Editing Bombing of Dresden (section)

===14–15 February===
On the morning of 14 February 431 [[United States Army Air Force]] bombers of the [[Eighth Air Force]]'s 1st Bombardment Division were scheduled to bomb Dresden near midday, and the 457 aircraft of 3rd Bombardment Division were to follow to bomb [[Chemnitz]], while the 375 bombers of the 2nd Bombardment Division would bomb a [[Brabag|synthetic oil]] plant in [[Magdeburg]]. Another 84 bombers would attack [[Wesel]].{{sfn|De Bruhl|2006|p=218}} The bomber groups were protected by 784 [[North American P-51 Mustang]]s of the Eighth Air Force's [[VIII Fighter Command]], 316 of which covered the Dresden attack – a total of almost 2,100 Eighth Army Air Force aircraft over Saxony during 14 February.{{sfn|Taylor|2005|p=364}} The smoke plume over Dresden by now reached {{cvt|15000|ft}} and was plainly visible to the approaching raid.{{sfn|Beevor|2014|pp=716–717}}

[[File:B-17 Flying Fortress.jpg|thumb|USAAF [[Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress]] bombers over Europe]]

Primary sources disagree as to whether the aiming point was the [[marshalling yard]]s near the centre of the city or the centre of the built-up urban area. The report by the 1st Bombardment Division's commander to his commander states that the targeting sequence was the centre of the built-up area in Dresden if the weather was clear. If clouds obscured Dresden but Chemnitz was clear, Chemnitz was the target. If both were obscured, they would bomb the centre of Dresden using [[H2X radar]].{{sfn|Taylor|2005|p=365}} The mix of bombs for the Dresden raid was about 40 per cent incendiaries—much closer to the RAF city-busting mix than the USAAF usually used in precision bombardment.{{sfn|Taylor|2005|p=366}} Taylor compares this 40 per cent mix with the [[Bombing of Berlin in World War II#March 1944 to April 1945|raid on Berlin]] on 3 February, where the ratio was 10 per cent incendiaries. This was a common mix when the USAAF anticipated cloudy conditions over the target.{{sfn|Davis|2006|pp=425, 504}}

[[File:96bg-b17.jpg|thumb|B-17s similar to some of the Dresden raiders, with [[H2X radar]]s extended from the belly where a turret would normally have been. Other B-17s relied on signals from those with radar]]
316 [[B-17 Flying Fortress]]es bombed Dresden, dropping 771 tons of bombs.{{sfn|Addison|Crang|2006|p=65}}{{sfn|Davis|2006|p=504}} The remaining 115 bombers from the stream of 431 misidentified their targets. Sixty [[Bombing of Prague in World War II|bombed Prague]], dropping 153 tons of bombs, while others bombed [[Most (city)|Brüx]] and [[Plzeň|Pilsen]].{{sfn|Davis|2006|p=504}} The 379th bombardment group started to bomb Dresden at 12:17, aiming at marshalling yards in the Friedrichstadt district west of the city centre, as the area was not obscured by smoke and cloud. The 303rd group arrived over Dresden two minutes after the 379th and found their view obscured by clouds, so they bombed Dresden using H2X radar. The groups that followed the 303rd (92nd, 306th, 379th, 384th and 457th) also found Dresden obscured by clouds, and they too used H2X. H2X aiming caused the groups to bomb with a wide dispersal over the Dresden area. The last group to attack Dresden was the 306th, and they finished by 12:30.{{sfn|Taylor|2005|p=374}}

No evidence of [[strafing]] of civilians has ever been found, although a March 1945 article in the Nazi-run weekly newspaper ''[[Das Reich (newspaper)|Das Reich]]'' claimed this had occurred.{{efn|Civilian strafing was in fact a regular practice of the Luftwaffe throughout the war.{{sfn|Neitzel|Welzer|2012|pp=57–58}} }} Historian Götz Bergander, an eyewitness to the raids, found no reports on strafing for 13–15 February by any pilots or the German military and police. He asserted in ''Dresden im Luftkrieg'' (1977) that only a few tales of civilians being strafed were reliable in detail, and all were related to the daylight attack on 14 February. He concluded that some memory of eyewitnesses was real, but that it had misinterpreted the firing in a dogfight as deliberately aimed at people on the ground.{{sfn|Bergander|1998|pp=204–209}} In 2000, historian Helmut Schnatz found an explicit order to RAF pilots not to strafe civilians on the way back from Dresden. He also reconstructed timelines with the result that strafing would have been almost impossible due to lack of time and fuel.<ref>Helmut Schnatz, ''Tiefflieger über Dresden? Legenden und Wirklichkeit'' (Böhlau, 2000, {{ISBN|3-412-13699-9}}), pp. 96, 99</ref> Frederick Taylor in ''Dresden'' (2004), basing most of his analysis on the work of Bergander and Schnatz, concludes that no strafing took place, although some stray bullets from aerial dogfights may have hit the ground and been mistaken for strafing by those in the vicinity.{{sfn|Taylor|2005|loc=Appendix A. "The Massacre at Elbe Meadows"}} The official historical commission collected 103 detailed eyewitness accounts and let the local bomb disposal services search according to their assertions. They found no bullets or fragments that would have been used by planes of the Dresden raids.{{sfn|Neutzner|Schönherr|Plato|Schnatz|2010|pp=71–80}}

On 15 February, the 1st Bombardment Division's primary target—the [[Böhlen]] synthetic oil plant near [[Leipzig]]—was obscured by clouds, so its groups diverted to their secondary target, Dresden. Dresden was also obscured by clouds, so the groups targeted the city using H2X. The first group to arrive over the target was the 401st, but it missed the city centre and bombed Dresden's southeastern suburbs, with bombs also landing on the nearby towns of [[Meissen]] and [[Pirna]]. The other groups all bombed Dresden between 12:00 and 12:10. They failed to hit the marshalling yards in the Friedrichstadt district and, as in the previous raid, their ordnance was scattered over a wide area.{{sfn|Taylor|2005|pp=392, 393}} Railroad operations at Dresden resumed within three days.{{sfn|Levine|1992|p=179}}