Dresden / Prague February 14, 1945

398th Bomb Group 

On February 14, 1945, the 398th Bomb Group was chosen to lead some 450 planes of the 1st Air Division on a bombing run to Dresden as a follow-up to the RAF raid of previous night. This was part of the advanced planning for the combined British/American effort, but it was also common practice by the Eighth to send a bomber force back to the same target the following day if they were not satisfied with previous results. The RAF may have incinerated the city that night before but did little damage to the railroad marshalling yards and surrounding industries which the AAF considered vital strategic targets. To read more about the Dresden bombing click here.

The 398th was led that day by their new commander, Lt. Col. Lewis P. Ensign.. He had recently been promoted by 1st Combat Wing commander General William Gross to replace 398th’s original commander, the well-loved and respected Lt. Col. Frank Hunter who had been killed leading a mission to Neuss, Germany on January 23.

But due to a combination of bad weather, faulty radar, and stubbornness, Lt. Colonel Ensign managed to get lost and bombed Prague instead of Dresden.

The weather on the morning of the 14th was terrible, much worse than reported in the morning briefing, and take-off was delayed. The 398th's force of 38 planes finally took off in poor visibility, rendezvoused with the rest of the bomber stream and led them east across the North Sea. At that point the weather deteriorated further and problems with on-board radar began.

Near Munster the formation was forced to swing further south of the planned course and to climb higher to avoid more dense clouds. Ensign also led them through several “S” maneuvers to avoid known or suspected flak batteries, thereby consuming more fuel and time. Icing and high tail winds added to navigational problems.






Navigator Ralph McIntyre recalls, “I received at least two calls from the lead plane (Col. Ensign’s) navigator asking my position data. I advised that my record showed we were about 50 miles south of course."

Actually, McIntyre’s dead reckoning was very close. They were about 60 miles south of the planned course, but his messages were ignored by Col. Ensign in the lead plane. Navigator Nunzio Addabbo’s misgivings about their course also went unheeded by Ensign. "I called our position to Sam and he radioed it to the lead. No action was taken.”

Lt. Col. Ensign was relying on his own “pilotage” or "navigating from the right-hand seat." When the Deputy Group navigator radioed Col. Ensign to suggest that they had missed the correct turning point he was overruled by Ensign and reminded about the rules for radio silence over Germany.

Several other pilots, navigators, and bombardiers began to recognize that they were off course. David Mill’s bombardier told him, “We are heading for the wrong target.” Newt Moy’s tail gunner informed him that the main bomber stream behind them was turning off to the north. Pilot Bill Costanzo adds: “I remember it being a SNAFU’d mission, climbing, climbing, trying to stay in formation at 30,000 feet, going thru “needless” flak, etc, etc.” Then Costanzo and others began to pick radio chatter and confusion from the lead plane and Ensign's voice saying, "I know how to read a map …I say our target is Dresden ahead and THAT is where we are going"

As they approached the target, the radar in the lead squadron came back on momentarily the Lead Radar Navigator identified what he believed to be Chemnitz and Dresden, but which were actually Pilsen and Prague, 80 miles to the south, but in the same general orientation as the target cities. Then about three minutes before “bombs away” the radar failed again, but through a break in the clouds the lead bombardier saw a city with a river running north that looked like photos of Dresden. 

Ralph McIntyre recalls, “Bombs were dropped visually as the clouds parted just before bomb drop, and we returned home as a group, everyone thinking that Dresden had been hit.” Unfortunately they had bombed Prague instead, an open city that was never supposed to be bombed! “It turned out that we really were about 50 miles south of course and that the radar had picked up Pilsen and Prague rather then Chemnitz and Dresden, both pairs of cities being in the same relative position to each other."

Both Prague and Dresden have rivers running north in the same general orientation to the city center. The Vltava River in Prague is actually a tributary to the Elbe which flows north through Dresden on its way to the North Sea, northwest of Hamburg.



As they were coming away from the bomb run, Deputy Lead navigator Doyle again broke radio silence and insisted that they had in fact not bombed Dresden. Lead Navigator Harold Brown checked with the rest of the navigators and they confirmed Doyle’s opinion. Ensign again ordered them to maintain radio silence.

The 91st, 381st, and 305th Bomb Groups followed the 398th toward Prague, while the main bomber stream, realizing they were on the wrong course, turned north to bomb Dresden as planned. Both the 398th an 91st dropped bombs on Prague while the 381st and part of the 305th, also realizing they were far off course, turned northeast and bombed Brux, Czechoslovakia, a viable military target.





