Economist book review - The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

[Been Accounting]

Some interesting statistics in this article.

The article misses a point mentioned in one of the comments: "Not bombing German cities during WWII would have provided a gift worth many 10's of millions of man hours of industrial production and scientific research & development".


http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21586520-damning-verdict-bombing-campaign-europe-during-second-world-war-costly (The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945)

[Chugalug2]

Your link isn't working OP. Googling comes up with this:-
Strategic bombing, 1939-45: A costly, brutal failure | The Economist (http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21586520-damning-verdict-bombing-campaign-europe-during-second-world-war-costly)
hope that works. As to the theme, same old same old. It seems that the book that will make the money is the one that says "Bombing Campaign 1939-1945 was essential to winning the war". That would require fresh thinking though, so more likely we'll have even more safe bets like this one.

[Onceapilot]

Well count me in for fresh-thinking. The "costly, brutal strategic air war 1939-45" was essential for winning the Second World War and, that was not just in Europe. Thank God we fought Total War in that one.

OAP

[Onceapilot]

I have noticed the review was in The Economist. Hmmmm, a portal for a discredited band of fortune tellers IMO:hmm:.

OAP

[angels]

Thank heavens we are free to speculate about whether or not saturation bombing worked.

Over 50,000 Bomber Command men died as part of the price of buying us that freedom.

[TBM-Legend]

Interesting comment that today we use precision bombing to avoid civilians and collateral damage while WW2 was saturation bombing. I guess we're also now not engaged in total warfare against adversaries that would smash us if they had the wherewithal. The author does not remember Coventry, Rotterdam or Warsaw either!

This revisionist shiiiiiite only serves to poison the history and not truly analyse it. As previously stated comparing today's standards in almost everything vs. yesteryear is purely academic and a waste of oxygen....:hmm:

[langleybaston]

Shan't buy that, then!

Quote: As previously stated comparing today's standards in almost everything vs. yesteryear is purely academic and a waste of oxygen....

Two points

1. I think it was ever thus, no doubt the Georgians whinged about the good old days. And the Victorians.

2. Surely most of us associate with "people like us" who understand "what really matters" and, apart from looking over our specs and saying harrumph! and I say! are to a good degree insulated from the oicks, revisionists, nay-sayers and slobs?

I read in Sunday's D Tel that I should not start to eat until everyone is served, and not to put elbows on the table. I really needed that, but then I don't dine with folk who need that advice.
All the above is a bit tongue in cheek, but all true I believe.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

Yet when war broke out in 1939 no air force was capable of such devastation. Nor did the general staffs of the main protagonists have plans to use what passed for heavy bombers at the time to carry out such attacks, seeing them as adjuncts to ground warfare rather than forces intended for independent operation.


At least he got that bit right regading general staffs. Thank the heavens for Smuts, Henderson, Sykes and Trenchard.

It certainly won't be on my shopping list.

[Heathrow Harry]

Albert Speer reckoned the Air Defence operation it was costing Germany badly by 1944 - before that maybe not so bad but the diversion of manpower and resources started to hurt big time in the last 2 years of the war

[Molemot]

Alber Speer discussed the bombing of Hamburg when he was interrogated in July 1945.... "We were of the opinion that a rapid repetition of this type of attack upon another six German towns would inevitably cripple the will to sustain armament manufacture and war production. It was I who first verbally reported to the Fuehrer at that time that a continuation of these attacks might bring about a rapid end to the war."

[Archimedes]

I think there may be a problem here, in that having read Professor Overy's other works (see How the Allies Won, for instance) and heard him speak, I get the feeling that the reviewer has either failed to capture all the nuances of the argument, or has read the book as confirming his/her opinions on the bomber offensive...

How the Allies Won talks about the contribution made by the bombing offensive to victory, and Overy is - IIRC - credited by Adam Tooze (an economic historian who gives the bomber offensive credit for hampering the German war economy in his book) as helping him get to the right sort of answers about the effect of bombing.

Overy has been going through the archives since the papers became available and has spoken to an awful lot of veterans. I gather that Overy has gone through the surviving papers from the German side as well, which is more than many historians of the bomber offensive have done. He's certainly aware of what Speer had to say (he may even have interviewed him about it as well, if memory serves).

Overy certainly wouldn't have made the mistake of referring to the Air Staff as the General Staff for a start, and given that the review is decidedly egalitarian in stripping him of his Professorship, I think I might be prepared to give him a chance on this - even if it is to give a library copy a read to work out whether I'll be going to the well-known riverine purveyor of books to get my own copy. But to dismiss the book on the strength of a review in the Economist seems a bit harsh, to be frank...

[Tankertrashnav]

Coming close on the heels of yet another assertion that The Battle of Britain was a non event (can't get a source for that but listened to it on BBC Radio 4 ) I think its about time that far from receiving new clasps, all RAF WW2 survivors should be requested to return their campaign medals forthwith, as they were all quite obviously wasting their time :*

[LowObservable]

I suspect that the review is wanting.

I would hope at least that the book makes note of the effort expended in defending against bombing raids, and to what extent that facilitated the achievement of tactical air superiority in support of ground forces.

You're also playing a game of "what if?" if you try to make a general argument that strategic bombing was ineffective. An undisturbed German industry - not forced to disperse production, put things underground or build guns and fighters to defend the Reich - would have been able to produce more submarines or long-range missiles. How many, and what difference would it have made?

[rolling20]

To be honest the whole of the Second World War was a costly brutal affair, but it and the Strategic Bombing campaign were a necessity. My family never recovered from losing members in the Blitz or from losing my Great Uncle on ops with Bomber Command. I went to Keil last December to his grave on the 70th anniversary of his and his crews death. I met one of the local cemetery keepers, who told me that local children were compiling information on the young airmen there, to learn more about them and how they had fought to defeat Hitler. The cemetery houses a good number of Bomber Command dead. What they did at the time was to carry out the official policy of the British Government, they were not lucky enough to be able to use hindsight and decide whether it was a costly and brutal affair. Although I would guess they knew it was definitely brutal.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

Overy certainly wouldn't have made the mistake of referring to the Air Staff as the General Staff for a start,

The way it is phrased, he does not appear to be referring to the Air Staff. Since April 1918, no CAS has ever considered his Service to be "adjuncts to ground warfare rather than forces intended for independent operation". The implication being that only the Army matters in a war and that the Air Force is only there to provide its air defence, transport, reconnaissance and long range artillery. It was that brown blinkered view that led to the formation of the RAF.

OK, the review might be grossly unfair and inaccurate but I won't be buying it to find out.

[ian16th]

Thread drift, but this is probably the place to get an answer.

I was watching The History Channel, when there was made the bald statement that; 'The B-17 dropped one third of all the bombs of WWII'.

This was not justified at all, and seeing as how late the B-17 was brought into the European theatre and how well know it was for its poor bomb load, can anyone confirm, justify or repudiate this?

Maybe because it carried many 'teeny weenie bombs' compared to the rather large items that a/c such as the Lancaster carried.

WRT the Pacific theatre, surely the B-29 carried much more than the B-17?

Just asking.

