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Until We Get To Berlin

Robert Royce Gideon Jr. 7/28/1916 — 1/09/2005 USAF Colonel "Bob" Gideon was born in Jackson, TN. Bob was a graduate of the distinguished class of 1939, United States Military Academy, West Point. From a cavalry unit, he entered the Army Air Corps flying school at Kelly Field, TX. After receiving his wings, he became an instructor and Commandant of Cadets at Randolph Field and Perrin Field, TX. In 1943, he transitioned into B-24's and was assigned as Deputy Commander, 450th Bombardment Group, part of the new 15th Air Force. He became the commander of the 450th in Southern Italy in August 1944. He completed 50 bomber combat missions including four over the Ploesti oil fields. Bob was promoted to full colonel at age 28. The 15th Air Force suffered more men lost than the Marines during WWII resulting in a record number of early leadership promotions. Tours at Langley Field, VA and Boca Raton Field, FL followed in 1945 before re-assignment to Ohio State University where he earned his Master of Business Administration degree. Bob then served five years assigned to the Air Staff, DOD and then the Joint Task Force for testing atomic weapons in the Pacific. Col. Gideon was the youngest student ever to attend the National War College in 1951/52 receiving Distinguished Graduate honors. In 1952, he served as Wing Commander of a B-29 and B-47 Wing in the Strategic Air Command. He was the first Chief of Staff at the newly formed Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs before returning to combat aircraft as commander of a jet fighter wing in Germany and France for two years. After an assignment as Inspector General of the USAF/Europe, he returned to CONUS as Commander of AF Defense Sector at McChord AFB in Tacoma, WA. Col Gideon retired from active duty in 1962. Military awards include the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Crosses, Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters, two Presidential Unit citations, Greek War Cross, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and the French Croix de Guerre avec Plume among numerous others. His was a distinguished and heroic career, a true patriot and a credit to the Long Gray Line.

I am not a literary man, so I can spin you no epic tales about the war. This is just the talk of a professional soldier to neighbors at home.

When I was graduated from West Point, in 1939, many did not think too much of professional soldiers. When I went into the air forces in '41, many did not think much about the usefulness of air power. That seems changed now. War has educated us.

When I got home from the European front in December and the news of Germany's great counter attack began breaking, some of my countrymen seemed in real despair. I can only say this — the German strategy will prolong the war, which is just what the Germans want. It will magnify the war's cost, to us. We shall not win cheaply, as some Americans had hoped. But — we shall still win.

The setbacks we suffered at the end of 1944 mean primarily that we shall have to do some of our work over again.

The work of our air forces in the year previous to December headed up to three strategic accomplishments.

For one thing, we mastered the Luftwaffe; by April last year our 8th and 15th air forces had flattened many of the enemy's aircraft plants, and reduced fighter opposition. In my own outfit, the 15th, Liberators have played a great part.

One outcome was that our ground forces could invade the continent in June without being decimated from the air — the first successful invasion across the Channel in history. German prisoners of war would tell us, "When we were in Russia they said our planes were in the west. Here they told us our planes were over Russia."

Second, we carried on the campaign heralded by the famous Liberator raid on Ploesti. We bombed the enemy's rich oil resources in Rumania and Poland.

Result: The Germans promptly faced fuel shortages for a mechanized war — shortages which have not prevented their counter attack, but have certainly handicapped them.

We also bombed plants making hydrogen peroxide. This, combined with potassium permanganate, is one of the fuels for the German robot bombs.

Finally, we hit hard at enemy lines of communication. As our own ground forces moved toward Germany, we have tried to hinder German supplies. For instance, in one day near the year-end — on December 11 — we poured 6,000 tons of bombs on German railway counters. The Fifteenth Air Force flew up front from out of Italy, and the Eighth out of Britain. They put some 1,600 of our heavy bombers in the air over Germany on one day. With fighter escort, that meant a flying army of more than 17,000 Americans in the air over Germany at one time.

The chart shows the official AAF figures on the tonnage of bombs dropped on some of the greatest German centers in the period between December 7, 1941, and December 7, 1944.

All this represents what we call strategic bombing. You doubtless know the distinction: strategy wins wars; tactics wins battles.

From the time of the invasion, our air forces have done more and more tactical bombing in support of our ground troops. Whereas a strategic target may be an aircraft factory or an oil refinery, typical tactical targets are gun positions, bridges close to the front line, troop concentrations, staff headquarters, armored vehicle concentrations, and the like.

