History of the Second World War (101 page)

The British Air Staff theory and doctrine is summed up in the Official History,
The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany,
written by Sir Charles Webster and Dr Noble Frankland:

The strategic air offensive is a means of direct attack on the enemy state with the object of depriving it of the means or will to continue the war. It may, in itself, be the instrument of victory or it may be the means by which victory can be won by other forces. It differs from all previous kinds of armed attack in that it alone can be brought to bear immediately, directly and destructively against the heartland of the enemy. Its sphere of activity is, therefore, not only above, but also beyond that of armies or navies.†

† Vol. I, p. 6.

Although actual experience gained by the end of the 1914-18 war had been very slight, it was this concept of strategic bombing that enabled the heads of the R.A.F. to uphold its independence against the encroachments of the Army and Navy during the inter-war years, and the repeated efforts of their chiefs, particularly during the first post-war decade, to get it abolished as a separate Service and subordinated to them as before.

Moreover the concept was, as a natural reaction, developed by Trenchard and his devoted assistants in extreme ‘pro-bomber’ terms. They argued that the Air Force and its activities were absolutely different in kind, and in a different sphere, from those of the Army and Navy. While this helped to bolster the shaky independence of the Air Force, such denigration of the tactical side of air action proved mistaken. A second argument, arising from the first, was that the best means of air defence was a bombing campaign against the heartland of the enemy — dubious even in theory, it became preposterous in view of the preponderance of air strength that Germany had attained by the late 1930s. The doctrinal intensity with which this argument was pursued led on to a conclusion that was epitomised in the phrase, too readily accepted by Stanley Baldwin when Prime Minister, ‘the bomber will always get through’. That was a fallacy to which both the R.A.F. and the U.S.A.A.F. adhered until their severe losses in 1943-4 forced them to recognise that command of the air is the prime prerequisite to an effective strategic bombing offensive.

Another pre-war assumption was that air attacks would be made in daylight, and directed against specific military and economic targets, since any other form of bombing would be ‘unproductive’. Trenchard did stress the ‘morale’ effects of bombing on the civil population, and night flying was practised to some extent, but in general there was a tendency in the Air Staff, shared by most of the R.A.F., to underrate operational difficulties.

In view of the constancy and consistency with which the strategic bombing concept was proclaimed during the inter-war years, future historians will be puzzled to find that when war came in 1939 the R.A.F. possessed no suitable force for strategic bombing. That was not altogether due to the financial stringency and policy of economy that prevailed during the 1920s and early 1930s, but also to R.A.F. misconceptions about the kind of force, and aircraft, needed for the purpose. Even when the obsolescent biplane types began to be replaced after 1933, there were still too many light bombers useless for strategic bombing, while the majority of the newer types — Whitleys, Hampdens, Wellingtons — were not good enough even by the standard of the period. Out of the seventeen heavy bomber squadrons available in 1939 only the six equipped with Wellingtons were reasonably effective. Moreover, the force was handicapped by a shortage of adequately trained aircrew — largely due to prolonged concentration on light two-seater machines — as well as to a lack of navigational and bombing aids.

Trenchard, who had retired from office as Chief of the Air Staff at the end of 1929, and been elevated to the House of Lords, continued during the next decade to have a great influence in the R.A.F. through his disciples. He, and they, also continued to put bombers first long after it was known that the Luftwaffe had attained a great superiority. The Air Staff’s ‘Scheme L’, drawn up early in 1938, was designed to provide seventy-three bomber squadrons compared with thirty-eight fighter squadrons by the spring of 1940 — a ratio of nearly 2 to 1 (and in number of aircraft actually more). After the Munich crisis of September 1938, the Air Staff’s revised ‘Scheme M’ increased the programme to eighty-five bomber and fifty fighter squadrons — thus raising the 1 to 2 ratio of fighters to bombers to just under 3 to 5.

Trenchard deplored this change, slight though it was, and as late as the following spring argued in the House of Lords that the 2 to 1 ratio of bombers to fighters ought to be maintained, and was the best deterrent to the Luftwaffe. Yet it was obviously chimerical — since the German bombing force was already close on double the strength of the British, while the expansion of a bombing force took much longer than that of a fighter force.

