There are two related but separate issues here. One concerns the issue of a specific campaign medal to the men of Bomber Command, the other concerns the conduct, efficacy and morality of the Bomber War as directed by Harris.
They need to be considered separately, as one might reach the judgement that it was right to recognise those who participated in the Bomber Campaign even if one disapproved of its conduct and its architect.
However, I would argue that however much Harris boasted that he could win the war through strategic bombing alone (and that was his claim), and however much he claimed a disproportionate share of resources, Bomber Command was always part of an integrated air campaign against the enemy, and as such, its members received the appropriate campaign medals (eg the Air Crew Europe or France and Germany Stars).
It is not that their efforts went unrecognised and unrewarded, it’s just that they were (rightly in my view) recognised in the same way that we recognised and rewarded the Coastal Command crews (who suffered heavy losses, were often equally unlikely to survive a tour, but who did rather more damage to the German war economy) and to those who flew intruder missions, agent-dropping, or resupply missions to the partisans and resistance movements. All of them required just as much 4 am courage, and received rather less attention from the newspapers and newsreel, and rather less attention post war from Gaumont British and Pinewood. To single out Bomber Command’s contribution above and beyond these contributions would be unjustified, offensive and unjust.
Let me make it clear. The issue of a Bomber Command medal (especially if extended to groundcrew) is a slap in the face to all of the other operational RAF aircrew who flew in the European theatre of operations, further relegating the importance of their efforts (Bomber Command has already been glorified again and again in print and on the big and small screens), even though many of them flew longer, more uncomfortable and more dangerous missions.
We would all condemn the “Hollywoodisation” of history, and yet many of those here are doing something very similar, allowing ingrained prejudice and ignorance (fed on a diet of ‘Target for Tonight’ and the ‘Dambusters’, and by hordes of books by Bomber Command vets) to give a very distorted version of history.
The claim that “the only way to win the war was to seriously damage German war production. The only way to do that was to take the war to them. The only way to do that was to bomb them” is risible.
If you go first to the Bomber Command war diaries, and examine the losses for a given night, and then at the (typically efficient) German records of damage sustained, and then do so again, for night after night after night, the truth about Bomber Command’s war becomes shockingly clear.
Night after night, we lost tens of aircraft (and their crews) and achieved nothing – killing a cow here, and damaging five houses there. Everything achieved by Bomber Command’s heavies up to the end of 1943 could have been achieved better, and at lower cost, by smaller tactical bombers, which were more likely to ‘live to fight another day’ and which put more bombs more accurately on target.
Bomber Command’s greatest successes were achieved in spite of Harris, not because of him, since they were often viewed by him as being ‘diversions’ from the Main Force effort. (Peenemunde, the tactical ops in the wake of D-Day, Tirpitz ops, bridge dropping with the big bombs, even Augsburg and the Dams Raid.)
It has been calculated that a single four engined bomber allocated to Coastal Command produced 20 times as much damage to the German economy as the same aircraft allocated to Bomber Command’s main force, yet Harris resolutely and forcefully argued against any allocation of resources to other Commands.
One can only imagine the potential effect had the resources devoted to the four engined heavies instead been used to build up a much larger force of Whirlwinds and Mosquitos.
One can only admire the spirit of Bomber Command veterans, and their loyalty to their former Commander, but one cannot help but think that if it was ever reciprocated, Harris had a blo.ody strange way of showing it. He always preferred the Lancaster to the Halifax, because an average Lanc dropped 154 tonnes of bombs during its brief life, while a Halifax crew dropped only 100. The fact that the Halifax was easier to escape from, and that a higher proportion of Halifax crews survived was of no interest to Harris, to whom live aircrew in a Stalag or Offlag were of no interest whatever. The fact that Lancaster crews, bombing from greater height, in greater discomfort, further from base, over more of the heavily defended heartland targets were less accurate than the late mark Halifaxes was of similarly little concern.
In Harris’ mind, a heavier tonnage of bombs dropped inaccurately on area targets in the vicinity of Berlin were of more value than smaller tonnages dropped more accurately on vital industrial targets closer to home.
Harris claimed, on 7 December 1943, that his planned campaign against Berlin would destroy the German capital and bring the war to an end by 1 April 1944. History records his lack of success, except in increasing absenteeism in the German workforce to 23.5 days per year….. and that at a cost of an average 5.4% loss rate (that had reached an unsustainable 9% by the time the campaign was abandoned).
By contrast, the success of Bomber Command against tactical targets in France in 1944 was huge, yet Harris itched to return to the sterile and marginal operations which he believed were “The real business of winning the war.”
The claim that: “if that campaign had not been fought (for instance if we had not produced a Strategic Bomber Force), that German war production would have grown unhindered to match that of its enemies.” Is simply unsustainable.
Had the four engined heavies been used in larger numbers against the U-Boats and in protecting convoys, and in tactical operations like those which led up to, accompanied and followed D-Day, the damage to the German economy would have been much greater, losses would have been lower, and victory would have been quicker.
Had the industrial capacity and service man power expended on the Bomber Command Main Force been used instead to build up a huge force of Whirlwinds and Mosquitos, the damage to German industrial and military targets would have been greater, and losses would have been slashed.
Small wonder that the Luftwaffe CoS, Jeschonnek remarked that:
“Every four-engined bomber the Western Allies build makes me happy, for we will bring these down just as easily as we brought down the two-engined ones, and each four engined aircraft constitutes a much greater loss to the enemy.” It’s hard to imagine him being quite so sanguine had he been facing a larger Main Force consisting entirely of Mosquitos!
I’m all for saluting the men who participated in the Bomber War, but lets keep away from inaccurate mythologizing about its effectiveness, and let’s view Harris for what he was – a narrow-minded and inflexible commander who showed little concern for casualties among his own people, who resisted what he saw as diversions (even when they were clearly war-winning efforts!), and who blindly followed the aim of defeating the enemy by destroying civilian morale through bombing, even after it became clear that it did not work. (Did the reaction of Londoners to the Blitz not give anyone pause for thought as to how difficult that might prove?)
A fair judgement would be that Harris was as much an obstacle to Allied victory as he was one of its architects.