152 tons of bombs fell on Prague that day, mainly on the east bank of the Vltava River about two and a half miles southwest of the city center, near a residential area. Initial reports indicated that 116 people were killed, 319 injured, and 50 missing. But subsequent rescue work and post-war clarification raised those figures to 701 killed, 1184 injured, and 11,000 left homeless. Ninety-three houses and other buildings were destroyed, including the 1347 AD Emmaus Monastery, with another 1960 buildings damaged.

Prague, February 14, 1945

Prague Casualty 

As the squadrons and groups re-formed and started back west many of the Fortresses were low on fuel and faced with 100 mph headwinds. By this time many were grumbling about Col. Ensign’s pilotage. They were told to knock it off.” Bombardier Dalton wrote in his diary, “We had another A and B plan today. They were Chemnitz and Dresden, [Germany]. We got a new Colonel here after Colonel Hunter went down. He’s already making a name for himself as a maniac, etc. He led us today to Dresden, Germany. That is a long haul so we had a full gas load. The crazy guy, or someone, made a little mistake and instead of going to Dresden, we bombed Prague, Czechoslovakia. As a result, we ran out of gas on the way back so we landed at a P-47 tactical outfit at St. Trond, Belgium.”

Most of the other 398th planes were also low on fuel and at least twenty-one had to land at Allied airfields in France or Belgium to refuel, and many did not get back to Nuthampstead for several days due to bad weather. Two other aircraft were damaged when landing and were AOC (Abandoned on Continent).

Following this blundered mission Lead navigator Harold Brown was relieved of his duties and flew the rest of his missions as Deputy Lead, but many felt the responsibility rested on Col. Ensign. Pilot Newt Moy remarked, “We had a new Group Commander. He knew more than the navigator.” Captain Keith Anderson remembers, “That was the day he [Ensign] had led the group supposedly to Dresden and ended up bombing Prague, Czechoslovakia, 100 miles away, again telling the navigators, bombardiers, radio operators, that they didn’t know where they were, he did. And that’s what happened.”

Due to the large number of aircraft that could not make it back to Nuthamstead that day, the 398th was very shorthanded of both aircraft and experienced crews. This set the stage for my father, Lt. Donald R. Christensen's first mission the following day, February 15, 1945, two weeks after he arrived in England.



In 1979, 398th researcher Malcolm “Ozzie” Osborne encountered Lewis Ensign at the Woodman Inn at Nuthampstead and asked if he could interview him. “Ask me anything you want Ozzie”, he replied. When Osborne asked him about February 14, 1945, Ensign asked, “What was special about that mission?” Ozzie replied, “That was the day you led the group and you bombed Prague instead of Dresden. Ensign said he had no memory of that mission at all. So I gave him lots of details about it. Still he maintained that he had no memory of that particular mission at all. End of story, for that day at least.”

Malcom "Ozzie" Osborn at Madingly Cemetery 

Dresden, February 13, 1945

RAF Lancaster

In early 1945, following the Battle of the Bulge, Allied ground forces were still recovering from the German assault and were not immediately ready to continue their march to the Rhine. Eighth Air Force and RAF planners therefore decided their best course in further weakening Germany was to bomb enemy positions along the Eastern Front in support of the Russian ground offensive since it seemed to have the best chance of ending the war by spring. Otherwise, many feared, the conflict might drag on until the end of the year. Selected bombing targets included Berlin, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Dresden, all major rail centers close to the Eastern Front. Attacks on all of these cities, not just Dresden, were made with the full understanding that they were filled with refugees from the east and that the bombings would cause great dislocation, clogged roads and railways, and high human casualties as well.

Churchill and Air Marshall Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris had long pressed for making eastern German cities high-priority targets, and now USAAF General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz waswilling to oblige and ordered the Eighth to strike Berlin on February 3rd. But this time the target was not the railroad marshalling yards, but the city center, the heart of the Reich and an area of high civilian population.

8th Air Force Commander General Jimmie Doolittle protested. American officials had long been sensitive about bombing civilian targets. In a long-running debate among AAF commanders Doolittle remained opposed to terror bombing on both military and moral grounds. He felt that bombing a population into submission had little chance of success and that it violated “the basic American principle of precision bombing of targets of strictly military significance for which our tactics were designed and our crews trained and indoctrinated.” [Donald Miller Masters Of the Air, p. 419] Certainly “precision bombing” rarely occurred and many American bombs fell on German civilians, often because of bad weather and inadequate technology, but Doolittle felt the intention should remain on strategic targets. Spaatz overruled Doolittle and insisted the attack proceed. On February 3, nearly 1000 bombers hit Berlin causing 3000 deaths and making 120,000 homeless. 23 bombers were downed by flak.

