Attitudes towards Harris

Targeting Policy

How much was determined by BC CiC? UK’s Ministry of Economic Warfare was involved, under substantial figures Dalton, then Selbourne; so was US in a Joint Targeting Committee. I doubt Harris (or a different CiC) had much discretion in the use of this massive national investment: day-to-day sequencing, but not High Policy. Everyone wanted the Ruhr and Berlin deleted.

Who has researched this?

I’m not absolutely sure where the idea came from, that the Americans dropped all of their payload into a pickle barrel

It was the original PR b*llsh*t used to promote the Norden bomb sight before it had seen action in the real world.

Moggy

Hi Stuart,

I’ve just finished reading (well, a few pages short) ‘The Mighty Eighth’ by Gerald Astor

There are several veterans quotes in the book detailing a second run or sometimes even a third run over the target, and quite a few accounts of the larger raids (mainly in 1945 when the skies were more crowded) detail the formation turning into the path of another box and seeing them coming directly for them! One quote is from Wayne Galtin, a P-51 pilot

“I led blue and green flight as we covered our box of bombers. All in all ten ships were flying off me as we covered our box of bombers. The dang bombers made three circles around the target before they finally bombed and we were getting pretty ‘browned’ off with them. I guess they were waiting for the smoke to clear….”

and from Bill Powers, a B-17 gunner although I’m not sure which position,

“I thought I saw spots of oil on my plexiglass dome on the turret and they got larger. Here was another formation of B-17s turning directly in our path, heading right for us. All at once my pilot broke silence and said “Looks like its every man for himself” and pushed down in the stick and pulled back using evasive action. When he pulled up, I fell out of my turret and was pinned to the floor with my oxygen line stretched to the limit. I saw the tail end of a B-17 fly by. When I returned to my turret and looked around, planes were everywhere and some going down due to collision.”

Fantastic read for anyone who has not read it.

Steve

Stuart.

The France and Germany Star was only issued to aircrew operating over France and Germany after 6th June 1944.

Regards,

kev35

I received a copy of that today and wondered, particularly, about this part…..

Since the end of World War II, the HD Committee has maintained a consistent policy that it will not consider the belated institution of awards and medals for service given many years earlier. The reason for this policy is that the present HD Committee cannot put itself in the place of the Committee which made the original decision and which would have been able to take account of the views of all interested parties at the time. A dedicated medal for Bomber Command was considered by the HD Committee of the time and it was decided that the institution of such a medal, or indeed one for Coastal Command, South East Asia Command etc, was not appropriate.

Maybe the reason for this committee to have failed to grant the award of a campaign medal to Bomber Command veterans was because of the lengths to which the Politicians went to distance themselves from Harris and the methods employed by Bomber Command. The Politicians, having more or less said that Bomber Command under Harris had gone too far could then hardly risk being seen to support the efforts of Bomber Command by granting them a special campaign medal.

regards,

kev35

Was the France and Germany star not a “campaign” medal ?; did The RAF receive the France and Germany star?

I see that a medal was issued retrospectively for Suez, on the grounds that the “committee” hadn’t considered it at the time; perhaps they didn’t think it justified a medal…

I’m not absolutely sure where the idea came from, that the Americans dropped all of their payload into a pickle barrel,(or several); unless my definition as to what constitutes a pickle barrel, differs significantly with accepted wisdom.

I would suggest that the perceived advantage of daylight raids,should be tempered with a cocktail of “everyones enemy” , the weather, be it overcast,fog, or rain, and the actual advantage that the German defences had, on a clear day, with target location.

there seems to be a misconception, that the RAF were tasked solely with area bombing , and the various American bomb groups with precision bombing; as I recall, the “togglers” worked on the principle that they were a certain distance from the lead bomber, and that translated into a time delay of “X” seconds; quite how they measured that distance accurately is another thing.

I’ve watched Memphis Belle about a hundred times, but I never can quite believe it when they “go around ” for a second run; flying in a box formation must be hard enough, but turning through 360 deg without gaining or losing altitude whilst maintaining the correct distance from each other, and the lead plane….

My Dad used to say, “when the Germans bombed we would hide, and when we bombed the Germans would hide, but when the yanks bombed , everybody would hide”; I’m sure there is more truth in that than would ever be admitted.

I received a copy of that today and wondered, particularly, about this part…..

Since the end of World War II, the HD Committee has maintained a consistent policy that it will not consider the belated institution of awards and medals for service given many years earlier. The reason for this policy is that the present HD Committee cannot put itself in the place of the Committee which made the original decision and which would have been able to take account of the views of all interested parties at the time. A dedicated medal for Bomber Command was considered by the HD Committee of the time and it was decided that the institution of such a medal, or indeed one for Coastal Command, South East Asia Command etc, was not appropriate.

