Heavy Losses Led to the Abandonment of Unescorted Bomber Raids Deep Into the Third Reich
The most famous aerial gunner was probably Clark Gable – MGM’s biggest earner when WWII began. Following his wife’s death in an air crash while returning from a war bonds tour, a devastated Gable decided to enlist. Despite MGM’s reluctance to let its most lucrative star go, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1942, with the hope of becoming an aerial gunner. He was sent instead to Officer Candidate School, which he completed in October 1942. On personal orders from the Air Forces’ chief, general Hap Arnold, Gable was sent to the Eighth Air Force in England, and tasked with making a combat recruitment film for aerial gunners, titled Combat America.
To obtain the combat footage needed for his recruitment film, Gable flew five combat missions in 1943 as a B-17 waist gunner, including a bombing raid into Germany. His presence in the missions was for propaganda and PR purposes, but the dangers he ran were all too real: during one mission, his B-17 lost an engine, had its stabilizer damaged after it was hit by antiaircraft fire, and was attacked by fighters. Over Germany, his B-17 had two crewmen wounded and another killed after being struck by flak, and shrapnel went through Gable’s boot and almost took off his head.
However, Clark Gable’s exhortations notwithstanding, the idea of sending bombers deep into Germany, and expecting them to protect themselves, turned out to be a bad one. While American heavy bombers such as the B-17s were exceptionally rugged, and heavily armed, they were inadequate for raiding deep into enemy territory on their own. That lesson was driven home with a vengeance in 1943, when unescorted raids resulted in heavy and unsustainable losses to German fighters.
Among the catastrophic raids was that against a ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt, which resulted in the loss of 36 out of 230 B-17s that took part, and heavy damage to dozens more. Even worse was a raid against the Ploesti oilfield complex in Romania: out of 177 B-24s that took off, 162 reached the target, and out of those, 53 were shot down, with the loss of 660 crewmen. Of the 109 that made it back to base, 58 were so badly damaged as to be beyond repair.
Such loss rates were unsustainable, and American bombers were thus forced to pull back and limit themselves to targets closer to Britain and within fighter protection range. Fortunately, US fighter range steadily grew, and with the introduction of drop tanks, American P-38 and P-47 fighters began escorting B-17s and B-24 to targets deeper within the Third Reich. The arrival of improved versions of the P-51 Mustang, equipped with drop tanks that gave them the range to escort bombers virtually anywhere in Europe, was a game changer that finally removed all restrictions. From then on, steadily intensifying daylight raids by American helped reduce the Nazis’ empire to rubble.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources & Further Reading
Air & Space Magazine – How to Become a Ball Turret Gunner
Hastings, Max – Bomber Command (1980)
Huffington Post, November 11th, 2015 – My Dad Was a Ball Turret Gunner in WWII
War History Online – Joem Chiminiello Shared the Horrors of Living in the Dangerous Ball Turret