Bomber Command (65 page)

The bomber offensive compelled the Germans to divert resources from the battlefield to the defence of their cities. If Hitler had been a reasonable man, the pressure upon him to do this on a much larger scale might have had important strategic consequences. Reason demanded that major forces of day-and night-fighters should be deployed against the bomber offensive as Speer, Milch and Galland demanded. But Hitler was not a reasonable
man, and did not comply with their wishes until the means to do so were gone. Economic historians agree that German industry proved astonishingly resilient in the face of bombing:

There can be no doubt that active interference of this nature in the work of the German economy hastened the decline in production [wrote Professor Milward
⁸
]. But the overall importance of bombing, as well as the importance of particular aspects of the offensive, has been exaggerated, often for the purpose of demonstrating the success of different kinds of bombing policy.

The two great achievements of the Allied strategic air offensive must be conceded to the Americans: the defeat of the Luftwaffe by the Mustang escort-fighter, and the inception of the deadly oil offensive. ‘The British inflicted grievous and bloody injuries upon us,’ said Milch after the war, ‘but the Americans stabbed us to the heart.’ Even the American breakthrough came late in the overall context of the war. The most common fault among air historians since 1945 is that they have examined the strategic-bomber offensive in isolation. The course of the war must be considered in its entirety. It is gratifying to airmen, but historically irrelevant, that they had destroyed the German economy by the time the armies achieved victory on the ground. Many of their greatest feats of precision bombing such as the sinking of the
Tirpitz
– which would have been a vital strategic achievement in 1941, 1942, even 1943 – became no more than marvellous circus-tricks by the time they were achieved in 1944 and 1945. The pace of the war had left them behind.

By late 1944, Bomber Command and the USAAF possessed the means to undertake what Harris had attempted without success in 1942 and 1943: the wholesale destruction of Germany’s cities. But it was too late. When they possessed the strategic justification – in 1942 and 1943 – they lacked the means. By the winter of 1944, when they had gained the means, the justification was gone, for the Allied armies were evidently on the verge of complete victory
bon the ground, and it was only a combination of their own shortcomings and the Wehrmacht’s genius that delayed the end so long. In the last months of war Bomber Command contributed to the punishment of Germany more than to the defeat of the enemy. No one disputed Germany’s guilt. Arguably, it is because of what the German people suffered from bombing in the Second World War that they are so unlikely to embark upon such a national adventure again. But it is difficult to accept in cold blood that the Allied air forces were appropriately employed as a punitive force. Contrary to the view of the British official historians, most civilized men would agree that there
is
a significant moral distinction between the incidental and the deliberate destruction of civilian life in war, and it is hard to look back across a generation with any pride on such a night’s work as the destruction of Darmstadt.

Bomber Command was very well served by its aircrew, and with a few exceptions very badly served by its senior officers, in the Second World War. The gulf between the realities in the sky and the rural routine of headquarters was too great for most of the staff to bridge. Cochrane and Bennett were the only men among Bomber Command’s leaders to do so. High Wycombe was fatally isolated both from the front and from sharp critical debate on policy. Even after all their bitter experience in the early years of war, senior officers were unwilling to face unacceptable realities. Dr Noble Frankland has written that ‘the whole belief that the bomber was revolutionary in the sense that it was not subject to the classical doctrines of war was misguided’,
⁹
and this should have been apparent to the airmen by 1942. The airdropped bomb had shown itself no more potent than any other explosive object. For all the technology embodied in the bomber aircraft, its load once released was an astonishingly crude and imprecise weapon.

The airmen’s great error, in which they have persisted to this day, was their refusal to admit that they overstated their case. Had they chosen to stand on Bomber Command’s undisputed achievements and marvellous courage, their shortcomings and excesses
might have been forgotten. Instead, many prominent British airmen have fought doggedly ever since the war to prove that the bomber offensive was the decisive factor in Allied victory in 1945. Their imprecision about what they sought to achieve has persisted through the intervening generation. The four-volume official history prints forty-nine sets of statistics covering every aspect of German production, hundreds of pages of data on British aircraft and losses, and yet not a single appendix giving details or estimates of German civilian casualties or even numbers ‘de-housed’ by the bomber offensive. The Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden computed after the war that 593,000 German civilians died and 3.37 million dwellings were destroyed, including 600,000 in Berlin alone, from 1939 to 1945.