During the invasion, for instance, our tactical bombing was done on precise schedule. We would have fifteen minutes to bomb an exact target; then our ground forces would move in as we stopped. We would take turns. Heavy bombers like the Liberators would knock out whole areas of approaches, from great heights. Then medium bombers would take over at medium altitudes. Then the fighter's would move in, strafing and dive-bombing.

Similarly, when the Germans counter attacked at the end of 1944, our airmen supported the ground troops by tactical bombing of this same kind, directed against the enemy's movements and positions. Our planes also rushed up ammunition and supplies to our ground troops, often dropping them from the air.

As the war proceeds from here on, tactical bombing will be of paramount importance. For our ground forces will doubtless be carrying the brunt of the attack, and it will be the business of our planes to lend them all support possible.

City	Target	Tonnage
Berlin	general war supplies, traffic center	13,717 tons
Ploesti	oil	13,098 tons
Munich	aircraft, chemicals	12,937 tons
Vienna	general war supplies, traffic center	11,671 tons
Merseberg	synthetic oil	11,391 tons
Cologne	general war industries, traffic center	11,236 tons
Hamm	traffic, supply, power center	10,105 tons
Brunswick	aircraft plants, steel works, etc.	9,431 tons
Kassel	aircraft plants, locomotives, marshalling yards	8,656 tons
Hamburg	oil, shipbuilding, aircraft	8,481 tons
Ludwigshaven	chemical, engineering, AFV, etc.	8,264 tons
Kiel	principal German naval base, etc.	7,662 tons
Budapest	aircraft, supply, traffic center	7,007 tons
Frankfurt	aircraft, motor vehicles, chemicals, etc.	6,642 tons
Saarbrucken	coal fields, iron and steel supplies	6,476 tons
Muenster	industries, inland harbor, canals	4,741 tons
Hanover	rubber, ordnance, oil refineries	4,697 tons
Bucharest	supply center Eastern front	4,403 tons
Osnabruck	iron, steel mills, railroad junction	4,357 tons
Wilhelmshaven	naval base, U-boat pen, etc.	4,130 tons

When the day comes — and it will — that we break across the Rhine and burst through the Siegfried line into the heart of Germany, such tactical bombing will doubtless continue to be vital right up to the gales of the enemy's capital.

This is a bad winter in Europe — some say the worst in a hundred years. That weather is one of the breaks that have gone against us. The Germans made their counter attack at a selected time when weather limited the effectiveness of our air power, and the longest nights of the year helped greatly in shielding their operations.

Meanwhile, in heroic measures — such as attempt's to rebuild the Luftwaffe by conducting plane construction in underground factories — the Germans have shown the courage of desperation. Their renewed offensive in middle December, during which they brought out new air power, illustrates this.

The fight is bound to be costly, bloody, and — on the enemy's side — merciless. As General H.H. Arnold has said, "I don't think the war in Germany will end until we actually get to Berlin." Perhaps guerrilla warfare will continue even long afterward.

Statistical summaries of bombs dropped cannot picture in any clear way the attack the Germans have been withstanding. What the enemy is experiencing must indeed challenge any average American to imagine.

Yet even this unparalleled attack has still not reached its goal — Unconditional Surrender.

As we continue on to our objective, Americans who feel that the war is a long way off might remember this: it is only an overnight's plane ride. That is, the siege of Germany is no further off in point of time than was, say, the siege of Vicksburg from Washington some eighty years ago.

I left the war theater, for instance, one Saturday in December, on special assignment, and was in Washington the next morning.

The Christmas lights of my homeland looked good to me. I am not one of those who say our people don't know there's a war on.

To keep the actual war away from the shores of our homeland — away from our own cities — was one of the first objectives of all our military strategy. So it is good to see our homelights burning.

A message to the folks at home in 1945 By Colonel Robert R. Gideon, 15th Air Force. Reprinted From Plane Talk. January 1945.

Berlin 1945 : The Final Reckoning A comprehensive history of the last battle of Nazi Germany, this book begins with a study of the background to the battle and a description of events on the eastern and western fronts before the Soviet forces reached Berlin. The strategic importance of the city to the German war effort and morale is considered, and the reasons why the Western allies halted their advance on the Elbe rather than race the Soviet troops to the Reichstag.

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