Battle of Berlin (RAF campaign)
The Battle of Berlin (November 1943 to March 1944) was a bombing campaign against Berlin by RAF Bomber Command along with raids on other German cities to keep German defences dispersed. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) Bomber Command, believed that "We can wreck Berlin from end to end if the USAAF come in with us. It will cost us between 400 and 500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war". Harris could expect about 800 serviceable heavy bombers for each raid, equipped with new and sophisticated  navigational devices such as H2S radar. The USAAF, having recently lost many aircraft in attacks on Schweinfurt, did not participate. The Main Force of Bomber Command attacked Berlin sixteen times but failed in its object of inflicting a decisive defeat on Germany. The Royal Air Force lost more than 7,000 aircrew and 1,047 bombers, 5.1 per cent of the sorties flown; 1,682 aircraft were damaged or written off. On 30 March 1944, Bomber Command attacked Nuremberg with 795 aircraft, 94 of which were shot down and 71 were damaged. The recorded the loss of 256 night fighters from November 1943  to March 1944. The retaliated with (Operation Capricorn) against London and other British cities from January to May 1944. The managed to assemble a force of 524 bombers but caused little damage for the loss of 329 aircraft, a greater percentage loss per raid and overall than that suffered by Bomber Command over Germany. There were many other air raids on Berlin by the RAF, the USAAF Eighth Air Force and Soviet bombers. The RAF was granted a battle honour for the bombardment of Berlin by aircraft of Bomber Command from 1940 to 1945. Battle. The first Bomber Command raid  of the battle occurred on the night of 18/19 November 1943. Berlin was attacked by 440 Avro Lancaster heavy bombers of the Main Force and four de Havilland Mosquitos but the city was under cloud and the damage was not severe. The second raid by the Main Force took place on the night of 22/23 November. This was the most effective raid on Berlin by the RAF of the war, causing extensive damage to the residential areas west of the centre, Tiergarten and Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Spandau. Because of dry weather, several firestorms ignited. The Protestant Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church , now a war memorial and the New Synagogue (used as a store house by the "Wehrmacht") were badly damaged in the raid. In the next nights, further attacks followed, damaging or destroying Bethlehem's Church, John's Church, Lietzow Church, Trinity Church, Emperor Frederick Memorial Church, Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz and St. Hedwig's Cathedral. Several other buildings of note were either destroyed or damaged, including the British, French, Italian and Japanese embassies, Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin Zoo, the Ministry of Munitions, the "Waffen SS" Administrative College, the barracks of the Imperial Guard at Spandau and several arms factories. On 17 December , extensive damage was done to the Berlin railway system. By this time the cumulative effect of the bombing campaign had made more than a quarter of Berlin's living accommodation unusable. There was another Main Force raid on the night of 28/29 January 1944, when the western and southern districts were hit in the most concentrated attack of this period. On 15/16 February, important war industries were hit, including the large Siemensstadt area in the west, with the centre and south-western districts receiving most of the damage. This was the largest raid by the RAF on Berlin; the campaign  continued until March 1944. Aftermath. Analysis. In 1961, the British official historians, Charles Webster and Noble Frankland wrote that Bomber Command sent comprising against Berlin. The attacks cost their crews killed or captured and damaged, a rate of loss of 5.8 per cent, exceeding the 5 per cent threshold that was considered by the RAF to be the maximum sustainable operational loss rate. The Battle of Berlin diverted German military resources from the land war and had an economic effect in physical damage, worker fatalities and injuries, relocation and fortification of industrial buildings and other infrastructure but by 1 April  1944, the campaign had failed to force a German capitulation, In 2004, Daniel Oakman wrote that, Harris had predicted the loss of and Oakman wrote "...it would be wrong to say that it was, in a strategic sense, a wasted effort. Bombing brought the war to Germany at a time when it was difficult to apply pressure anywhere else". In 2005, Kevin Wilson wrote that, despite the devastation of Berlin, the British raids failed to achieve their objectives. The bombing prevented increases in German production and caused resources to be diverted from offensive to defensive purposes but German civilian morale  did not break. The Berlin defences and essential services were maintained and war production in greater Berlin did not fall. In 2006, Adam Tooze, an economic historian, wrote that the British bombing of Hamburg in July 1943 appeared to vindicate the hopes of the British leaders in Bomber Command, that it had become a decisive weapon and that the theory of strategic bombing had been proved. Bomber Command was only able to emulate the Hamburg firestorm of 28 July once, at Kassel in October. In the winter of 1943, the attacks on Berlin began, which Tooze called fruitless, Berlin was  a big manufacturing city but the Ruhr was the principal supplier of coal and steel to Germany. Isolating the Ruhr could strangle the rest of the German war economy; in the campaign against Berlin, the British caused much damage but the evolution of German anti-aircraft defences, particularly night fighters, was able to counter the Bomber Command threat on its long flights to Berlin in winter weather. German casualties. The Battle of Berlin caused immense loss of life and devastation in Berlin. The 22 November 1943 raid killed 2,000 Berliners and rendered 175,000 homeless. The following night, 1,000 people were  killed and 100,000 bombed out. During December and January, Main Force raids killed hundreds of people and rendered between 20,000 and 80,000 homeless each night. In 1982, Laurenz Demps collated loss data using the damage reports of the Berlin police commissioner ("Polizeipräsident") issued after each air raid, descriptions of losses and damage indicated by houses and distributed to 100–150 organisations and administrations busy with rescue, repair, planning and other matters, against reports of the main bureau for air raid protection ("Hauptluftschutzstelle") of the city of Berlin, which issued more than 100 copies with variable frequency, each summarising losses and damage  by the number of air raids; the war diary of the air raid warning command ("Luftwarnkommando" – Wako Berlin), a branch of the "Luftwaffe" and other sources. Demps wrote that 7,480 people had been killed, 2,194 people were reported missing, 17,092 were injured and 817,730 Berliners made homeless. In 2003, Reinhard Rürup wrote that nearly 4,000 people were killed, 10,000 injured and 450,000 made homeless. In 2005, Kevin Wilson described the effect of smoke and dust in the air from the bombing and long periods spent in shelters gave rise to symptoms that were called cellar influenza ("Kellergrippe"). Battle of Berlin