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The Battle of the Ruhr of 1943 was a 5-month long campaign of strategic bombing during the Second World War against the Nazi Germany Ruhr Area, which had coke plants, steelworks, and 10 synthetic oil plants. The campaign bombed twenty-six major Combined Bomber Offensive targets.〔 〕 The targets included the Krupp armament works (Essen), the Nordstern synthetic-oil plant (Gelsenkirchen), and the Rheinmetal–Borsig plant in Düsseldorf. The latter was safely evacuated during the Battle of the Ruhr.〔Although not strictly part of the Ruhr area, the battle of the Ruhr included other cities such as Cologne which were within the Rhine-Ruhr region and considered part of the same "industrial complex".〔 Some targets were not sites of heavy industrial production but part of the production and movement of materiel. Although the Ruhr had always been a target for the RAF from the start of the war, the organized defences and the large amount of industrial pollutants produced that gave a semi-permanent smog or industrial haze hampered accurate bombing.〔〔Butt Report, 1941〕〔Bishop, Patrick ''Bomber Boys Fighting Back 1940-1945''〕 Before the Battle of the Ruhr ended, Operation Gomorrah began the "Battle of Hamburg". Even after this switch of focus to Hamburg, there would be further raids on the Ruhr area by the RAF—in part to keep German defences dispersed, just as there had been raids on areas other than the Ruhr during the battle.〔 ==Offence and defence== The British bomber force was made up in the main of the twin-engined Vickers Wellington medium bomber and the four-engined "heavies", the Short Stirling, Handley Page Halifax and Avro Lancaster. The Wellington and Stirling were the two oldest designs and limited in the type or weight of bombs carried. The Stirling was also limited to a lower operational height. Bombers could carry a range of bombs - Medium Capacity bombs of about 50% explosive by weight, High Capacity "Blockbusters" that were mostly explosive, and incendiary devices. The combined use of the latter two were most effective in setting fires in urban areas. British raids were by night - the losses in daylight raids having been too heavy to bear. By this point in the war, RAF Bomber Command were using navigation aids, the Pathfinder force and the bomber stream tactic together. Electronic navigation aids such as "Oboe", which had been tested against Essen in January 1943,〔 meant the Pathfinders could mark the targets despite the industrial haze and cloud cover that obscured the area by night. Guidance markers put the main force over the target area, where they would then drop their bombloads on target markers. The bomber stream concentrated the force of bombers into a small time window, such that it overwhelmed fighter defences in the air and firefighting attempts on the ground. For most of the Battle of the Ruhr the Oboe de Havilland Mosquitoes came from one squadron, No. 109.〔 The number of Oboe aircraft that could be used at any time was limited by the number of ground stations.〔 The USAAF had two 4-engined heavy bombers available: the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator - neither of these American heavy bomber designs had a bomb bay suitable to carry the RAF's blockbuster bombs or anything comparable. USAAF raids were by daylight, the closely massed groups of bombers covering each other with defensive fire against fighters. Between them, the Allies could mount "round the clock" bombing. The USAAF forces in the UK were still increasing during 1943 and the majority of the bombing was by the RAF. The German defence was through anti-aircraft weapons and day and night fighters. The Kammhuber Line used radar to identify the bomber raids and then controllers directed night fighters onto the raiders. During the battle of the Ruhr, Bomber Command estimated about 70% of their aircraft losses were due to fighters.〔Brown, Louis: ''A Radar History of World War II'' CRC Press, 1999〕 By July 1943, the German night fighter force totalled 550. Through the summer of 1943, the Germans increased the ground-based anti-aircraft defences in the Ruhr Area; by July 1943 there were more than 1,000 large flak guns (88 mm caliber guns or greater) and 1,500 lighter guns (chiefly 20 mm and 37 mm calibre).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Part 2: Large air defence in the Rhine-Ruhr area )〕 This was about one-third of all anti-aircraft guns in Germany.〔 Six-hundred thousand personnel were required to man the AA defences of Germany.〔 The British crews called the area sarcastically "Happy Valley"〔("Battle of the Ruhr" ) Australian War Memorial〕 or the "valley of no Return". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of the Ruhr」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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