[Whenurhappy]

I've not got around to reading Richard Overy's latest tome, but if it is true to form, it will be an extremely well researched effort. The immediate Post War US Strategic BombingSurvey was pretty conclusive in it’s findings (sadly the UK could only afford a very small team of researchers to take part in this massive study) about the efficacy of the Combined Bomber Offensive; Speer and Goering, inter alia, spoke at length of the massive disruption to the war effort brought about by CBO. * Overy’s Interrogations contains some useful quotes from the Nuremburg investigations and trials that support these assertions. ‘Bomber’Harris himself quotes Speer in Bomber Offensive, along with the rather interesting observation that when the Allies successfully bombed the Reichsluftministerieaircraft procurement division in an effort to disrupt the administration ofcontracts, productivity rose, counterintuitively!

I think that all researchers accept that to defend the Reich from the CBO drew in massive resources – manpower, materiel - otherwise that could have beendeploy in support of the land forces. Bylate 1943, work on most offensive air systems – with the exception of the V1and V2 – had stopped and almost all aircraft production was directed towardsdefensive fighters. Arguably, then, the CBO effectively stopped Nazi Germany developing a strategic bomber force. The designs were there, but none were put into volume production. Furthermore, because of the disruption to transportation,fuel distribution and aircraft materials, the RLM would have struggled to have produced bombers in any significant numbers.

However, the reviewer does mention the massive economic impact theBritish-led bomber offensive had on the UK economy, and little has been written about this, at least not in recent years. If I recall correctly (as I don’t have the AP athand), by early 1943 one third of the construction industry – equipment andworkers – were employed building or lengthening bomber airfields in the UK, andit was consuming 10% of the war-fighting budget. This led to already acute manpower shortages in other areas – amongst the fighting services, emergency services and in the wider economy. To sense an extent of the resources consumed, the Air Ministry – on behalf of the RAF and the USAAF – was accepting a bomber airfield into service every three days, for three years. Additionally, at any one time, c 50% of airfields were being upgraded (sealed runways, increased hangarage &c).

I don’t recall seeing any work speculating on how these resources could havebetter used, but it might make an interesting ACSC Research Paper..




* As it was conducted by the USAAF, it would say that, of course.

[Heathrow Harry]

the US Strategic Bombing Survey wasn't exactly an unbiased piece of research - a couple of years after the war no-one was going to pick holes in what had been a vast effort costing zillions and the lives of so many brave men

later research has shown that Speer was pretty much correct - up until 1944 it was an irritant - after that it started to make a difference but, TBH the Red Army would have got to Berlin anyway by 1946 at the latest

[Whenurhappy]

HH - hence my asterisk comment at the bottom of my post!

Red Army to Berlin - probably. Allies out of France? without the Transportation plan, possibly not. Result? The whole of Europe under Soviet control...

Although synthetic fuel production peak in c Jul 1944, from Aug 1943, a huge amount of hiitherto 'soft' factories had to disperse after the Schweinfurt and Augsburg raids; moreover a belated attempt was then made to put armaments production on to a war footing (but not using women munitions workers, well, at least not german women munitions workers).

[Tankertrashnav]

later research has shown that Speer was pretty much correct - up until 1944 it was an irritant - after that it started to make a difference but, TBH the Red Army would have got to Berlin anyway by 1946 at the latest




That is debatable, and even if they did, at what cost? The Soviet Air Force was heavily biased towards support for the Red Army, with very little in the way of long range strategic bombers or maritime aircraft. Thus the Soviet war effort was greatly supported by the RAF/USAAF bombing of Germany without which they would have met with much stiffer resistance in the areas of men and materials. The Soviet Air Force played little or no part in the strategic bombing campaign, certainly after the very early months of their participation in the war. Nor did they provide much in the way of air support for the Arctic convoys which were bringing essential supplies to them - they had no equivalent of the FW Condor, the Catalina or the longe range Wellingtons operated by Coastal Command and could offer nothing in the way of air cover for the convoys until they were virtually in sight of the Russian ports.

There has often been a tendency (not least amongst the Russians themselves) to see WW2 as a titanic struggle between the forces of Soviet communism and German fascism, with all other participants merely a sideshow, but the Soviet struggle was facilitated to a very great extent by the efforts and sacrifices of the air forces (and navies) of the West.

[Party Animal]

they had no equivalent of the FW Condor, the Catalina or the longe range Wellingtons operated by Coastal Command

Bit like the RAF of today then!

Sorry, I digress. Please continue.

[ancientaviator62]

If Germany had held out for any length of time after August 1945 they may well have been the first nation to experience atomic warfare. After all the Manhattan Project was the USA response to the fear that Germany was developing atomic weapons.

[Heathrow Harry]

yeah but everyone who knew much about the weapons was Jewish and had fled to the west or rather low on the totem pole

the Germans never had a serious N weapons programme

As for the Red Army I don't want to take anything away from everyone (including members of my family) who fought and died in W Europe but the once the Russians started west in 1943 they weren't going to be stopped

It would have taken longer and cost more deaths but they would have got there in the end. The best German units were deployed on the Eastern Front and they were being bled dry

My late mother, who was as anti-Red as it was possible to be always said she felt a great sense of relief when Hitler invaded Russia - she knew the war would be won one day, some day

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Thank heavens we are free to speculate about whether or not saturation bombing worked.

Over 50,000 Bomber Command men died as part of the price of buying us that freedom.


Hear hear. But what a shame that all those brave men - never mind all the German civilians - were lost pursuing a flawed strategy. Think of how much harm would have been done to Germany's military power had the British bombers joined the American ones in focusing on military/industrial targets.


Alber [sic] Speer discussed the bombing of Hamburg when he was interrogated in July 1945....
"We were of the opinion that a rapid repetition of this type of attack upon another six German towns would inevitably cripple the will to sustain armament manufacture and war production. It was I who first verbally reported to the Fuehrer at that time that a continuation of these attacks might bring about a rapid end to the war."


And in this, he was manifestly wrong. There were plenty more large scale strikes in the 22 months after the Hamburg raids, none of which affected the will to sustain armament manufacture etc. German war production increased steadily until Allied and Soviet ground forces began to over-run the territory where the various German production facilities were sited. His views were not echoed in any of the Enigma transcripts, which did provide clear evidence that the attacks on the German oil industry were having a huge impact on Germany's ability to wage war. But let's not hold this error against Speer - he was an architect, after all, who happened to end up in Hitler's inner circle.


Albert Speer reckoned the Air Defence operation it [sic] was costing Germany badly by 1944 - before that maybe not so bad but the diversion of manpower and resources started to hurt big time in the last 2 years of the war


On this point he may well have been right, but most of the defensive effort was against the American offensive, not Bomber Command.

You're also playing a game of "what if?" if you try to make a general argument that strategic bombing was ineffective

True, but has anyone actually tried to make this argument?

There has often been a tendency (not least amongst the Russians themselves) to see WW2 as a titanic struggle between the forces of Soviet communism and German fascism, with all other participants merely a sideshow, but the Soviet struggle was facilitated to a very great extent by the efforts and sacrifices of the air forces (and navies) of the West.

