Bomber Command (20 page)

It was the American air attaché in London who reported to Washington as late as April 1942: ‘The British public have an erroneous belief, which has been fostered by effective RAF publicity, that the German war machine can be destroyed and the nation defeated by intensive bombing.’

Throughout the war the Royal Navy waged an unceasing battle against the Air Ministry not only for a larger share of industrial resources, but also for the services of the greatest possible numbers of the long-range aircraft being built, for anti-submarine operations and reconnaissance. Both parties to the dispute stooped to unseemly depths in the pursuit of their cases, and the Royal Navy diminished its own credibility as a judge of the effective use of air
forces by insisting that Bomber Command should waste effort first on the abortive bombing of the
Scharnhorst
and the
Gneisenau
, and subsequently on the impenetrable concrete-encased U-boat pens of the French ports. ‘Our fight with the Air Ministry becomes more and more fierce as the war proceeds,’ wrote Admiral Whitworth at the height of the controversy. ‘It is a much more savage one than our war with the Huns, which is very unsatisfactory and such a waste of effort.’
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However, some shrewd and able naval officers, fighting impossible odds in the far corners of the world, understandably deplored the immense concentration of resources upon Bomber Command.

‘It certainly gives us furiously to think when we see that over 200 heavy bombers attacked one town in Germany,’ wrote Admiral Willis, second-in-command of the Eastern Fleet, to Admiral Cunningham in the Mediterranean, a few months after the Japanese entered the war. ‘If only some of the hundreds of bombers who fly over Germany (and often fail to do anything because of the weather) had been torpedo aircraft and dive-bombers the old Empire would be in better condition than it is now . . .’
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Professor Pat Blackett did not impress airmen, because he was an adviser to the Admiralty. But he was also one of the most distinguished defence scientists of his generation. Blackett pointed out that in 1941 British bombers killed German civilians no faster than the German defences had been killing highly-trained British aircrew. Computing brutal realities, he concluded that the future British bomber offensive could not expect to kill more than one German for every five tons of bombs dropped.

I say emphatically [he wrote in 18 February 1942] that a calm dispassionate review of the facts will reveal that the present policy of bombing Germany is wrong; that we must put our maximum effort first into destroying the enemy’s sea communications and preserving our own; that we can only do so by operating aircraft over the sea on a very much larger scale than we have done hitherto, and that we shall be forced to use much longer range aircraft. The only advantage that I see in bombing Germany is that it does force the enemy to lock up a good deal of his effort on home defence . . . The heavy scale of bombing will only be justified in the concluding stages of the war when (or if) we are fortunate enough to have defeated the enemy at sea and to have command of it.

But it was not only the Admiralty and its advisers who questioned the bomber offensive. Few men could claim a more intimate knowledge of air technology than A. V. Hill, one of the founding fathers of British radar, and also Independent Conservative Member of Parliament for Cambridge University. Hill felt sufficiently strongly about the error that he believed was being made in concentrating such great resources upon Bomber Command that on 22 February 1942 he took the unpopular course of denouncing in the House of Commons ‘the brave adjectives about big and beautiful bombs, and the fate which will await Berlin next year – it is always next year – from them’. He went on:

Such adjectives do not impress the enemy at all. He quietly does some simple arithmetic and smiles . . . Past controversies about the independence of the Royal Air Force have had one most unfortunate result, the exaggeration of the importance of bombing an enemy country. Against an ill-defended enemy bombing, no doubt, can quickly produce disastrous results, but so can other forms of offensive action – against an ill-defended enemy. In the present struggle none of the protagonists is ill-defended now against attack from the air . . . The idea of bombing a well-defended enemy into submission or seriously affecting his morale – of even doing substantial damage to him – is an illusion. We know that most of the bombs we drop hit nothing of importance. The disaster of this policy is not only that it is futile, but that it is extremely wasteful, and will become increasingly wasteful as time goes on.

A few months earlier the House of Commons aired an agony of protests about the discovery that Professor Solly Zuckerman and a
team of biologists had been carrying out experiments about the effects of explosives on live animals. The House was somewhat less moved by Hill’s speech. Flight-lieutenant Boothby MP rose to say that ‘in Bomber Command we have fashioned a most formidable weapon of offence’. He deplored statements that might erode confidence in bombing: ‘It is tough to ask these chaps to undergo great dangers and perils, which they do cheerfully and bravely, unless they are convinced, as they are at present, that it is worth doing . . .’

In the War Cabinet criticism of the bomber offensive was muted by a mixture of deference on a matter so close to the Prime Minister’s heart, and inability to suggest any alternative strategy. The Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair, argued in October 1940 that

. . . our small bomber force could, by accurate bombing, do very great damage to the enemy’s war effort, but could not gain a decision against Germany by bombing the civil population . . . Unless we get a decision we achieve nothing by promiscuous bombing. Except when he uses mines, it is uncertain to what extent the enemy is deliberately choosing to bomb the civil population when he might hit military targets. When he cannot see to hit the latter he bombs centres of population, and we are now doing the same . . . In so far as the Germans may have been led away by their theories of total war into attacking our civilian population instead of concentrating upon our aircraft and air engineering factories, it is very lucky for us.

But when bombing policy changed, Sinclair changed with it. He was a man in deep personal thrall to the Prime Minister – ‘Head of school’s fag’, as he was sometimes unkindly described in political circles – and as Air Minister he was always the RAF’s political representative rather than its master. He became an assiduous public apologist for area bombing, whatever his earlier private misgivings.

