Bombing Tank Production
It was not until the late summer and fall of 1944 that plants became the target for a concentrated strategic bombing effort. Before this time, Alkett, in an area raid in November 1943, had been the only plant heavily damaged by air attack, but by June 1944 it had fully recuperated through setting up a new plant in Falkensee. The tank industry was hit as a target system in August 1944. Damage to plants before then was principally caused by area raids on the cities in which the plants were located and had little effect on production. The motivating reason for the change in policy at that time was undoubtedly the desire to interrupt the flow of tanks to the Western Front to replace the battle losses inflicted by our offensive actions. In August, September, and October, most of the big tank factories were heavily attacked.
Early in 1944, orders were issued for the construction of baffle walls throughout all war plants for the protection of important machine tools, assembly lines, transformer stations and sub-stations, and other critical facilities. Only a limited amount of this work was completed, however, because of the inability of the plants to obtain the power distribution panels and special, hard to replace machines were finally protected.
During the first half of 1944, air raid shelters at practically all plants were made more secure and enlarged to shelter foreign workers as well as the German workers. In many case new shelters were provided either by the construction of massive concrete bunkers, by digging new tunnels in nearby hillsides or by altering existing tunnels. The original bunkers consisting of reinforced basement shelters were, for the most part, abandoned as it was found the older types would not stand up under heavy bombing. Undoubtedly many of the worker's lives were saved as a result of this program.
From time to time during the combined bombing offensive, the greatest importance was attached to the bombing of bottlenecksm such as the offensive against the ball bearing industry. Up to the end of 1943 several bottlenecks appeared in the tank industry, the main ones being tank engines at the Maybach plant and transmission gears at Zahnradfabrik, the destruction of either of which would have had serious results.
The expansion of the component supply resulted in a very effective dispersal program so that when in April and May 1944 destructive attacks were made on two of the once existing bottlenecks, Maybach and Zahnradfabrik, the bottlenecks had already been done away with and the resulting loss in finished tank production was small. In the case of Maybach engines, if both Maybach and its dispersal plant, Siegmar, had been destroyed at the same time instead of five months apart as actually happened, there would have been approximately five months loss in the production of Panther and Tiger tanks. Undoubtedly, the failure to bomb Siegmar was due more to the fact that intelligence did not correctly assess Siegmar with the production of Maybach engines than to poor target selection. In general, however, the component plants cannot be considered good targets as they were too widely scattered; the same parts were manufactured in too many plants, and intelligence on the various locations was too limited.
The tank plans were subjected to 40 raids in which the plants were the aiming point for the attacks. During these raids, 10,677 tons of HE and 3,667 tons of IB were dropped. In addition, nine plants were hit by attacks aimed at the cities in which the plants were located. At several of the plants, and Alkett, Berlin, in particular, damage from area raids was more serious than that caused by the plant raids. Approximately 40 area raids in which 24,224 tons of HE and 15,644 tons of IB were dropped caused some damage to tank plants.
On the whole the concentrated bombing attack on tank plants was not a success. Of the five plants surveyed, only Henschel at Kassel had a major interruption to production. During the last five months of 1944 the period in which production loss can be attributed directly to plant attacks, the total industry had a production loss of about one-fifth of potential. Losses in 1945 were far heavier but were due to as much indirect causes as to the bombing of the tank plants. This raises the question of whether tank plants were so immune to bombing that they did not warrant the expenditure of the necessary weight of attack that would have been required to knock out the industry.
Henschel & Sohn, Kassel, was the only tank plant where tank production was seriously affected by air attacks. Over a 15-day period, 95 percent of the floor area was made unusable with a resulting production loss of 70 percent over a period of three months. This amount of damage at a motor vehicle plant would probably have caused complete stoppage of work for a period of at least six months. Only 35 percent and 15 percent loss in production over a three month period resulted to MAN and Krupp, respectively, where raids over a 40 day period caused 59 percent to become unusuable. Comparing this to Daimler-Benz, a motor vehicle plant, 60 percent floor space damage caused a 75 percent loss of production over a three month period.
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