History of the Second World War (102 page)

It is very disputable whether bombing by itself will be a decisive factor in the present war. On the contrary, all that we have learnt since the war began shows that its effects, both physical and moral, are greatly exaggerated.*

* Official History, vol I, p. 182.

He also emphasised, rightly, that German defences were ‘very likely’ to improve.

Prophetically, he remarked in a minute to Portal that ‘a different picture would be presented if the enemy’s Air Force were so far reduced as to enable heavy accurate daylight bombing of factories to take place’. That policy was put into practice in 1944, but not before, and then by the Americans.

Churchill’s fears, and warning, as to the strengthening and improvement of the German air defence were soon fulfilled. Heavy losses were suffered by Bomber Command in November, especially in a multiple attack by 400 bombers on the 7th, when 12½ per cent of the 169 bombers sent to raid Berlin failed to return, although losses in raids on nearer targets were less expensive.

The sum of experience since the outbreak of war had shown that the long-established concepts of the Air Staff and Bomber Command were badly in error. The results of their bombing in the first two years of the war had proved very disappointing.

The low ebb of Bomber Command lasted until March 1942. During the winter operations were mainly concentrated on the German battlecruisers,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
at Brest — on which some hits were achieved. The initial effect of America’s entry into the war in December 1941 was to reduce the prospect of receiving an increase on the small number of bombers coming from American factories. Moreover the reverses that the German armies suffered in Russia that winter, within six months of their June invasion, raised questions about the necessity or value of seeking to win the war by bombing.

The bombing campaign against Germany began to revive in mid-February, when the problem of Brest had resolved itself by the homeward ‘Channel Dash’ of the battlecruisers. By this time many of the British bombers were being fitted with ‘Gee’ — a radio aid to navigation and target identification. A new directive to Bomber Command on February 14, 1942, emphasised that the bombing campaign was now to ‘be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular, of the industrial workers’. That was to be the ‘primary object’.† Thus terrorisation became without reservation the definite policy of the British Government, although still disguised in answers to Parliamentary questions.

†
ibid
., p. 233.

The new directive was a recognition of operational feasibility. The prevailing thought had been expressed earlier, on July 4, 1941, by Portal: ‘The most suitable object from the economic point of view is not worth pursuing unless it is tactically attainable.’*

* Official History, vol I, p. 189.

This directive was ready for Air Marshal A. T. (later Sir Arthur) Harris when he became Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command, on February 22, 1942 — in succession to Sir Richard Peirse, who had gone out to the Far East as C.-in-C. of the Allied air forces there shortly after Japan’s entry into the war. A forceful personality, Harris gave a stimulating lead to the crews and organisation of Bomber Command, but in retrospect many of his view’s and decisions were shown to be mistaken.

Another support, and encouragement at a time of stress and depression, came from a memorandum which Lord Cherwell (formerly Professor F. A. Lindemann), Churchill’s personal adviser on scientific matters, drew up at the end of March. His reassurance to Churchill followed close on a devastating attack early in March on the Renault factory at Billancourt, near Paris, where only 1 out of 235 bombers was lost; it was the first large experiment in using flares as guides.

Later that month came a ‘successful’ attack on the Baltic town of Lubeck, in which the closely packed town-centre was devastated with incendiary bombs, while in April there were four such attacks on Rostock. (Most of the damage, however, was suffered by the lovely old houses in the centre of these historic Hanseatic towns, not by the nearby factories.) These towns were in fact beyond the range of Gee, but they were easy to locate, so undue encouragement was drawn from the fact that equipped with Gee, 40 per cent of the bombers found their targets. Nevertheless, Bomber Command’s losses over Lubeck were heavy, and eight raids on Essen during these two months met a stronger defence, less favourable conditions of weather, and were much less effective.

On the German side, defences were being built up quickly — with a radar system directing anti-aircraft fire and searchlights, along with a growing number of night-fighters. At the beginning of 1942, only 1 per cent of the bombers was being lost to night-fighters, but by the summer the toll had risen to 3½ per cent — despite the increasing use of diversions and ruses.

‘All these plans involved the assumption that the opposing air force could be successfully evaded at night.’† This was the basic fallacy remaining in the minds of Bomber Command, and the Air Staff. They disregarded the basic lesson of experience that a bomber, however well protected — which those of the R.A.F. were not — is bound to be vulnerable to an aircraft designed and created to destroy it. Evasion tactics and all the technical devices produced to aid them would not for long hide, and preserve, the bombers from the ever-growing German air defence system — unless the R.A.F, could gain command of the air.