This is inaccurate. By the time the bombing campaign had got into its stride, and by the time a useful quantity of munitions was arriving in Russia from the West, the Russians had already brought the German advance to a halt and started the process of recapturing lost territory. Yes, the enormous sacrifices made sending munitions to the Russians helped them, but 'a very great extent' is over-stating it. Other participants a sideshow? One only has to look at German force dispositions a month after Overlord started to see where the Germans thought the 'titanic struggle' was taking place.


'The B-17 dropped one third of all the bombs of WWII'.

This was not justified at all, and seeing as how late the B-17 was brought into the European theatre and how well know it was for its poor bomb load, can anyone confirm, justify or repudiate this?


I have no proof either way, but would suggest that it might be true (in terms of numbers of bombs rather than tonnage). You say that the B-17 was brought into the European theatre late, but in fact it carried out operations for nearly half the European war (first raid over Europe: 17th August 1942), and it had been dropping bombs in the Pacific since December 1941 (admittedly, there were never many B-17s in the Pacific). By contrast, the B-29 didn't fly its first mission until June 1944, and for the first months B-29 ops were severely restricted by the problems getting bombs and fuel over 'The Hump' to the Chinese bases used until the Marianas were available. And whether or not the programme's statement is accurate, people seem to judge the B-17's bomb-carrying ability too harshly - it was, after all, meant to be a twin-engined design (cf the Douglas B-18) which ended up with 4 engines. And it was available at the start of direct US involvement in WWII and bore the brunt of the 8th Air Force's campaign

[racedo]

There is an element of truth in the economic activity that it sucked up, no more or less than the building of defensive measures all across the UK from 1939 onwards even after invasion was a non starter.

Many people would have been playing petty politics and looking after their own fiefdoms irrespective of the Nazis being 30 miles from Dover.................that is a sad reality of the human condition.

Nazis didn't have long range bombers and had pretty much no intention of going down that route, the development of V1s and V2's showed they were make a leap forward well beyond this.

[ColinB]

As it consists of almost 900 pages I doubt if many people have read this book unless they had a review copy.
I think the topic has been widely covered and some of us probably still have the HMSO and SBS tomes (now worth a few quid). So I wouldn't normally want to spend £20 on it except I thought his excellent book Interrogations gave new insights into Nuiremburg and was well written and Xmas is on the horizon. So.....

[tornadoken]

Prof. Overy's work includes Why the Allies Won and is estimable. If the Economist headline-grabber is valid, and his new work follows the line of philosophy Prof. Grayling, Down Among the Dead Cities, in citing all Bomber Command aircrew as war criminals, then I would be sad for his decline.

Production Policy of Cabinet Defence Committee (Supply), 31/10/41, was to assign UK resources to build 12,670 Heavies for mid-’43 1st.line strength of 4,000 Scott/Hughes,Official History, Administration of War Production,HMSO,1955,P.429. UK High Policy was again to be of attrition of enemy strength, not this time by weight of men, but by denial of materials: Economic Warfare to sever sources, Air bombardment and Naval blockade to sever distribution, by RN on/under the sea, and by Bomber Command.

Fads to decry “carpet” bombing, and to overlook civilian pain from RN blockade (RN's Task since its inception), ignore the High Authority of Strategy stated to Commanders. In 10/41 Hope could not rest on the retreating Red Army, on dilatory Uncle Sam, or on theory of fission: Options were Armistice as is, where is, or recourse to CBW. Grayling-types need to put forward a credible alternative warfighting Policy, other than waiting patiently for someone else to do the dying.

Harris was appointed in Feb.1942 to implement the Policy of our elected Govt., which was thoroughly approved of by all, and especially by my mother who had emerged merely shocked from the bombed flat whence her friend had not.

[Warmtoast]

Max Hastings in the Sunday Times gave a very considered review of Overy's book as below.

The allied strategic bombing campaign that razed the cities of Germany stands second only to the Holocaust among the great issues of the Second World War that rouse 21st-century passions. Was it a war crime, as many modern Germans believe? Or did it make a significant contribution to allied victory?

Richard Overy has written extensively and often authoritatively on this subject over the past 30 years, and for a decade and more positioned himself among the foremost defenders of the RAF’s Bomber Command. In a book published in 1997, for instance, he made extraordinary claims for the achievements of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris’s force, concluding with the statement: “Bombing was a strategy that had a long and painful learning curve. But for all its deficiencies the 125,000 men and women of Bomber Command made a larger contribution to victory in Europe than any other element in Britain’s armed services.”

Yet today, it seems, Overy has undergone a drastic conversion. He concludes his latest large volume — a general history of the bombing war in Europe, which the publisher characterises as his “masterpiece”— with an almost directly contradictory judgment: “There existed throughout the conflict a wide gap between what was claimed for bombing and what it actually achieved in material and military terms, just as there existed a wide gap between the legal and ethical claims made on its behalf and the deliberate pursuit of campaigns in which civilian deaths were anticipated and endorsed. The resources devoted to strategic bombing might more usefully have been used in other ways... bombing proved in the end to be inadequate in its own terms for carrying out its principal assignments and was morally compromised by deliberate escalation against civilian populations.”

This was pretty much the view I reached in my own book, Bomber Command, back in 1979, but by a nice irony, I later somewhat modified this in the light of Overy’s writing. In the 1990s, he advanced an important argument that, beyond the direct damage imposed on German industry by RAF and USAAF bombardment, from 1943 onwards the offensive exercised critical leverage by forcing the Germans to shift fighters and 88mm guns from the eastern front to defend their homeland. Stalin profited mightily, his offensives inflicting repeated surprises, because the Luftwaffe could not conduct effective air reconnaissance over Russian territory.

Perhaps it is unfair to make too much of Overy’s shift of ground, because all grown-up historians review their judgments over time, in the light of new evidence. Over his lifetime, the author has done much distinguished work on the Second World War. But the magnitude of this turnaround does seem remarkable: from fulfilling a role as principal academic standard-bearer for Bomber Command, he has become today an adviser to Hamburg’s new museum on its experience of wartime victimhood at the hands of the RAF.

“Whatever claims might be made for air power in the Second World War,” he writes, “they need to be put into perspective. Bombing in Europe was never a war- winning weapon and the other services knew it.” He believes the Russians got it right, by recognising that the technology of the time was inadequate to make their air force a decisive strategic weapon, and thus using air resources almost exclusively to support the Red Army.
Overy’s book contains much solid research on the Luftwaffe’s 1940-41 blitz on Britain, the allies’ operations against Italy as well as Germany, and the aforesaid Russian use of bombers. He notes that, far from the allied bomber offensive constituting a just revenge for the Blitz, the RAF started attacking Germany — albeit ineffectually — before the first German raid on London took place.

In September 1940 and May 1941, German assaults on Britain’s cities had an alarming impact on civilian morale: the much-vaunted “Blitz spirit” was more fragile than the authorities ever admitted. Fortunately, however, the German air force lacked the weight of destructive power to inflict war-winning damage on a large industrialised society. In the 1941 words of the shrewd scientist and Admiralty adviser Patrick Blackett, in the pre- nuclear age no air force “will ever be large enough to bomb all the people all the time”.

