There were over a million people tied up in air defence in Germany, which must have had an effect on the German operations on land also it tied up a large number of German 88 mm guns which could have been put to use else where.

Originally Posted by Kesse81

The wreckage of Allied bomber and fighter aircraft proved to be an important source of raw materials for Germany. The Germans systematically collected all wreckage from the scattered crash sites into scrap dumps both in the Reich and in the occupied territories.

One of these dumps was located at Utrecht in the Netherlands. In November of 1943, this yard alone supplied more than 308,000 pounds of aluminum alloy to German industry. During late 1943, they were scraping approximately fifty Luftwaffe and thirty Allied aircraft each month.

Source: “Strangers in a strange land” by Hans-Heiri Stapfer.

The book deals primarily with captured American aircraft. But there is a section that tells about “How an American bomber becomes a new Messerschmitt”

Thanks for that Verdana. It's good to see a query specifically answered and referenced, even though we have drifted from issues in the original OP somewhat.

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

There were over a million people tied up in air defence in Germany, which must have had an effect on the German operations on land also it tied up a large number of German 88 mm guns which could have been put to use else where.

Yes this is often overlooked, especially by the Russians. So is the extra materiel which would have been produced without the air raids. The dispersion alone must have reduced production relative to what it would have been (a point missed when comparing production figures from one year to the next) and this made the subsequent attacks on the transportation infrastructure decisive. That said I think Harris could have used his bombers more wisely.

Originally Posted by perseus

Yes this is often overlooked, especially by the Russians. So is the extra materiel which would have been produced without the air raids. The dispersion alone must have reduced production relative to what it would have been (a point missed when comparing production figures from one year to the next). That said I think Harris could have used his bombers more wisely.

Oddly enough that isn't the conclusion that US Strategic Command studies came to just after the war, they concluded that the forced dispersion of German industries made it impossible to do major damage to German industries and as such actually aided the German war effort and cost allied lives.

They were extremely critical of the bomber war.

However their are certain targets that undoughtably benefited the Allied effort such as the Dams blasted in the Ruhr Valley the industry heart of Germany, down time at Ploesti and the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt.

Originally Posted by Kesse81

The wreckage of Allied bomber and fighter aircraft proved to be an important source of raw materials for Germany. The Germans systematically collected all wreckage from the scattered crash sites into scrap dumps both in the Reich and in the occupied territories.

One of these dumps was located at Utrecht in the Netherlands. In November of 1943, this yard alone supplied more than 308,000 pounds of aluminum alloy to German industry. During late 1943, they were scraping approximately fifty Luftwaffe and thirty Allied aircraft each month.

Source: “Strangers in a strange land” by Hans-Heiri Stapfer.

The book deals primarily with captured American aircraft. But there is a section that tells about “How an American bomber becomes a new Messerschmitt”

On the planes salvaged, not all the material or even most of it was recoverable. Their mission height was 27,000 to 30,000 feet. In the case of 154 tons being salvaged this is not surprising considering > 4150 B-17 went down over the Reich along with 3250 Arvo Lanchesters. It would be interesting to see this figure compared to the total wartime Aluminum alloy used by the Reich in WW2, (much of which came from Norway)?
An interesting footnote: The B-17’s delivered 640,000 tons of bombs on the Reich while the Arvo Lancasters delivered> 610,000 tons of bombs. So a total of 1.250 million tons of bombs were dropped on the Reich. This did in effect galvanize the German people in much the same way the Blitz galvanized the British, however the value of the terror bombing is questionable as some considered Bomber Harris the only real allied war criminal. As mentioned earlier some industrial setbacks did occur as a result of the bombing, however as Monty mentioned the Germans were quick to move to a cottage industry system that made it a bit harder to target industry. The bombers had a large contribution in the destroying of the Luftwaffe runways and airbases and German communications centers particularly with the approach of D-Day.

The bombing of the synthetic oil plants and possibly the transport system would have been decisive if the ground war had dragged on. Certainly decisive in the sense that it prevented any successful large scale counter offensive since this requires large supplies of fuel and unbroken rail links. In effect Germany was defeated twice over, once by the gradual attrition of ground forces, and secondly by the removal of the means to move large numbers of troops and materiel from one place to another.

When the RAF wiped out the V! and V2 plants on the Baltic they were immediately moved to safer areas. Germany like Britain had many little workshops through out all the cities which added to the war effort. Now area bombing caused a major effort by the Germans to keep there towns operating with fuel and water and every effort in this took away people from the war effort.

Originally Posted by perseus

The bombing of the synthetic oil plants and possibly the transport system would have been decisive if the ground war had dragged on. Certainly decisive in the sense that it prevented any successful large scale counter offensive since this requires large supplies of fuel and unbroken rail links. In effect Germany was defeated twice over, once by the gradual attrition of ground forces, and secondly by the removal of the means to move large numbers of troops and materiel from one place to another.

I agree we had a good tread on this topic some time back.
The consensus was that after losing the battle of Moscow which forced the Osteer (German Army in the east) into a war of attrition and Hitler's simultaneously declaring war on the US in Dec 41 Germany was brought into a conflict with the world's 2 largest economies.
This virtually doomed the Reich which despite often having superior: tactics, weapons and soldiery could not hope to compete against the sheer weight in number and machines.

Originally Posted by JOC

The B-17’s delivered 640,000 tons of bombs on the Reich while the Arvo Lancasters delivered> 610,000 tons of bombs. So a total of 1.250 million tons of bombs were dropped on the Reich.

There were other aircraft of course. The figure for the US looks right but the RAF dropped almost a million tons on Germany. THE US was also active in other European theater's so they ended up dropping slightly more than the RAF by the end of the war.