Big Week: Six Days That Changed The Course Of World War II - Plot & Excerpts
On January 27 the Eighth Air Force made its first attack on targets within Germany, albeit with fewer than the one hundred bombers promised by Eaker. The primary target, plucked from the top item in the hierarchy of targeting priorities, the naval yard at Wilhelmshaven, would be hit by fifty-three heavy bombers while two others diverted to Emden. Hughes and others may have been impatient with the ineffectiveness of the attacks on U-boat pens, but the strikes against shipyards within Germany meant hitting the insidious submarines at their more vulnerable source. On February 2, an attempted second attack on Germany was aborted because of weather, but the Eighth Air Force returned to Wilhelmshaven on February 26. Thus began the off-and-on campaign against the shipyards that would continue through 1943. The German shipbuilding industry, which was in the midst of increasing the proportion of its resources devoted to U-boats, was far more vulnerable to attack than the reinforced concrete pens.
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