Originally Posted by
bobdh478
Yes, hindsight from the safety of your home 75 years on is a wonderful thing.... for one thing we are all transformed into experts! How many people have had a gun fired at them I wonder? It does give you a slightly different take on things.
People are very happy to criticise Harris, how many have been in charge of anyone, let alone whole Command, which at certain times was responsible for the major part of the countrys offensive war effort.
Sadly it's a characteristic of our present times that we feel it necessary to beat ourselves up for events in our past. But, these events are gone and are just part of history.
To be fair, there was plenty of criticism of Harris’s performance at the time - it’s not simply revisionism for its own sake. Harris consistently went his own way on area bombing despite directives from above. As I recall, Hastings suggests in Bomber Command that a stronger commander than Portal may well have sacked him.