[Hobilar]

The Royal Air Force entered the Second World War committed to demonstrate that the air dropped bomb was a weapon of unique potential. The Airmen at that time were extremely jealous of protecting their freedom from the other armed services and this ledn to an obsession amongst the Air Staff with the desire to acquire an independent offensive role for their service. This independent offensive role was one that, it was seen, could be fulfilled by the Strategic Bomber, and in this the four-engine heavy bomber fleet of the RAF was a unique asset.

In the winter of 1941-1942 Churchill was to make one of his rare `errors of judgement' in committing so much of British manpower and resources to the Strategic Bomber programme. Although the airmen were denied their `4,000 plan' they were still allowed to embark on their own ambitious war aims. Aims that after the war Sir Henry Tizard was to describe with these words:

" No one thinks now that it would have been possible to defeat Germany by bombing alone, the actual effort in manpower and resources was greater than the value in manpower and resources of the damage caused"

By the spring of 1944 it was becoming clear that Harris's area bombing campaign was failing to bring Germany close to defeat. German industry proved to be astonishingly resilient in the face of bombing and that the overall importance of strategic bombing had been greatly exaggerated. Even US General Arnold was to openly say that the bombing of factories from one end of the Reich to the other was not having the effect that had been hoped for. The Air Staff's gravest error seems to have been an inability to accept that they had overstated the ability of Strategic bombing to undermine the German economy. Even after the war it was commonly accepted that the Bomber campaign had been a decisive contribution in Germany's downfall.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the brave and courageous aircrew whose sacrifice and dedication to duty is above reproach, but rather a comment on a policy that was just so great that it was beyond the resources of the Air Staff. In fact the two greatest results of the Allied bombing campaign, it is now generally accepted, were the destruction of the Luftwaffe as a fighting force and the disruption of German Oil supplies. We should not however be to overcritical of the Air Staff for it must be remembered that Air bombardment of a nation's entire economic strata was a new and virtually untried experiment in warfare. The lessons were being learnt by trial and error.

Harris in a letter to Sir Norman Bottomley in March 1945 was to answer some of the criticisms being made against the Air Campaign. In this letter Harris was to say that although personally he found the bombing of German Cities repugnant and that he took "little delight in the work". He made it clear that in his opinion it was a necessary business, aimed entirely at destroying the German ability to continue hostilities, to shorten the war and save the lives of allied ground forces. To this end he felt that it was necessary to continue the offensive until either the entire German industrial complex had been destroyed or until Germany could be occupied by allied Armies against "unorganised resistance". He also defended the priority of attacking cities on the grounds that HE bombs were in short supply whilst there was a plentiful supply of incendiaries. This seems a very odd attitude from a man who had been a leading exponent of precision bombing between the wars.

After the war the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden computed that 593,000 German civilians had been killed between 1939-1945, with 3.37 million dwellings destroyed, including 600,000 in the Berlin area. .