Maybe the reason for this committee to have failed to grant the award of a campaign medal to Bomber Command veterans was because of the lengths to which the Politicians went to distance themselves from Harris and the methods employed by Bomber Command. The Politicians, having more or less said that Bomber Command under Harris had gone too far could then hardly risk being seen to support the efforts of Bomber Command by granting them a special campaign medal.

regards,

kev35

Arthur Travers Harris “Bomber Offensive”…………

The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

His statement sums it all up for me, under his command and thanks to the bravery of all those who went to war on all fronts we enjoy the freedoms we have today and for decades to come.

Some people tried to support the Bomber Command Vetrans. Here is a government reply to a petition for a campaign medal for Bomber Command.

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page17125

Agreed, but the aim of area bombing was to cause a great concentration of 4000lb ‘cookies’ and 4lb incendiaries to cause fires and burn down large areas of the city. When this was achieved, Hamburg and Dresden, the results were spectacular, far outweighing the actual tonnage of bombs dropped.

Also it wasn’t really the bombs that were the problem; over Berlin scattering the target-indicators all over a five-mile radius circle was just no good…..and the target wasn’t necessarily the centre of Berlin.

The result, bomb-loads dropped all over the place not just five-miles out, and much of the bombing wasn’t even that close, bomb-loads were dropped twenty miles off target in open country.

That’s because five miles from the aiming point was still Berlin

Moggy

It (H2S Mark III) was regarded as the primary bombing aid during the Battle of Berlin…

…but you are quite correct about the results of the bombing…..as opposed to the marking when using it.

H2S was really a navigation aid rather than a bombing aid.

I doubt you could get within five miles of a target bombing on H2S unless it was on a particularly distinctive bit of coastline.

Moggy

‘The ultimate aim of the attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this we must achieve two things; first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce(i) destruction and (ii) the fear of death.’

The above statement was in 1941 exactly what was required given the proven limitations of the command at this stage of the war. However we are talking about early 1944 onwards when Bomber Command had already proven to a degree that it had the ability both tactically and strategically to carry out raids on selective targets and not just cities.

We appear to be going off at a tangent here. I am not attacking the man just his apparent resistance to utilise bombing aids that could have been used to a more beneficial effect. I have already mentioned he was the right man for the job in 1942 and continued to be up until his resistance to listen to the Senior Air Staff and Portal from early 1944 onwards.

His commitment to victory is unquestioned.

I’ll lay my cards on the table – I’m an admirer of Harris. His Wind and Whirlwind ‘speech’ was one of the most chilling anti-war quotes ever.

I’ve read of H2S, Oboe, etc. but I have no real idea how they worked. I have come to the (perhaps incorrect) assumption they made it possible for an aircraft’s bomb-load to be dropped more accurately on the intended target – the difference between “selective” and “area” bombing??

Comments like “H2S was available from July, 1944 (or whatever date)” make me wonder though.

Over what period of time from the first, say a Lancaster, in squadron service being fitted until all of Bomber Command’s heavy bombers had it? How long did it take to install on an aircraft (and thus the aircraft was temporarily removed from service)?, how much time was required for aircrew training and groundcrew training to be able to use it?

I don’t need answers to these questions – they are just to make the point that comments such as the above cannot indicate that, in a single month, every bomber in the RAF was capable of switching from “area” to “selective” bombing.

Roger Smith.

Further, why are those who are so keen to vilify Harris never seen to comment adversely on the largest and most devastating are bombing attacks in history? I refer of course to the incendiary raids on Tokyo…

I’ve often wondered if the difference in tactics that the US used when attacking Germany and Japan weren’t down to the fact that Germany hadn’t bombed the US but that Japan had? Attacked Pearl Harbor that is (and I know Pearl was a military target and that Hawaii wasn’t a US state back then).

It may explain the different attitudes of the British and US when bombing Germany.

For that matter why are the German commanders not being condemned for their indiscriminate use of unguided ‘vengeance’ weapons?

Personally, I have no issue with the indiscriminate use of the V1/V2 against civilian targets; it would be a bit hypocritical wouldn’t it knowing what Bomber Command was doing to German cities.

Good points from Kev.

I would also suggest it worth considering the mental strength of the man to carry out the job he did from February 1942 through to the last days of the war in Europe.

He was not an uncaring person, he did not see ‘his’ crews as meaningless cyphers. Each day he had to take a decision that would send the crews into the battle. Through the night the enormity of the losses would be revealed to him. Sometimes a few, often many. And when ‘many’ I am sure he was wracked with the thought that had he only done something different…

What on Earth did it take to shoulder that burden?

Could you?

I couldn’t, not for a week.

If the strength he possessed that enabled him to endure that torture led him to be a tad uncaring for the enemy civilians, then who, living in twenty-first century safety and security, has the right to judge him harshly?

