temperature during Dresden firestorm
 

I'm finishing up a brief article for our newsletter on the Dresden firebombing and I'm stuck on one detail. Does anyone have an estimate by a credible source of how hot it became on the ground during the firestorm? I've tooled around the web and not found anything authoritative, and I don't have time to visit a library. Thanks.

Having now Googled, I see what you mean. A pretty wide range of estimates & not one of them sourced.

Maybe someone else will have better luck than I did, but I did try.

A newsletter on the Dresden firebombing?

Heck, if they have waited this long to hear the news, another few months for more research doesn't seem like it would hurt. You can't hurry the news.

hmm

if I have time, and it is a big if, and if I can still get onto U of Washingtons intranet from work, another big if, I can see if I can find anything.

What if you build a 1/100 scale model of Dresden and bomb it with 1/100 scale bombers and bombs? If you then measure the resulting temperature and multiply by 100 you should have a fairly accurate estimate of the real temperature.

I'll see if I can find any info with an academic journals search in an hour or so.

This

My search-Fu sucks. Sorry I couldnt find this.

1

A 'firestorm' is the event that ties all intense fires together, be it from bombings, forest fires, or other large scale burnings.

Based on the science behind firestorms, it isn't so much what is burning that causes the high temperatures, as much as it is the self-sustaining effect that is caused by the pulling in of oxygen to the fire. So the temperatures will max out based on how much oxygen can be fed to the fire, not what is burning.

I couldn't find anything definite, just estimates that the temperatures were up to 1500 °C.

It probably wasn't hot enough to spontaneously combust everything and anything. I only say this because when the fires came through my neighborhood a few years back, there was a fire storm that went through there. There was more wind damage than fire damage. Purely anecdotal, but, gives you an idea.

As for the report, just be honest and say "There are conflicting reports to what the temperatures may have been during the fire storm, however, no documented evidence could be found for an exact temperature".

If you have time, maybe try and call someone at a local university that may be able to give you an estimate.

Ask Kurt Vonnegut.

have you tried google scholar?

This is the way to go. Just think how much attention your paper will get when you report that it was actually 7,000 degrees on the ground even before the first bomb fell.

nothing definitive in german-language results either, however the consensus of newer results has been that the low-end estimates are more likely, just a couple months ago a panel of experts on behalf of the city of dresden claimed that the temperatures were likely more around 1000-1100 degrees celcius maximum rather than the 2000 sometimes claimed.

Don´t think there is or will be a definitive number out there, just go with a source you feel comfortable with and put a footnore in that there´s just no way to be sure and that there´s various other opinions.

If that doesn't work then build a 1/50 scale model of of Dresden and bomb it with 1/50 scale bombers and bombs? If you then measure the resulting temperature and multiply by 50 you should have a fairly accurate estimate of the real temperature.

And if that doesn't work, then maybe firebombing a German city isn't for you

SI

Don't believe that 1/100 scale crap. The ONLY way to accurately determine the proper temperature on the ground is to recreate the bombing.

You have to do it. Man up & get to planning.

Make sure you drop plenty of leaflets first though.

But what city is most like 1945 Dresden?

I'm gonna say Columbus, Ohio.

Don't you worry about Columbus, Ohio. General Brady Tecumseh Hoke has a plan for them.

Yeah, roll over and get beat up.

I'm pretty sure that in the new Big 10 alignment the top tier teams don't play the bottom tier teams. Now if Michigan can win a few games maybe they can move up to play with the big boys.

This thread is fascinating me for many reasons. Are you looking for just the hottest temperature reached at any point in the fire? I don't get the fascination with that. It seems like any number over the threshold of human existence has diminishing returns. Given that human skin apparently ignites at around 480 degrees, it seems to me that a temperature over 480 degrees is largely irrelevant.

I'd be slightly more fascinated in what temperature it was outside the firezone. If you told me that it should have been 46 degrees in Dresden but if you live a mile from the fire it was actually 85 degrees, well that might be interesting.

Can't imagine that you would have much success getting anymore than a wild ass guess to this question since I doubt there were any 5,000 degree thermometers lying around Dresden somebody could check out and report in. I'm sure scientists could use process to determine the temperature at which buildings burned, but that doesn't seem like something the Nazis would spend time on.

However, I would LOVE to read this newsletter. Makes me wonder what else is in there.

Instead of trying to quote an exact temperature (good luck with that, i've looked in the past), I would probably go more fact based. Something like: "the fire was hot enough to melt steel", or something like that.

Thanks, everyone, especially whomario for checking the German sources. 1,000 C sounds impressive enough. I'm doing the final proofing right now (i know I shouldn't be proofing myself, but I'm the token native speaker in the office).
For those who were curious, the newsletter is a weekly mailer with 2 articles -- one being this week in history, which is why Dresden is the topic -- to help sell our World War 2 tours.
It's actually a very difficult subject to write about because it's been politicized past the point of being able to simply relay the facts without delving into the motives behind the attack, and you can't do that without walking a political tightrope. The good part was rereading parts of Slaughterhouse 5 or the Children's Crusade, one of my favorite novels.