The rulers of Britain were surprised and relieved to discover that its economy and even most cityscapes emerged from the Luftwaffe’s bombardment in better shape than pre-war doomsters about air power had dreamt possible. This made it all the more astonishing that the RAF thereupon embarked upon an attempt to do to Germany exactly what the Nazis had failed to do to Britain.

But in those lonely and almost naked days, Winston Churchill could see no other plausible means of carrying the war to the enemy. While military and naval chiefs dithered and wavered, the leaders of the RAF campaigned with messianic fervour for the chance to prove that they could win the war without the need for a bloody invasion of Europe. They got their way, with consequences or lack of them that all the world knows.

Overy drastically reduces Soviet estimates of their own wartime bombing losses, from half a million dead to 51,000 — roughly as many civilians as perished in Britain at the Luftwaffe’s hands — though in truth all Russian statistics relating to the war are wildly unreliable, and the 51,000 figure is almost certainly understated.

His account of the Anglo-American air offensive embraces the latest economic and industrial research. The author is roused to a fierce moral fervour by allied claims, then and since, that engagement in “total war” against a uniquely evil enemy justified the abandonment of all traditional constraints on the treatment of non-combatants.

I agree. I concluded my own 1979 book: “The cost of the bomber offensive in life, treasure and moral superiority over the enemy tragically outstripped the results that it achieved.” But I believe that 2013 Overy understates the merits of some of the contrary evidence and conclusions advanced by 1990s Overy. A sensible judgment about wartime bombing, as about almost everything in life, must lie somewhere in the middle ground.

[Onceapilot]

Typical Max Hastings, a reasonable collection of the pro and con arguments followed by a fudged conclusion:hmm:.
No Mr Hastings, a judgement on the wartime bombing campaign does not lie in the middle ground, it was an essential strategy of its time.

OAP

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Grayling-types need to put forward a credible alternative warfighting Policy, other than waiting patiently for someone else to do the dying.

Err, how about using the bombers to attack military/industrial targets? Admittedly this was difficult to achieve in 1942, but improvements in precision (Pathfinder Force, H2S etc) would have allowed this as the war went on. But instead, the strategy remained the same. What a contrast with the USAAF, who swallowed their pride and changed tack several times (ball bearings, aircraft production, then oil) to ensure that the massive effort and sacrifice of putting hundreds of bombers over Germany achieved worthwhile results.

Harris was appointed in Feb.1942 to implement the Policy of our elected Govt., which was thoroughly approved of by all, and especially by my mother who had emerged merely shocked from the bombed flat whence her friend had not.

In 1942, it is understandable that most in Britain were delighted to see German cities suffering. What they were unaware of was the cost of achieving this - both in terms of men of Bomber Command and the economic costs of building the aircraft and infrastructure to achieve this. By 1943-4, how many British civilians, had they been privy to these facts, would have wished Bomber Command to maintain the focus on destroying cities instead of military targets? And in terms of the politicians, they may have supported Harris' intent in 1942 when there was no other way to carry the war to Germany...but it is evident that by 1944-5 many were having serious misgivings over the inflexibility of Bomber Command's strategy and the lack of appreciable results. When Churchill came out publicly against the Dresden raids, do you really think he went from 'thorough approval' to publicly distancing himself in the space of a few days?

[langleybaston]

Churchill could have sacked Harris at any time.

[racedo]

Churchill could have sacked Harris at any time. Fraid he couldn't.

Per my earlier comment about politics and people.

The only was he could have sacked him was to have intensified bombing and showing Harris opposed it.

Anything other than this would have been shown as getting it wrong militarily before and been classified as defeatism and damaged morale together with a crisis of confidence.

Success was as more about confidence that you could prevail even when you were staring defeat in the face. Lose that and you are defeated without firing a shot.

Churchill was as much tied up in the success of Bomber command as Harris was.

Bomber command was as much about making Germany pay for starting it as it was about damaging war industry.........no element of post war revisionism will change that.

Bomber Harris was WRONG looking at things when war ended, he was RIGHT when war was on.

"It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it." Robert E Lee

[Chugalug2]

racedo:-
Bomber Harris was WRONG looking at things when war ended, he was RIGHT when war was on.

and you complain about revisionism? There is only one thing that is important when fighting a war, and that is to win it. Harris, with the enthusiastic support of Churchill (well, until that memo), sought to do just that. I doubt very much if he cared a fig about how it would look when it ended, though I think he cared greatly about Churchill's betrayal of his Command. If the First World War is anything to go by, it will take more than a century to pass after the event to see the Bombing Offensive in anything like a true perspective.
As to the supposed ease with which so called pinpoint targeting was possible by night later in the war, each aircraft was on its own. If it saw another one it was usually in dire trouble. You try it with astro, an API, and a dodgy forecast. They did well simply to find the cities that the Pathfinders marked. Many didn't, and didn't survive long enough to learn how to.

[Archimedes]

I'd suggest that in theory Churchill could've sacked Harris, but by the mechanism of dismissal by promoting him to command elsewhere (i.e. the air commander for a theatre, encompassing all air assets rather than just bombers).

Granted, I can't think of anywhere obvious - Churchill being mischievous might, I suppose, have moved him to what became Leigh-Mallory's post as commander of Allied Expeditionary Air Forces, but I can only begin to imagine what Ike and Tedder would have thought of that - but in theory, that mechanism did exist and Churchill could have got away with it. The point, as you allude to, I'd suggest, is that he didn't want to sack Harris. The instances where that might have eventuated - Eisenhower's 'them or me' approach over pre-invasion bombing and Harris's dispute with Portal over attacking oil targets - did not reach the point where Churchill came close to having to make that choice, I would contend, with Harris recognising he wasn't going to win in the first instance and Portal not pushing the matter in the second.

And let's not forget that when he made the 'Never in the Field of Human Conflict' speech, Churchill gave more time to Bomber Command than Fighter Command, observed "The fighters are our salvation but the bombers alone provide the means of victory”. If you trace Churchill's involvement in the development of military aviation and his views on bombing, he was inextricably linked to bombing policy, no matter how hard his minutes after Dresden (the first withdrawn at Portal's insistence) attempted to rebrigade the historical record for posterity...

[ColinB]

Some of the points raised are well informed and sincerely felt but do not reflect the true situation in WWII.
We did what we could reasonably do with our limited resources and any injury we could inflict on the hated Germans was welcomed. Any criticism of our methods and our lads efforts was unwelcome and could easily lead to the critic having a rough time.
In the years 1939 until Alamein we had a procession of reverses including losing 400,000 tons of shipping in one month and the terrifying blitzes.
The bombing of Germany was not only highly popular and has few critics amongst the British people who were involved.
Some years ago I went to a talk By Hamish Mahaddie on the Bombing of Germany in WWII. The audience included many WWII bomber aircrew and one of them asked the question "Were you bothered about the number of civilian casualties caused" to which he replied "I never lost any sleep over killing the spawn of Schicklgruber". This was met by loud applause.
Seventy years ago there was no time for liberal views. It really was Big Boys Rules

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

As to the supposed ease with which so called pinpoint targeting was possible by night later in the war, each aircraft was on its own



We did what we could reasonably do with our limited resources and any injury we could inflict on the hated Germans was welcomed


With respect, 1000+ heavy bombers is a very potent weapon - not really 'limited resources'. The resources which were limited were those fields of operation which lost out due to the emphasis on building and crewing bombers. And with such a large force, there was no need for pinpoint targeting - if you put hundreds of bombers over a target, enough of the bombs will hit. Just look at the Americans who regularly had to bomb through cloud, smokescreens etc but did enough damage to make a difference.


