Postby jwocky » Sun Sep 11, 2016 3:45 pm
And about the success of the raid ...
22 British Aircraft and between 21 and 34 French Aircraft (the French book keeping was a pain). The Brits were 9 Sopwith Bombers, 6 Bregueat and seven Sopwith Fighters. The French had (at least) 12 Farman F.42,7 Breuget IV one Breguet V and 1 Sopwith fighter (the latter two borrowed from RNAS). They also had 4 Nieuport 17s from Escadrille N.124 and the Escadrille Americaine was flying escort.
The flights took off with separations of five to ten minutes which meant, it took from 1:15pm to after 2:00pm to bring all the planes up and in the meantime a bank of clouds moved i. The last flight of bombers therefore had to return without even crossing the lines.
For the others, it was a 225 miles ride to Oberndorf and back. The first Sopwith bomber fell victim to a Fkooer D.II flown by Lt. Ludwig Hanstein (another "failry good" alter ace). During that attack a Sopwith fighter tried to intercept and got himself engine trouble, so he had to return without being hit by enemy bullets, just for technical difficulties. There would be more and some of them had to go down without even seeing a German fighter due to technical difficulties. Other planes got damaged and crashed later during landing attempts. Norman Prince, originally Escadrille Americaine, flew escort on that raid, got his plane seriously damaged by a German fighter, had to return and crashed when the gear caught some telegraph cables near the air base. He died three days later (it seems the French telegraph service was almost as effective against French planes as the Luftwaffe).
Allegedly, I have only some obvious propaganda articles from entete reporters, of the more then 40 plaes, 33 returned. The authors usually forgot to mention the at least 12 planes returned before they even reached Oberndorf.
Oberndorf meant and still means two things Majolika and Mauser. Majolika produces table wear but aside of the line "the Germans threw everything at them including the table ware and boiler plate" was not really relevant as target. However, since those plants were next to each other back then, Majolika was identified wrongfully as part of Mauser and hits on the table ware manufacturer added to the delusion that they had achieved a big victory.
Mauser produced a lot of arms and therefore, there aws some heavy AA artillery concentration around. The bombers actually approached the factories cross over the Mauser test field, so even those guys got some shots at them. Nevertheless, they flew through the defensive AA fire and delivered their bombs. Most hits were achieved on the Majolika side. On the Mauser side ... well, that is such a story. They produced machine guns and mostly infantry rifles there, the infamous Kar98. Some bombs hit buildings of Mauser, even photos are rare. But since Mauser took up production already with the night shift and was able to roll out deliveries of Kar98s the next morning, the damage can't have been too significant. Germany was at this time equipping several new units with Kar98s from Mauser in Oberndorf and it doesn't appear as if there were any delays.
The historical value of the Oberndorf raid lies not in its success. The use of infantry attacks along the whole front sector to distract the Germans away from the flight paths of the planes was a good idea, but it failed because communication had late in 1916 already too effective. The new role of communication in war (which earlier in 1870/71 and before there in the first highly mechanized war, the American Civil War had been still secondary) became clear for the first time in this raid.
The other thing is, while Oberndorf was not successful in terms of damage done, it showed one of the most important effects of air power, the ability to reach in a short time relative far away targets. While the number of guns and production buildings destroyed was insignificant, the possibility of that kind of operation forced the Germans to put more stress on their fighter squadrons (Jastas). Which then again meant less German bombers and recons could be produced because Germany needed fighters to prevent such raids. This kind of thinking, the use of air power for psychologically effective would become later in history part of the arsenal. 24 years later, with the Doolittle Raid, Americans would use that and force Japan's Navy, which had nothing really to do with that right, into the Battle of Midway. Of course, there are books and movies about Midway, even about the Doolittle Raid and not much about the Oberndorf Raid, but Oberndorf was where this line of thinking started.
And Oberndorf was the beginning of another line of thinking, even that seems to be missed by most authors. After Oberndorf some asked the question "what, if we could have instead of bombs, could have landed soldiers?". It was just a question tossed around. And a question, the Germans wondered themselves about. Of course, it was WWI, everybody was busy with thousand other things, but some stuck with that question. The idea per se was not new, Benjamin Franklin for example had envisioned "sky soldiers" already in 1784, but of course the understanding of the principles of parachuting were then still too crude. But in WWI, after Oberndorf, the question was asked again, there were experiments, plans, in short a development. In 1917, Churchill suggested to form airborne assault forces, indicating, only a year after Oberndorf, they had mastered the technical problems (mostly). In late 1918, elements of the U.S. 1. Division were trained to be dropped behind the German lines at Metz. But Germany surrendered before this operation could be executed.
Then, between the wars was of course a lot of development, up to developing the abilities to land troops in corps size in airborne operations. The development included already in the early 1920s parachute and glider troops, which, as history would show, would see a lot of action in WWII. But it all started with the questions after Oberndorf.
So, while throwing bombs was not that successful, the Oberndorf Raid is kind of a first milestone to several of the crucial points modern air war and as this, it is hard to overestimate it's historical significance.
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