A quick note before I write about statistics; these were people, not numbers. As I write about strategic bombing, percentages of destroyed cities, population loss, and other statistics, we, as in historians and the reader, cannot forget that these statistics represent people, their deaths, terror, and lived experience.
To fully understand the damage dealt to Dresden and other German cities by strategic bombing, we need to look at the statistics behind what bombs were dropped, and ideally, where they were dropped. To guide my research, I will seek to answer a series of questions for later posts. Firstly, what bombs were used on what cities? I have found a couple of sources from the USAF (United States Air Force) that give great detail about the tonnage dropped on Germany and elsewhere. I would need to find the British RAF (Royal Air Force) and possibly Soviet Air Force numbers as well so that we have an accurate count of the munitions used. Secondly, were incendiary bombs more destructive, that is, was the city more destroyed on average when incendiaries were used more, than conventional bombs? To answer this, I will compare the estimated percentage of cities destroyed to the percentage of incendiary bombs dropped to conventional explosives.
Methodology
I use the term “conventional” explosive to refer to non-incendiary bombs which usually carried a payload of TNT or a similar form of weapon. The statistical document “Army Air Forces Statistical Digest: World War II,” written in December of 1945 by the Office of Statistical Control also includes Cluster bombs, which are bombs that explode into smaller bombs called submunitions, fragmentation bombs, which send shrapnel out in all directions, and armor piercing bombs, which were used to destroy armored ships and to break through concrete bunkers and more.1 For the purpose of my research, cluster munitions will be added with their respective type of weapon, armor piercing bombs will be added to conventional explosives, and so will fragmentation weapons.
Summary and Justification
The USAF Statistical Digest will be exceptionally useful in directing my research into strategic bombing. For example, it lists every single theater and sub-theater with the bombs used in it, subdivided by type. The section on Germany gives detailed numbers for the total tonnage of bombs used of each type with other graphs even splitting it up by the type of aircraft that dropped said bombs.2. This information will be useful as a reference for which types or classes of planes used which weapons as well as which weapons were used the most towards the end of the war, and thus, when Dresden was bombed the most severely. For instance, White Phosphorus, an exceedingly dangerous chemical incendiary that is nearly impossible to put out was used a great deal in January to August of 1945, but not as much before that year.3. This, and other data from this paper, will be quite useful to my research. This paper also references some bombs as British and Russian, however, I am not entirely sure if they are including their bombs dropped in this documents’ figures, so I will look to corroborate these numbers with other Allied sources. I will certainly need more sources than just this to answer my questions, but it is a very useful start.
Author
The U.S. Air Force Office of Statistical Control published this originally classified document that details U.S. Air Force operations by theater and accounts for seemingly everything from fuel usage by plane type to USAF base personnel housing data.4 This was done for accounting reasons as well as to inform future Air Force decisions such as future airframe and bomb designs. This report was declassified in 1978.
Bibliography
United States Air Force Office of Statistical Control. “Army Air Forces Statistical Digest: World War II.” Second Printing. https://www.afhistory.af.mil/USAF-STATISTICS/. Accessed 19 September 2024.
- United States Air Force Office of Statistical Control, “Army Air Forces Statistical Digest: World War II,” Second Printing, https://www.afhistory.af.mil/USAF-STATISTICS/, Accessed 19 September 2024. [↩]
- Ibid, 237-248 [↩]
- Ibid, 237 [↩]
- Ibid, VII-XIV [↩]