Harris, with the enthusiastic support of Churchill (well, until that memo), sought to do just that.


Again, with respect, I disagree, on two counts. I think that Racedo has it right when he says:


Bomber command was as much about making Germany pay for starting it as it was about damaging war industry.........no element of post war revisionism will change that.


But was it worthwhile haemorrhaging tens of thousands of our own brave men, and severely depleting our resources, year after year, just to make Germany pay for starting it? I'm sure that in 1942, bombing cities was universally felt to be the best way (from very limited options) to chip away at Germany's ability to wage war. It probably was the best way to do something. But by 1944, there were far better things to be done with 1000 bombers than turning even more cities into rubble. The Germans themselves were amazed by the complete failure to target their power stations; as late as 1945, they had plans to attack Moscow's power stations as they knew that a similar attack against their own would cripple them. Yet, with one famous exception, German power stations were unscathed except by the odd stray bomb.

I also disagree with 'well, until that memo'. Of course Churchill had enthusiastically embraced bombing as a course of action in the early war years (and previously). But it's absurd to suggest that he suddenly changed his view in the space of a few days. Dresden was simply the straw which broke the camel's back. After all the arguments about changing strategy during 1944, there was Harris, still wasting his people, aircraft, petrol and bombs going after German civilians when the end of the war was in sight and there was still nothing to show for the years of bombing cities. Churchill was perhaps especially uncomfortable about Harris' obstinacy given the Americans' signal success in changing tactics until they found the chink in the German armour.

I can well understand the desire among both British civilians and Bomber Command aircrew (and the commanders and politicians) to mete out retribution for the Blitz; when Harris took over, being seen to be striking back was at least as important as doing any worthwhile damage to Germany military/industrial might. I am well aware of the various accounts of RAF personnel who were thanked by random civilians for 'what they were doing', in the same way that during the Blitz, the AA guns kept lobbing shells into the sky, despite the near-impossibility of hitting anything, just to show that we were trying to fight back. But military strategy is not decided by the man in the street, nor by the footsoldiers.


The audience included many WWII bomber aircrew and one of them asked the question "Were you bothered about the number of civilian casualties caused" to which he replied "I never lost any sleep over killing the spawn of Schicklgruber". This was met by loud applause.


But how about the deaths of 55,000 of his friends and colleagues, and the terror which every crew endured? Was it really worth losing so many of our own, and devoting so much effort, to killing Germans for the sake of it?

Seventy years ago there was no time for liberal views. It really was Big Boys Rules

Absolutely. But there was time for commanders to assess the cold hard facts and re-evaluate strategy where needed.

[Chugalug2]

I've just enjoyed listening to Mathew Parris's "Great Lives" on Radio4, with Al Murray talking about Montgomery. "Arrogant, hard to like, but undeniably successful":-
BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Series 31, Al Murray on Bernard Montgomery (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03brkdx)
Whether that similarly sums up Harris is of course what this book and this thread is very much about, but it does it for me. As said in the programme, in peace you really want agreeable people that will not upset others (particularly your Allies). All that changes in war, where the very qualities above are more appropriate in one's commanders. Just like Montgomery, Harris rapidly became persona non grata, perhaps even more so. So what? The important thing was that he did the job handed down to him from above. That he truly believed in that strategy seems to me a mark in his favour rather than against.
As to main force it was a giant club to beat the enemy with, not a foil, not an epee, but by necessity a club because big though it was (though a 1000 at a time was not routine in any way) it had to fly by night. That was the crucial difference between it and the USAAF. The latter could make a good fist occasionally given favourable enough conditions, but BC's favourable conditions simply meant successfully finding a target of city size. Even so, both forces regularly succeeded in flattening fields and killing German cows.
We all know that this argument will rumble on for years. We also know that the Bombing Offensive has been consistently disowned by the very Service that conducted it, and that this is directly related to the delay in providing a worthy memorial to those who perished in doing so. So be it. Time alone will determine the final DS solution. I am sure that certain operations could have been better planned and executed, but to characterise a whole campaign as a pointless waste in blood and treasure seems wrong to me.
Speer knew better than anyone, certainly anyone posting here, what effect it had on Germany's war making ability. He likened it to an additional front that had to be provisioned and fought. He lied and charmed his way out of the gallows that he deserved, but in this at least I think he was telling the truth.

[racedo]

racedo:-
Quote:
Bomber Harris was WRONG looking at things when war ended, he was RIGHT when war was on.
and you complain about revisionism?

Nope not engaging in anything of the kind I am stating the position that viewed what Bomber Command did...................acceptable when it was needed and soon as war over then judged by peacetime standards.

[Chugalug2]

racedo:
....then judged by peacetime standards
I would have thought that to be the classic example of revisionism and something that is so typically British. We are ruthless in war and forever apologetic about it thereafter. Our war leaders and career military then have to perform some deft footwork and our wartime commanders suffer the consequences. I know those I feel contempt for, and those with whom I sympathise. Others of course may differ....

[Onceapilot]

Very well put at #37 Chuggy:ok:.

OAP

[Squirrel 41]

As it consists of almost 900 pages I doubt if many people have read this book unless they had a review copy.
I think the topic has been widely covered and some of us probably still have the HMSO and SBS tomes (now worth a few quid). So I wouldn't normally want to spend £20 on it except I thought his excellent book Interrogations gave new insights into Nuiremburg and was well written and Xmas is on the horizon. So.....

Colin - 642 pages, and I'm on page 406 which is beginning to deal with USSBS and BBSU. Thus far, the over-riding analytical points to me have been:

(i) prior to late 1942 Bomber Command wasn't able to achieve sufficient accuracy to even make the area-bombing plan work;

(ii) the Bomber Offensive in the first half of the war was one of the few things we could do, so we did it;

(iii) Harris was an iconoclast who wouldn't consider other approaches (ie, he opposed CHASTISE, the oil plan, the transport plan, and resented supporting land forces in the summer and early autumn of 1944;

(iv) Germany and Germans behaved exactly the same way under bombing as Brits did in 1940-41 - and this shouldn't have been a surprise. As a result, morale never cracked;

(v) the RAF never seriously considered a counter-force strategy, and so the USAAC largely defeated the Luftwaffe. This provided the local air supremacy - and later air superiority - that sharply reduced bomber losses after late 1944;

(vi) the target analysis that was done was not done as systematically as the USAAC. Consequently when the USAAC (correctly) picked on transport and oil/synthetic oil, the results were good;

(vii) The crews were young, brave, scared and did it anyway. Not a bad word to be said about the operational end of the RAF - the scorn is for Harris and his team.

