Movies often portray cities like Stalingrad and Berlin to haave hundreds of bombers over head, with smoke filled skies, crumbled buildings, and fires littering the landscape. My question is, are these accurate representations of battlefields, specifically in cities? And also, was there ever a bombing raid that had bombers just littering the skis, with flak fire constantly shooting? One more as well, could you describe (in detail, if possible please) what a battle ridden cities atmosphere would be like, like would it just be a normal day with a few fires around (Minus the dead and vehicles) Thanks!
Here are some pictures to give you scale. These are B-17s flying through an intense flak barrage. Here are B-17s and their escort fighters spewing condensation trails across the sky.
The combined bomber offensive, consisting of British bombers at night and American bombers in the day was an immense effort, including some raids like the one on Cologne in 1942 where 1000 allied aircraft participated, including around 800 bombers, with pathfinders, and escort fighters making up the difference. Pathfinders were sent in first to mark the targets with flares. A coordinated bomber stream followed, overwhelming Reich air defense systems with the sheer weight of aircraft. For every huge raid there were dozens of small nuisance raids, a pair of Mosquito fighter-bombers was usually sent to Cologne every few evenings.
Perhaps the most infamous bombing raid of WWII was the bombing of Dresden, which occurred over the course of a few days and nights in February 1945. Using a mix of high explosives and incendiary bombs small fires were started in the wooden city that eventually developed into a firestorm. Hurricane force winds and thousand degree air temperatures melted pavement, asphyxiated people sheltering in cellars and sucked people and anything not bolted to the ground into the inferno.
Dresden happened toward the end of the war in Europe and is highly controversial to this day. The city was a rail hub but had hardly been touched in earlier raids. It is frequently compared and contrasted to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Examples of destroyed cities:
Edit: added images of bombed out cities
The Allied production capacity increased steadily throughout the war, so by War's end there was more bombing capacity than available strategic targets. The Allies eventually bombed the crap out of Germany, partially because they simply could. Additionally, from early on, Churchill pushed for "big raids", so he could announce stuff like a "thousand bomber" mission (numbers sometimes padded with obsolete planes). So yes, there were skies filled with bombers.