†
ibid
., p. 350.

Such an aim was foreshadowed by the so-called ‘Circus’ operations which were started early in 1941, and continued in 1942 — daylight penetrations of the Continental coastal area, by bombers and fighters operating in combination, with the object of drawing the Luftwaffe up into the air for Fighter Command’s Spitfires to attack. These ‘Circuses’ had some success, but this was limited by the relatively short range of the British fighters, and when daylight operations were extended farther, losses were severe wherever strong opposition was met, even when the magnificent Lancaster bomber became available. The main effect of the ‘Circus’ operations was that despite setbacks, they opened the struggle for Allied air superiority along the north coast of France that was important for later invasion purposes.

In 1942 the chief new development came with the much acclaimed ‘1,000 bomber’ raids. By these Harris sought to cut losses by concentration, and produce a greater effect. Although Bomber Command’s first-line strength in May 1942 was only 416 aircraft, by using second-line and training squadrons he managed to send 1,046 bombers against Cologne on the night of May 30. In this attack, 600 acres of the city were devastated — much more than by the 1,346 sorties against Cologne in the previous nine months. The cost was a loss of forty bombers (3.8 per cent). On June 1 the whole available strength of Bomber Command, 956 aircraft, was used against the more difficult target of Essen — but cloud and haze saved that city from serious damage, while thirty-one aircraft were lost (3.2 per cent). The ‘1,000 bomber’ force was then disbanded, but Harris continued to plan for similar raids, and on June 26 a total of 904 bombers, including 102 from Coastal Command, attacked the great port of Bremen and the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory. This time heavy cloud prevailed, and the damage inflicted was relatively slight, whereas the loss rose to nearly 5 per cent, largely among the training squadrons. No more ‘1,000 bomber’ raids were launched until 1944.

These specially enlarged raids, by the public impression they made, certainly helped Harris in his struggle to sustain Bomber Command’s claims to priority, and to obtain an authorised increase in his force to fifty operational squadrons. He was also helped by the creation in August 1942 of the Pathfinder force — which, ironically, he had opposed — and by the new navigational aids of Oboe and H2S in December and January respectively.

It is, however, evident in retrospect that the effects of British bombing were still much exaggerated and German industrial damage negligible, in view of the fact that Germany’s armaments production increased about 50 per cent in 1942. Oil, which was Germany’s weakest point, was scarcely touched, and her aircraft output greatly increased. Ominously, the Luftwaffe day-fighter strength in the West increased that year from 292 to 453, and the night-fighter strength from 162 to 349. By contrast, Britain’s loss of bombers had risen to 1,404 in 1942.

The Casablanca Conference in January 1943 laid down the ancillary nature of strategic bombing as forerunner of a land invasion. Then the directive to the Allied Air Forces ordered: ‘the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened’. This satisfied Harris (who stressed the second part of the directive) and Lieutenant-General Eaker, Commander of the 8th U.S.A.A.F. (who stressed the first part). While the directive laid down a general order of priority targets, it left the tactical choice to the air commanders. Thus, although the British would bomb by night and the Americans by day, the attacks were not complementary except in a general sense.

Nevertheless, the Washington Conference in May 1943 stressed the co-operation expected from (and indeed often achieved by) the two bomber forces; and it also stressed the danger, which was then becoming apparent, to them both from the German fighters. Thus the first objective of ‘Point-blank’ — the Combined Bombing Offensive — was to be the destruction of the Luftwaffe and the German aircraft industry, which was: ‘essential to our progression to the attack of other sources of the enemy war potential’. It was as important in the long run to Bomber Command as to the Americans. Even so, it was a loosely phrased enough document which allowed Harris to continue general area bombing on the German towns, and to avoid facing reality, that the future of the bombers, and ‘Operation Overlord’, lay in the destruction of the Luftwaffe whose strength had doubled between January and August 1943. However, the great successes of Bomber Command in the raids on the Ruhr and Hamburg tended to obscure this danger.