(viii) Fortunately, the Luftwaffe was led by Goring and Hitler, who believed their own propaganda and trusted their own worldview, which meant that the Luftwaffe was much less effective than it should've been.

It's an excellent book, and I highly recommend it. Very detailed, a mastery of the material on both UK and German sides, and beautifully written: highly recommended for Christmas lists - along with a decent bottle of something.

S41

[ShotOne]

It's hard to prove the case that our bombing prevented Germany developing a strategic bombing force since they had a free hand to do so before our offensive gOt into gear and didn't do so, prioritising short range tactical aircraft.

As to " Battle of Britain a waste of time..." Of course it wasn't, although even if we'd lost, they would still have had to get past our fleet to mount an invasion. We lost more aircrew in one night over Nuremberg than in the entire. BoB!

[Pontius Navigator]

Overy’s shift of ground, . . . from fulfilling a role as principal academic standard-bearer for Bomber Command, he has become today an adviser to Hamburg’s new museum on its experience of wartime victimhood at the hands of the RAF.

So, no cause for bias then.

The Germans themselves were amazed by the complete failure to target their power stations;

As Squirrel said (before I read that far) We should remember that Harris was opposed to panacea targets such as oil, ball bearings, dams, etc and not enthused on diversion of his force to transport targets. To that end he reverted to the primary aim of strategic bombing whenever he could,

never mind all the German civilians - were lost pursuing a flawed strategy. Think of how much harm would have been done to Germany's military power had the British bombers joined the American ones in focusing on military/industrial targets.

We should remember that the innocent German civilians wholly approved of the Nazi offensive and the righting of wrongs wrought by their politician at Versaille.

IIRC the Hamburg attack was a combined effort with successive raids by Bomber Command and USAFE over 3 days. It was not Bomber Command going it alone.

Harris did not target civilians per se; had he wished to attack civilian targets then there were many small towns in German that would have been soft, undefended targets. In a study of target lists we should remember that industry at the time was manpower intensive and workers generally occupied housing close to their point of work - commuting was never a factor then. As we know, Bomber Command did not have the bombing aids for precision bombing until accurate target marking by the Pathfinder Force, even then DMPI were often marked up to 400 yards away. As the work force was essential to the factor so civilian casualties were acceptable collateral damage - see below as well.

acceptable when it was needed and soon as war over then judged by peacetime standards. Yet we immediately began work on Atomic weapons that would have devastated western Russia in hours and not years.

It's hard to prove the case that our bombing prevented Germany developing a strategic bombing force since they had a free hand to do so before our offensive gOt into gear and didn't do so, prioritising short range tactical aircraft.

But until they had seen the effects of our heavy bomber programmes they had not seen any advantages in developing one. In fact looking at a map would also show that they did not need a long range heavy bomber force. Their targets were closer to their bases that ours to theirs.

[Pontius Navigator]

Such Revisionism 70 years after the event leads one to suppose that new thinking could reveal the WW1 strategy was wholly wrong too.

Instead of pouring all our money in to artillery and ammunition and Chinese digging ever more trenches, we should have employed manoeuvre warfare. We should have fallen back, drawn the enemy out of his prepared positions, and then swept in with tanks, armoured cars and light bombers and . . .

You get the idea?

[Pontius Navigator]

the Germans never had a serious N weapons programme

Actually just today that statement has been brought in to question by the Daily Wail.

"Austrian authorities have ordered a search of secret tunnels beneath a concentration camp . . . eyewitness accounts . . . Mauthausen-Gusen near Linz. Tests show high levels of uranium. A secret section may have been missed post-war.

[racedo]

It's hard to prove the case that our bombing prevented Germany developing a strategic bombing force since they had a free hand to do so before our offensive gOt into gear and didn't do so, prioritising short range tactical aircraft.

Germany were never into developing a Heavy bomber force as majority of operations were used to support Blitzkreig.

It was an error of the Nazis because as their logistics chain became stretched they lacked the resources to resupply as well as adequately bomb their opponents.



As to " Battle of Britain a waste of time..." Of course it wasn't, although even if we'd lost, they would still have had to get past our fleet to mount an invasion. We lost more aircrew in one night over Nuremberg than in the entire. BoB!

BoB loss would have been a catastrophe. I mentioned earlier about confidence and losing this so soon after Dunkirk would have sapped confidence.

The idea of fleet stopping an invasion while great has an inherent weakness in that it relies on being able to attack and defend oneself without losing anything in return.

Prince of Wales and Repulse losses showed how easy it was to overcome the strength of battleships and figure Germany would have easily sacrificed couple of hundred aircraft for similar. Add this to mines then even a succesful defence would potentially have cost half the home fleet.

Even a failed German invasion that cost half of home fleet would have been a German success.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

I'm reminded how costly the Navy found retaking Crete without credible air cover.

[ColinB]

It's an excellent book, and I highly recommend it. Very detailed, a mastery of the material on both UK and German sides, and beautifully written: highly recommended for Christmas lists - along with a decent bottle of something.
I did put it on my Xmas list, but they have refused to buy me any more books.
I'll be going to the well-known riverine purveyor of books
Is that the one in Germany?

[Onceapilot]

Direct research, rather than quotations from books written by other people, will allow a realistic understanding of the Allied bomber offensive in WW2.
Some may be interested to know that Germany tried hard to develop long-range heavy bombers. Fortunately for us, they were over ambitious in the design of the He177 (with DB610 engines). The political/military drive for this heavy bomber is shown by the production of over 1500 DB610 double-engine units (the equivalent of over 3000 DB605 engines) before the end of 1942. By the time that Germany gave-up on the He177, over 7000 DB610 engine units had been made for it.
Atomic bombs. German research had effectively validated the theory. They were certainly on the path to building a weapon.:uhoh:

OAP

[Pontius Navigator]

(v) the RAF never seriously considered a counter-force strategy, and so the USAAC largely defeated the Luftwaffe. This provided the local air supremacy - and later air superiority - that sharply reduced bomber losses after late 1944;

Britain had already suffered a counter-force strategy and given the inevitable advantage of a short range fighter and rapid turn round had been able to hold off the Luftwaffe.

The Luftwaffe then switched to a counter-logistics strategy with some success but ultimately that too failed. The RAF would appear to have learnt both lessons and opted to improve on the second using massive force.

To then suggest the RAF did not try a counter-force strategy is wrong as night fighter intruders used to mix with the German fighter stacks and attack airfields as fighters recovered. A full-blown counter-air campaign would have been both unnecessary and wasteful early on as the Luftwaffe offensive air was already limited.

After D-day you are talking a target rich environment and to suggest counter-air was the sole prerogative of the USAAC is wrong.

[Whenurhappy]

I didn't even bother to ask for this book for my stocking as Mrs WP has had enough of the 'dull, dusty, boring war books' that clutter the Study, the sitting room, the bedside table. As it happens I've just finished reading the Saward Biography of Harris and he is painted in a much more positive light (but he would be, it was 'authorised').