Yet as this low point of the bomber offensive in the winter of 1941–42 there would have been the deepest concern at the Air Ministry if it had been known that Captain Harold Balfour, Sinclair’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary and a man of wide personal experience of air matters, had also become sceptical about Bomber Command. On 24 January 1942, in a confidential memorandum to Sinclair that is unmentioned in any of the official histories, Balfour reviewed past hopes for British bombing:

The fact is that this plan has not been fulfilled . . . Night defences have on both sides increased in quantity and efficiency. As regards accuracy, I believe we calculate that only some 10 per cent of bombs fall in the target area.

The public are more and more questioning the effectiveness of bombing policy and beginning to wonder whether bombs can bring Germany’s effort to a standstill and thus be a deciding factor in winning the war.

Balfour was convinced that as Britain faced crisis in the Middle and Far East, bombers must be diverted from the assault on Germany: ‘It may be that the believers in bombing Germany to destruction, though right if war were confined to the Western battlefield only – are wrong having regard to the war in the East which has to be won and may continue long after victory in the West if the deteriorating position cannot be checked before then.’

Balfour kept his misgivings to himself. But Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons, made a speech in the House of Commons at the beginning of 1942 which caused widespread astonishment, interpreted as a vote of no confidence in the strategic air offensive:

Another question which has been raised by a great number of members is the question of policy as to the continued use of heavy bombers and the bombing of Germany. A number of hon. members have questioned whether, in the existing circumstances, the continued devotion of a considerable part of our effort to the building up of this bombing force is the best use that we can make of our resources. It is obviously a matter which it is almost impossible to debate in public, but if I may, I would remind the House that this policy was initiated at a time when we were fighting alone against the combined forces of Germany and Italy and it then seemed that this was the most effective way in which we, acting alone, could take the initiative against the enemy. Since that time we have had an enormous access of support from the Russian armies . . . and also from the great potential strength of the United States. Naturally, in such circumstances, the original policy has come under review. I can assure the House that the Government are fully aware of the other uses to which our resources can be put, and the moment they arrive at a decision that the circumstances warrant a change, a change in policy will be made.

Cripps’s statement caused momentary alarm at the Air Ministry and in America, where at that very moment the British delegation were devoting their utmost effort to ensuring that the American air forces joined Bomber Command in mounting an even more ambitious combined offensive against Germany. But in reality, while Cripps had made his own scepticism clear, for all his grandiose titles he had no influence on the vital decisions, and no information from the Prime Minister that could possibly have justified his hopes.

Another impotent critic was Lord Beaverbrook. Not in the least afraid of speaking his mind to Churchill, after a relatively brief period of real power as Minister of Aircraft Production, by the end of 1941 his influence had waned greatly. His fierce comments on the bomber offensive, like the speech of Cripps, are important because they were made, not because they influenced policy.

The events of the past eight months [wrote Beaverbrook on 7 February 1942] have shown that the achievements of our powerful and growing bomber force have been in no way commensurate with its potentialities, with the man hours and materials expended on its expansion, nor with the losses it has sustained . . . The aircraft in these operations could have been performing vital services in other theatres of war . . . The policy of bombing Germany, which in any event can yield no decisive results within any measurable period of time, should no longer be regarded as of primary importance. Bomber squadrons should be flown forthwith to the Middle and Far East.
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Beaverbrook, who had been at the heart of air warfare policymaking (and at loggerheads with the Air Ministry) since 1940, was better informed than most of his Cabinet colleagues about the reality of the bomber offensive. Many ministers knew little or nothing about the struggle taking place over Germany beyond what they read in the newspapers. Ordinary members of the House of Commons and of the British public knew scarcely anything. It will become apparent later that real debate about the strategic air offensive did not develop even in well-informed circles until long after area bombing began, because so few people had any knowledge of it. Very early on, it had been agreed by the War Cabinet that there should be no public admission of changes in bombing policy. At a meeting on 24 March 1941,

Several ministers reported that many people in the country believed that, although the enemy was attacking the civil population . . . we were still deliberately refraining from attacks on the German civilian population. No minister suggested that we should alter our policy to the extent of ceasing to attack military objectives. But it might be wise to take steps to bring home to our people that attacks such as those which we had carried out on Mannheim and Hanover had already resulted in inflicting grave injury on the civilian population of those towns: and that as the strength of our bomber force increased, the civilian population of Germany would increasingly feel the weight of our air attack.

The general view of the War Cabinet was that it was better that acts should speak louder than words in this matter . . .

Therefore although the making of war policy remained in Britain a much more open business than in any Axis state, the debate about the future of the bomber offensive was conducted almost entirely within a very small circle headed by the Prime Minister. Politicians such as Captain Balfour, even those with Cabinet rank such as Cripps and Beaverbrook, were entirely eclipsed by the power of the service chiefs in deciding the course of the war. Even the Chiefs of Staff became frequently no more than a rubber stamp for decisions already taken in Downing Street, in consultation with the Air Ministry. Major-General Sir John Kennedy, the Director of Military Operations, noted without pleasure that ‘the bombing policy of the Air Staff was settled almost entirely by the Prime Minister himself in consultation with Portal, and was not controlled by the Chiefs of Staff’.
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The purpose of all the foregoing has been to show that in the critical months of decision for the future of the bomber offensive there was a formidable body of dissent in the service departments and in Whitehall which held that strategic bombing had proved a failure, and that, as the war widened and Britain’s resources were stretched more tightly around the world, it was a grave error to reinforce the huge commitment to Bomber Command. Yet none of this made any impact on the decisive debate of this period: between the Chief of the Air Staff and the Prime Minister himself.