Although the Pathfinder force was being gradually built up, while Oboe and H2S were now in operation, the opening months of 1943 were a quiet period for Bomber Command compared with 1942. This gave the crews a chance to correct some flaws in the new equipment, and also to acclimatise themselves to the rising number of Lancasters and Mosquitoes that were replacing the old bombers. (Operational strength in general rose from 515 in January 1943 to 947 by March 1944.) The crew problem was met by the large Commonwealth training schemes, especially in Canada, and by the abolition of the post of second pilot in 1942.

All these factors helped in the ‘Battle of the Ruhr’ — a series of forty-three major raids between March and July 1943, ranging from Stuttgart to Aachen, but mainly focused on the Ruhr. It opened on March 5, when 442 planes attacked Essen — which was a strongly defended area, as it contained the Krupp works. Essen was hit much harder than before owing to the marking of targets by Pathfinders directed by Oboe, and only fourteen bombers were lost. Essen was again severely hit four times, and also most of the major centres of the Ruhr, during the months that followed. The damage was inflicted mainly by incendiaries, but also by explosive bombs as heavy as 8,000 lb. Duisburg, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Bochum, and Aachen all suffered badly, due to the new Oboe marking system, while 90 per cent of Barmen-Wuppertal was devastated in a single attack on the night of May 29. Although the weather often interfered, it was evident that Bomber Command’s accuracy had much improved — and strengthened Harris’s hand in his arguments about the use of his force.

Even so, Bomber Command was still hardly capable of precise bombing by night — with exceptions such as the breaching of the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr on the night of May 16 by the specially trained 617 Squadron — the ‘Dam busters’ — led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson. Despite the brilliant success achieved in this ‘dams’ raid eight of the nineteen Lancasters used in it were lost.

In sum, as the Official History remarks, the ‘revolutionary advances in the technique of bombing’ demonstrated in the Battle of the Ruhr had made Bomber Command ‘into an effective bludgeon but that . . . had not yet enabled it to develop the potential of a rapier’.* Moreover, as Oboe was the crucial factor, the results were not promising for anything outside its range.

* Vol. II, p. 136.

After the first attack on Essen losses rose rapidly, and averaged 4.7 per cent (872 planes lost) in this entire campaign. Only the high morale of the crews, and continual reinforcements, made it possible for Bomber Command ‘to take’ such losses, which were approaching danger level.

Significantly the Mosquitoes, whose great speed and altitude made them almost immune to German fighters and flak, suffered very few losses. Oboe would not have worked without such a high-flying aircraft (the transmission left the curvature of the earth at a tangent), and there would otherwise have been no accurate marking for the Lancaster bombers of the main force.

The introduction of Beaufighters as night-time escorts was no solution, as these aircraft were too slow. Moreover, just as the British technical advances were tending to turn night into day for Bomber Command, so did the German countermeasures for the Luftwaffe — and it looked likely that the time would soon come when bombers would be as vulnerable at night as in daylight.

The ‘Battle of the Ruhr’ was followed by the ‘Battle of Hamburg’ — a series of thirty-three major attacks on that city and others between July and November, 1943, involving 17,000 bomber sorties. It opened with the great raid on July 24, by 791 bombers — which included 374 Lancasters. Thanks to the new navigational aids, clear weather and good marking, a vast number of incendiary and explosive bombs hit the centre of Hamburg — and thanks to a new radar-distracting device called Window only twelve bombers were lost. Moreover the 8th U.S.A.A.F. joined in the attack on July 24 and 26, and Mosquitoes (which themselves could carry a bomb-load of 4,000 lb.) kept the city’s defences busy on those two nights. On the night of the 27th 787 British bombers renewed their devastating attack, and only seventeen were lost. On the 29th, 777 bombers hit the city again, although with less accuracy, while British losses rose to thirty-three, as the Germans began to adjust themselves to the effect of Window. Bad weather prevented the fourth attack, on August 2, from being as successful. In sum, however, the city suffered terrible devastation, and Bomber Command’s losses, though rising each time, averaged only 2.8 per cent. Moreover, on July 25 and 30 — in the middle of the ‘Battle of Hamburg’ — Bomber Command had severely hit Remscheid and the Krupp works at Essen. In the following months its attacks ranged to Mannheim, Frankfurt, Hanover and Kassel, badly damaging all these cities. It also delivered, on the night of August 17, its famous attack on the flying bomb research and experimental station at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast. This attack was carried out by 597 four-engined bombers, of which forty were lost and thirty-two others damaged, while the effects were not so great as was imagined in London.