What is undeniable is that the CBO (and let's remember it was a combined offensive) drew enormous resources of the Reich into purely defensive roles. Although one can argue about the magnitude of the impact, what is undeniable is the oft-ignored fact that there was no other means of war that the Western Allies could have prosecuted that could have begun to touch the level of damage and dislocation that the CBO achieved. Both Goering and Speer made this point during their interrogations at Nuernburg.


What would be interesting would be to Blue Team and Red team the options Harris (and Portal) had in 1942 and 43 - poor performing platforms, sub-optimal weapons, abysmal accuracy of delivery, surprisingly limited intelligence (apart from PI) and a competing resource base. Without Harris's involvement as DD Plans in the mid 1930s, the RAF would have had no Strategic Bomber force!

I'm not defending Harris, but what other realistic and effective options did he have?

[ColinB]

Atomic bombs. German research had effectively validated the theory. They were certainly on the path to building a weapon.Germany did not have the industrial capacity to build A Bombs before 1945. Neither had it the knowledge to produce weapons grade uranium 235 or plutonium.
The only country with the industrial capacity and sufficient engineers and scientists was the USA with a little help from our Germans.
To discover how little the Germans knew read the Hall Farm Tapes where all of the German scientists were confined in the immediate post-war years and recorded

[awblain]

Farm Hall indeed settles the matter about why the remaining aryan physicists' pooch was walking tentatively around Germany in mid-1945.

Some tunnels under Mauthausen with Uranium in them (anyone think to check the geology?) does not a combination of the Oak Ridge, Argonne, Los Alamos and Hanford sites make.

The USSR was already deeply engaged in nuclear weapons development, despite wartime stringency; but then, just the knowledge that a simple reactor-based plutonium programme was underway makes the road to executing one rather easier in the face of a demanding and despotic leader.

[Onceapilot]

You are correct in part Colin, but for the wrong reasons. AFAIK from evidence in public, the German fission weapon research had not quite progressed to the point where a large yield weapon could be designed. This was partly because the heavy bombing of Germany had completely disrupted the research process.
If Germany lacked the industrial capacity to build such weapons, as you claim, that was partly due to the efforts of heavy bombing.
Atomic bombs. German research had effectively validated the theory. They were certainly on the path to building a weapon. :uhoh:

OAP

[polecat2]

There was a very good account of the German attempt to produce an atomic bomb written in the 1960s by the now discredited historian David Irving. Titled 'The Virus House', it was written long before he went native after interviewing so many old Nazis. It was highly recommended at the time and I remember it supported the theory that the work was severely disrupted by the bombing campaign.

Polecat

[ColinB]

You can download it here Free Download: David Irving, The Virus House (The German Atomic Bomb) (http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/VirusHouse/)

It is dated but valuable. I try not confuse David Irving's alleged personal beliefs with his excellent scholarship.

[ColinB]

You are correct in part Colin, but for the wrong reasons. AFAIK from evidence in public, the German fission weapon research had not quite progressed to the point where a large yield weapon could be designed. This was partly because the heavy bombing of Germany had completely disrupted the research process.
If Germany lacked the industrial capacity to build such weapons, as you claim, that was partly due to the efforts of heavy bombing.
Atomic bombs. German research had effectively validated the theory. They were certainly on the path to building a weapon.

I am afraid there is no credible evidence for your theory, the reality is that only the USA had the capability to build such a device in the timescale. It was a matter of cost, scientists, engineers and industrial capacity. It cost a conservative $2 billion in an era when a Spitfire fully fitted cost £10K.
The Frisch-Peierls Report convinced us that we could not afford to invest such a large commitment on a device which may not be used in the current war.

[Onceapilot]

Sorry Colin, what theory? You are wrong to dismiss the threat that German atomic research posed in WW2. We disagree on this.

Getting back to the first post:
"Some interesting statistics in this article.
The article misses a point mentioned in one of the comments: "Not bombing German cities during WWII would have provided a gift worth many 10's of millions of man hours of industrial production and scientific research & development"."
IMO, the Allied bombing campaign was central to the defeat of Germany by 1945 and, it prevented the successful development of many high-tech weapons. It may have been something of a "club" but, it became a powerful weapon that beat the monster to death before it could kill us all.

OAP

[Pontius Navigator]

It cost a conservative $2 billion in an era when a Spitfire fully fitted cost £10K.

Putting currency values against goods works only in functioning capitalist democracies - goods needing to be bought and workers paid.

In a totalitarian dictatorship the economic value, as OAP said, is man hours of industrial production and scientific research & development

A shortage of manpower or factory facilities - Peenemunde - is far more significant than mere shortage of money.

[racedo]

IMO, the Allied bombing campaign was central to the defeat of Germany by 1945 and, it prevented the successful development of many high-tech weapons. It may have been something of a "club" but, it became a powerful weapon that beat the monster to death before it could kill us all.


Bombing the cities didn't end the war, nor was it ever likely to. It was done to make people aware of the cost of war.

Men away from home fighting in a foreign land gets forgotten about very quickly and that is now even with 24 hr media.

Having bombers go overhead and attack nearest city is a reminder.

In todays world the Bombing campaign was wrong BUT as said earlier in thread we were not in todays world in WW2. The bombing was needed and required and those who led it would have known that once peace broke out their role would be questioned and diminished.

A war fighting leader who takes it to the enemy should never be allowed gain political office, their personality alone precludes them as lacking the compromise and deceit that is required in politics. That is fine as long as everybody recignise that we need dogs to fight dogs.
Eisenhower was as much a politician as a general, Patton was a general, MacArthur also a general................real difference here.

[Pontius Navigator]

A war fighting leader who takes it to the enemy should never be allowed gain political office, their personality alone precludes them as lacking the compromise and deceit that is required in politics. That is fine as long as everybody recignise that we need dogs to fight dogs.
Eisenhower was as much a politician as a general, Patton was a general, MacArthur also a general................real difference here.

A bit selective perhaps?

Mountbatten? Churchill? Wellington even.

Even De Gaulle.

[racedo]

A bit selective perhaps?

Mountbatten? Churchill? Wellington even.

Even De Gaulle. Mountbatten .....................inept as a politician, questionable as a military leader who "alledgedly" sought to overthrow Wilson, would have he achieved any of this if his parents were not German / British royalty ?

Churchill............. Successful brilliant Wartime political leader but had significant failures as a Military man and lost trust of people in WW1, had WW2 not occurred he would be a footnote in History. Even during phoney war didn't have enough support among MPs. Should have retired as a politician in 45 rather than continuing.

de Gualle............Brilliant soldier in WW1, saw what way war would occur but sidelined within France, understood better the need for post war France and keeping Communists out of power, resigned early and had an opportunity to return to save nation. Overall a better soldier than politician.

[Pontius Navigator]

Non! :)

Can't disagree with any of that.

Really I think you could pick any politician/general, general/politician, and even a pure politician and find the same failings - Generals Blair and Bush anyone?

[racedo]

Really I think you could pick any politician/general, general/politician, and even a pure politician and find the same failings - Generals Blair and Bush anyone?

What rank would either achieve in their military without using any family influence ?

[Pontius Navigator]

I can imagine the college warrant officer having apoplexy.