The next big city bombed was Dresden on February 13-15. Some have argued that Dresden had no military significance as a bombing target, but that is simply untrue. Sometimes called Florence on the Elbe, Dresden was a beautiful city known for its architecture, china ware, and spacious parks. But it was also a key transportation hub, the nexus of three important rail lines with twenty-eight trains carrying 20,000 troops a day toward the east. For this reason the city’s Friedrichbahn marshalling yards were considered one of the most important strategic transportation targets. In addition, Dresden was a manufacturing center for radar equipment, bomb fuses, gun sights, electronic components, and poison gas. An American POW in Dresden, Col. Harold E. Cook, confirmed, “I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians.” [Miller p.435] The city and the roads leading into it were also clogged with over a half million refugees fleeing the Eastern Front, so bombing roads, bridges, and rail lines there would cause much confusion and further hinder the movement of German troops and materiel.

The Eighth had bombed Dresden twice before, on October 7, 1944, and January 16, 1945, both times targeting industry and rail lines near the marshalling yards, but sparing the city’s historic core. The February ’45 attacks were planned as a combined RAF-Eighth Air Force assault. This time the RAF would have the first shot on February 13. The Eighth was to follow up with daylight raids the following two days.

Dresden Before

On the night of February 13, two waves of over 800 RAF Lancasters dropped 2,700 tons of bombs on the city center, a combination of explosive and incendiary devices, creating a firestorm that incinerated or suffocated over 35,000 people, soldiers and civilians, and turned much of the city to ash. This attack was not much different from British tactics against other cities, but this time unusual weather conditions of low humidity and cold, dry air provided ideal conditions for a firestorm.

 

Dresden After

“Bomber” Harris had long been an advocate of area bombing of German cities to punish and demoralize both the enemy’s military and civilian populations. Some have tried to label Harris a war criminal for his attacks on cities and civilian populations but I find it difficult to place much moral blame on him; this was the type of air war England and Germany had been fighting from the beginning. In 1940-41, after losing the Battle of Britain in the air, Hitler unleashed “the Blitz,” a nighttime bombing campaign against English cities intended to destroy, demoralize, and terrorize the civilian population. Over 30,000 Londoners were killed in these attacks and over 50,000 injured. Coventry, a non-military target, was largely destroyed and several other cities damaged and thousands more civilians killed or injured. Harris responded with many of his own attacks against German cities, including the 1943 firebombing of Hamburg which killed at least 11,000 more people than the Dresden raid. And even as Dresden was being bombed that February 13, German V-1 and V-2 rockets were still raining down on civilians in English cities and towns.

Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris

The blame for the destruction of German cities ultimately lies with Hitler and his insane orders to fight to the finish, no matter the cost to the German people. By 1945 the American military command became convinced of the need for a hard war to destroy the Reich. The Germans had started two world wars (at least the Western Front in WWI) and must be thoroughly defeated. FDR agreed: “It is of the utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. [That fact] collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war. Too many people here and in England hold to the view that the German people as a whole are not responsible for what has taken place—that only a few Nazi leaders are responsible. That unfortunately is not based on fact. The German people as a whole must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization.” [Miller p.416]  

Hitler

The Eighth bombed Dresden again the two days following the February 13th British raid. On February 14, over 300 B-17s appeared over the city, targeting mainly the marshalling yards and adjacent industrial areas, although many bombs fell on other parts of the beleaguered city as well. The damage might have been worse but three bomb groups, led by the 398th, became disoriented due to bad weather, PFF radar failure, and navigational error, and bombed Prague, Czechoslovakia by mistake. This snafu and the failure of most 398th planes to make it back to base that day set the stage for Don Christensen’s first combat mission the next day on February 15.  To read more about the Prague bombing, click here.

Kurt Vonnegut

For many of my generation the firebombing of Dresden was made infamous by Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut and other American infantrymen captured in the Battle of the Bulge were in Dresden as part of a forced work detail and were housed in a concrete shelter for pigs about to be slaughtered with the number five over the door. He thought Dresden was “the loveliest city that most of the Americans had ever seen.” When he and his fellow prisoners were let out of the slaughterhouse the day following the firestorm, he wrote, “Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.” [Vonnegut p. 227] Unfortunately he did not place this in the context of the larger war. It is understandable that he only experienced this event through his own experience on the ground, but it has influenced many people to believe that the bombing of Dresden was nothing but a war crime perpetuated by the Allies.