The bomber offensive partly fulfilled useful purposes for the Allied war effort. Bomber Command entirely satisfied Churchill’s hopes as I have interpreted them at the beginning of 1942, by fighting a long holding-action to buy time before launching
Overlord
on overwhelmingly favourable terms. If the airmen had pitched their demands for resources, their own hopes and their subsequent claims more modestly, history might have judged them more kindly. As it was, the cost of the bomber offensive in life, treasure and moral superiority over the enemy tragically outstripped the results that it achieved.

Beyond those who died flying for Bomber Command, many more outstanding young men somehow used themselves up in the Second World War, leaving pathetically little energy and imagination to support them through the balance of their lives. Surviving aircrew often feel deeply betrayed by criticism of the strategic air offensive. It is disgraceful that they were never awarded a Campaign Medal after surviving the extraordinary battle that they fought for so long against such odds, and in which so many of them died. One night after I visited a much-decorated pilot in the north of England in the course of writing this book, he drove me to the station. Suddenly turning to me in the car, he asked: ‘Has anybody else mentioned having nightmares about it?’ He said that in the past ten years he had been troubled by increasingly vivid and terrible dreams about his experiences over Germany.

A teacher by profession, he thought nothing of the war for years afterwards. Then a younger generation of his colleagues began to ask with repetitive, inquisitive distaste: ‘How could you have done it? How could you have flown over Germany night after night to bomb women and children?’ He began to brood more and more deeply about his past. He changed his job and started to teach mentally-handicapped children, which he saw as a kind of restitution. Yet still, more than thirty years after, his memories of the war haunt him.

It is wrong that it should be so. He was a brave man who achieved an outstanding record in the RAF. The aircrew of Bomber Command went out to do what they were told had to be done for the survival of Britain and for Allied victory. Historic judgements on the bomber offensive can do nothing to mar the honour of such an epitaph.

Appendix A: Bomber Command sorties dispatched and aircraft missing and written off, 1939–45

This record is admittedly incomplete because it does not include minelaying or Special Duties sorties and casualties, and because some squadron and group record books were carelessly kept. But they are the best figures that the Royal Air Force is ever likely to compile. The statistics for crashed aircraft before February 1942 are unreliable because it is not clear which were damaged and which were totally written off.

Appendix B: Specifications and performance of the principal aircraft of Bomber Command and Luftwaffe night-fighters, 1939–45

It is impossible to detail the immense number of different Marks of each aircraft. I have therefore chosen those which relate to the events most closely described in the text. Performance figures are only the most approximate guide, since individual aircraft varied immensely in efficiency and handling. Some Lancasters, for instance, were modified to carry a bombload of ten tons, with front and mid-upper turrets removed.

BRITISH AIRCRAFT

Vickers WELLINGTON IC.
Type: twin-engined medium bomber; crew: 6; length: 60.8 feet; height: 18.75 feet; wingspan: 86 feet; maximum loaded weight 30,000 lb; ceiling: 15,000 feet; cruising speed: 165 mph; maximum speed: 245 mph; bombload: 4,500 lb (with fuel for 1,200 miles)/1,000 lb (with fuel for 2,550 miles); armament: twin .303s in front and rear turrets, single free .303s on beam mountings
¹⁸
; engines: Pegasus XVIII.

Bristol BLENHEIM IV.
Type: twin-engined light bomber; crew: 3; length: 40 feet; height: 9.2 feet; wingspan: 56 feet; maximum loaded weight: 15,800 lb; ceiling: 22,000 feet; cruising speed: 180 mph; maximum speed: 266 mph; bombload: 1,000 lb (with fuel for 1,460 miles); armament: twin .303s in forward under nacelle
¹⁹
; single .303 in rear turret, single .303 rearward fixed firing from engine nacelle; engines: Mercury XV.

Armstrong Whitworth WHITLEY V.
Type: twin-engined medium bomber; crew 5; length: 69.3 feet; height; 12.75 feet; wingspan: 84 feet; maximum loaded weight: 33,500 lb; ceiling: 17,600 feet; cruising speed: 165 mph; maximum speed: 202 mph; bombload: 8,000 lb (with fuel for 630 miles)/3,500 lb (with fuel for 1,930 miles); armament: single free .303 in forward turret, four .303s in rear turret; engines: Merlin X.