What I found sad was being ordered to be sociable rent-a-crowd even if you despised the VIP.

Think the message if rent-a-crown had a free choice and opted out.

I got 'invited' to a do to meet one of our great and good honourable members. He was in jail about 4 years later.

[Chugalug2]

racedo:-
Bombing the cities didn't end the war, nor was it ever likely to. It was done to make people aware of the cost of war.
The only thing that ends war is surrender, sometimes termed an Armistice in order to save face. It is what leads up to that being the only option left that wins wars. What lead up to it in Europe in WW2 was the occupation of Germany. What led up to that was the successful advance of the Red Army in the East and the success of D-Day in the West. What led up to that was the industrial disruption caused night and day by the Allied Bombing Campaign, which had serious effects in both East and West, not the least of which was the local air superiority over the invasion beaches enjoyed by the Allied Air Forces.
Of course many other factors led to those two successful invasions, the build up to which owed much to the sacrifices made in the Atlantic, The Arctic, and in Italy. All of these meant that the end of the war could happen, and happen before the lights of perverted science could produce yet more peril. Could it have been done differently? No doubt. Could it have been done better? Of course. The important thing is that it was done. The Royal Air Force should be proud of the part played by Bomber Command in that doing. Is it?

[DC10RealMan]

I would also like to suggest that however effective or not RAF Bomber Command was in 1942-1943, it was the only Allied military force attacking the Nazis in their homeland.

This was an important point when in 1941-1943 the Wehrmacht was on the banks of the Volga, within shelling distance of Moscow and Leningrad, and rampaging across the Caucasus towards the oilfields of the Middle East.

It was the military action that Churchill could present to Marshall Stalin as positive proof of Allied intentions to defeat Germany when there were suspicions in the Kremlin of the possibility of Allied collusion with the Nazis in their dealings with the Soviet Union.

Stalin always backed the Allied bombing campaign as helping to deflect some of the Germans attention away from operations in the Soviet Union.

[racedo]

The Royal Air Force should be proud of the part played by Bomber Command in that doing. Is it?

It was initially post war but to celebrate that well after the event when hundreds of thousands killed is looked at poorly.

Its like US celebrating 2 Atom bombs dropped..........

Recognise the achievement and bury it.

The honour is in their service recognise that and leave it at that.

[Pontius Navigator]

Interesting daily report in the DT today of the Berlin raids in Dec 1943 and details of the infra-red search lights and cathode ray tubes enabling precision bombing through heavy cloud in conditions that grounded defensive fighters.

It may not have won the war but it would certainly annoyed the Berliners.

[Chugalug2]

racedo:-
It was initially post war but to celebrate that well after the event when hundreds of thousands killed is looked at poorly.
I can't understand any of that, I'm afraid. Harris and his Command was dropped like a hot potato even as the war drew to an end, not only by the chattering classes, but disgracefully by Churchill himself who had presided over the campaign throughout, and even more disgracefully by that hot bed of intrigue and backstabbing, the RAF High Command.
As to "celebrate", who on earth would suggest doing that after so much sacrifice? One can be proud of that without celebrating it. The Bomber Command Memorial does not celebrate, Remembrance does not celebrate, but the duty done should be remembered with pride.
Germany had to be defeated and as soon as possible, for it were not then Europe and beyond might have remained under its cruel tyranny for a very long time (the thousand years promised?). It was defeated and I take pride in the generation that did that. You may not...

[racedo]

Chug

Think you misreading what I wrote.

Honour those who served but unfortunately there are some who will seek to glorify it and celebrate it.

The ditching of those who sacrificed is not unusual because those who demanded what they did were embarassed that they did what was expected. It then became expedient to claim they had gone too far. Its politics and politicians.

[Chugalug2]

It's talk, and rubbish at that. Those who can sit in judgement on previous generations and condemn them for going too far are failing to learn the lessons of history and are doomed to repeat them.
Every war is driven by the art of the possible, of the technology available. By WW2 it was possible not only to attack enemy forces in the field, at sea, and in the air, but to attack his heartland, his means of war production and his civilian population that did the producing.
To characterise that as immoral, evil and 'going too far' is to miss the point that war is all of those things anyway. There is no honourable war, just war. If your enemy has the means to bomb you then he will. If you don't want him to then don't go to war!
We had to win WW2, make no mistake, and we did. If we had not bombed Germany by night, and the USAAC by day, then we might not have. The lights might never have come on again in our time. You fight a war to win. That means acting immorally, often with evil intent, and of going too far. That's what it takes to win a war. That is what it took the Allies to win the war, that is why two A bombs were dropped. If you don't fight to win then you lose...simples!

[Courtney Mil]

...and the real war crimes that the Germans were committing would have continued. God knows where we would be today.

As you say, Chug, it was the art of the possible. We used every means at our disposal to win the war and that is the only way to win a war. Unless, of course you try to drag it out while you consider the morality of your actions or worry about how history might judge you. And, yes, I can see the irony there, if you choose to see it taht way.

[rolling20]

Having lost family members in the service of Bomber Command, I am loathe to criticise those brave airman. However it wasn't until the Mustangs ranged freely over the Reich, that the Germans knew the game was up. If Harris had been removed from his Command towards the end of the war, I doubt that Area policy would have changed that much. Britain was committed to Area bombing. However,Speer was the first to recognise the importance of Area bombing as a Second Front, taking millions of men and guns which would have otherwise been used on the Eastern Front. As an old Colonial member of the armed forces once told me: 'When the fighting is over, your country doesn't want to know you'.

[Viola]

DC10RealMan's point that the bombing was ‘proof of Allied intentions to defeat Germany’ was the political reason for continuing the bombing campaign. Stalin didn’t trust anyone at all and probably also considered his country was doing most of the fighting. Even though the Allied bombing was the only attack on Germany in the early part of the war, most of the total German casualties occurred on the Eastern front. A Russian friend of mine says until she moved to the West, she wasn’t aware that the rest of the Allies were involved in defeating Germany.

With hindsight it seems that at least some of the air resources should have been given to Coastal Command to help protect the Atlantic Convoys. Though less glamorous than the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic was of crucial importance in preventing defeat; with as high a casualty rate as Bomber Command in the merchant fleet. The U boats were Churchill’s greatest fear, we came very close to running out of food in early 1941.

[ORAC]

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." L. P. Hartley

[Pontius Navigator]

It seems that at least some of the air resources should have been given to Coastal Command to help protect the Atlantic Convoys.

Wiki has an interesting article on this. It seems it wasn't just Harris that denied the Lancaster to CC.

Also the recognition of fatigue in extra long flights so the sorties were reduced to 14 hours. Certainly the crews alertness would have been very low however the mere presence overhead might have had a deterrent effect.

[rolling20]

In my opinion the Lanc was then totally unsuited for Maritime ops. It evolved as we know from a 1936 specification for a medium bomber, the Manchester. Through lack of foresight, the powers that be were unprepared for the submarine menace. The Liberators were the only aircraft able to plug the Atlantic gap as it had the range. As two Bomber pilots discussed with two Coastal pilots (on the sub war) in Jack Curries Mosquito Victory: 'Prevention is better than cure old boy!'