populace.

Can you bomb evil? England dispatched waves of night bombers to set aflame areas of old cities; while daytime, US fleets attacked targets on the list. The Middlebrook books communicated the smell of petrol, leather and fear. They made me sad for brave men who kept fighting until their number was up (in 1943, odds were against surviving a full tour). I could understand the reason GAF pilots continued to defend their cities. (Happily, many ex-combatants met as friends after the war; some visited regularly.)
At the end of the war, studies and photos documented supply disruptions and populaces displaced-- but it still took Ground Infantry to seize the country and free the people. England paid dearly for inconclusive results. 'Target Leipzig' left me unsatisfied.