WW2 Bombing of Schweinfurt

Hello friends,
now that I realized that my threads “WW2 Bomb Crater Relics of the “Schweinfurt Raids” and “WW2 Precision daylight bombing of US Airforce ” found much interrest. As a contuniation I will post this thread:

Schweinfurt has 3 big plants producing bearings and other machinery components e.g. for Automotive application. In WW2 these plants were the German core industry for bearings and therefore target priority one for bombing. The names of that companies are SKF, FAG and Fichtel & Sachs. I worked in FAG for 36 years – finally head of bearing endurance testing. Now, retired, my interest for this WW2 fate of the city were I spent my whole working life, came up.

My pictures show the local situation nowadays and after “Precision Daylight Bombing” of the USAF.
Picture 1 shows again the crater localisation 8 km away from target
Picture 2 shows the three plants concentrated aroung the railway station, the position of the railway station. The city is left above from the plants,
Pictures 3 and 4 show the the US reconnaissance photos of the bombing results.
note the burning city and the many massive craters right above in the fields in photo 3
Pictures 5 and 6 show more precise reconnaissance photos of the bombing effects on the three plants and the lots of big craters all around.

In the site “Tird Reich Ruins” ( http://www.thirdreichruins.com/schweinfurt.htm) You can read:
“The two bombing attacks in 1943 (17 August 1943 and 14 October 1943, the black thursday) scattered bombs widely over the town area, not just the factory areas. By the time the bomber streams reached the aiming point, they had been severely disrupted by Luftwaffe fighters and flak, and many bombers simply released their bombs in the general area of the town”.

Finaly Schweinfurt was bombed 22 times untill 10. April 1945 and the more and more precise bombing without defense of German fighters lead finaly to the large destroyment of the city and the plants. That costs the life of much more than 1000 Allied Aircrew Members.

Greetings