Moggy

The simple fact remains that area bombing was a legitimate course of action and that cities were legitimate targets. I refer you to the Air Staff Paper of 23rd September 1941, before the appointment of Harris and the Policy on which his Command was based….

‘The ultimate aim of the attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this we must achieve two things; first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce(i) destruction and (ii) the fear of death.’

Harris did that. The sticking point is that the powers that be underestimated the will and determination of the man to carry out what was asked of him.

In light of the revised Dresden casualty figures, has anyone considered on how many more occasions German Officials might have felt it necessary to grossly inflate casualty figures? They may not have done but it would be interesting to know.

One final point about Harris and the policy of area bombing. People here refer to the accuracy of the USAAF in precision bombing. Does that really stand up in truth? As someone else has said, how can such accuracy be ensured when often only one crew actually aimed their loads, the rest just dropped at the same time? Can anyone explain how that type of bombing would allow a bombardier to put his bombs ‘on the pickle barrel from 30,000 feet’? Further, why are those who are so keen to vilify Harris never seen to comment adversely on the largest and most devastating are bombing attacks in history? I refer of course to the incendiary raids on Tokyo and the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why are the American commanders not being condemned in the same way as Harris? For that matter why are the German commanders not being condemned for their indiscriminate use of unguided ‘vengeance’ weapons?

One final thought regarding the attacks on Germany when it has been suggested there was no need as the war approached its end. Let’s use an analogy. Two boxers are in the tenth round of a twelve round fight. One is clearly in the lead. Should he stop fighting? Or try and finish it? People should remember that the War could have ended much sooner had the Germans chosen to surrender.

Regards,

kev35

I think it’s worth reading the ‘The Thousand Plan’ because it actually gives a more human view of Harris, a professional airman but also family man with a softer side – certainly not a butcher but certainly someone who believed in the justness of what he was doing on behalf of the country and the elected government.

He was also certainly not just going sit around while the Nazi regime bombed Britain at will……………….

Arc

Hello Eddie, !!

It is the post invasion period I am referring too. Bomber Command had proved despite Harris initial scepticism and the loss of some of it’s most experienced crews that they could bomb accurately small strategic targets in the occupied territories.

Even with the “limited” range of both devices, important targets could have been attacked with some degree of accuracy in the Ruhr including Synthetics oil plants, oil plants, selected armaments factories and transportation hubs and communication centres. This surely would have been more beneficial then the return to area bombing cities that happen to have industrial targets located within it.

It is on record that from July 1944 of all the total bombs used / dropped in “area” raids on Germany, by far the greatest part, over 300,00 tons were dropped after July 1st 1944. This is when Bomber Command was equipped with some of the most accurate bombing aids then available, GH and Oboe. You correctly say that both were limited in range but with the foot hold in France secure GH & Oboe stations were relocated on the continent and almost immediately gave the additional range needed to attack targets in Eastern Germany. However, given the range increase, the proven ability of Bomber Command to attack accurately industrial targets, Harris doggedly continued with “his” area bombing policy.

I quote Albert Speer “ The Allied air attacks remained without decisive success until early 1944. This failure, which is reflected in the armaments output figures for 1943 and early 1944, is attributed principally to the tenacious efforts of the German workers and factory managers and also the haphazard and too scattered form of attacks of the enemy who, until the attacks on synthetic oil plants, based his raids on no clearly recognisable economic planning. The American attacks followed a definite system of assault on industrial targets, were by far the most dangerous “ *

Regarding the point made about “Ultra”. Harris was well aware of this and for some reason choice to ignore it the information given to him. Harris was not convinced that the information this was accurate and basically regarded it as another “panaceas”.

* The strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939-1945 Vol. IV.

… in 1944 when the whole nature of bombing had changed with the introduction of sophisticated bombing aids like Oboe & G-H which were in 1944 available in numbers that could have made a difference to strategic / selective bombing, i.e. Oil.

This argument is a little misleading, I fear! Both G-H and Oboe were limited in range due to “line of sight” limitations. The maximum range for both systems was around 300 miles, which basically allowed the Ruhr to be attacked, until stations could be set up on the continent. Any raids beyond this range might use “turning point markers” dropped by Oboe or G-H to give an accurate fix at maximum range, but the actual bombing would have to either be by visual means, or by H2S. H2S Mk.III (introduced in December 1943) was at the 3cm wavelength and could accurately determine the location of lakes and rivers, it wasn’t, when combined with the inherent inaccuracies of bombing markers (particularly skymarkers), sufficiently accurate for bombing a precision target.

The only way, in 1943 or 1944 for the RAF to bomb accurately beyond the range of Oboe or G-H was to attack at low level with a master bomber, which was used at Peenemunde – even that was not guaranteed to be accurate, as the accidental bombing of the forced labour camp showed.