Fortunately a more realistic attitude had begun to take shape in the Air Staff. As early as 1937, Sir Thomas Inskip, the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, had expressed his doubts, suggesting that it would be better to destroy a German bomber force over England than by bombing it on its aerodromes or in its factories. Then early in 1939 Air Vice-Marshal Richard Peck — who in the 1920s had been the young head of the ‘Plans’ branch and formulated many of Trenchard’s bomber arguments for the Cabinet — was brought back from India, where he had been senior Air Staff Officer for three years, to become Director of Operations. He had come to revise his views in the light of the actual situation, like many of the younger men, and soon after the outbreak of war he convinced the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Cyril Newall, that it was vital to increase the fighter scale. His arguments were reinforced by the fact that the prospects of effective air defence were now improved by the development of radar for early detection, accompanied by the advent of new and faster types of fighter, the Hurricane and the Spitfire. So in October the order was given to form eighteen more fighter squadrons for the defence of Britain. That decision, speedily implemented, proved of vital importance in turning the scales of the Battle of Britain a year later, in July-September 1940. Without it the air defence of Britain could hardly have held out against the heavy and prolonged attack of the Luftwaffe.

The revival of a more realistic view also led the Cabinet, and the Air Staff, more reluctantly, to agree that in the circumstances of 1939 Britain might be wiser not to initiate strategic bombing, if the Germans refrained — at any rate until her bomber force was much stronger and her fighter force had been built up to a better proportion.

The irony of the situation, and of the Air Staff’s planning, is epitomised in the comment of the Official History:

Since 1918 their strategy had been based on the conception that the next war could not be won without strategic bombing, but when it broke out Bomber Command was incapable of inflicting anything but insignificant damage on the enemy.*

* Vol. I, p. 125.

For the reasons outlined above, the R.A.F. abstained from anything more than very restricted action during the Polish campaign and the so-called ‘phoney war’ period that followed — the dropping of propaganda leaflets over Germany and occasional attacks on naval targets. Moreover the French, who feared bombing reprisals still more, were opposed to Bomber Command operating from French bases, while themselves believing — like the Germans — only in the tactical value of bombers, in co-operation with the Army. The Germans, in contrast to the British, had nursed the belief that the Gotha raids of World War I had been a failure in all respects, and had virtually abandoned the concept of strategic bombing from their planning.

Although the British Air Staff had plans for air attack on German industrial centres in the Ruhr, they were not allowed to put them into practice. That was probably fortunate, as the attacks would have been made in daylight by bombers that were slow and defenceless. Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, the Commander-in-Chief of R.A.F. Bomber Command from 1937 to 1940, himself thought such an operation would bring only prohibitive losses for results of questionable value. In December 1939 the Wellingtons of R.A.F. Bomber Command suffered severe losses in daylight raids on naval targets, from German fighters directed by a primitive form of radar, without achieving effective bombing results — whereas the less efficient Whitley which had been used for leaflet raids at night suffered no losses at all in operations between mid-November and mid-March. As a consequence of this contrasting experience Bomber Command raids were confined to night-time after April 1940. That showed the fallacy of the Air Staff’s pre-war view that daylight bombing would be possible without heavy loss.

Another fallacy, that a specific target could be easily found and hit, was longer in becoming evident — mainly because photographic reconnaissance of results did not become general until 1941, so that undue reliance was placed on crews’ reports — which were often wildly in error, as came to be known later.

The bombers and dive-bombers of the Luftwaffe played a dominant part in the April invasion of Norway, as they already had in the September invasion of Poland, and were still more dominant in the May invasion of the West, operating in conjunction with the panzer forces. But the R.A.F. remained averse to co-operation with the Army, and still insistent on its doctrine of specifically strategic bombing. Thus Bomber Command had little effect — even less than was possible — on the course of these tremendously crucial campaigns. Some spasmodic attacks on the advancing German Army by the Air Component with the B.E.F., particularly directed against the Meuse bridges, were costly without being effective. It was not until May 15 that the War Cabinet, now headed by Winston Churchill, authorised the use of Bomber Command to attack east of the Rhine. That night ninety-nine bombers were sent to strike at oil and railway targets in the Ruhr — and this Is generally dated as the start of the strategic air offensive against Germany. But Bomber Command overestimated, and long continued to overestimate, the results and effects of this and subsequent strategic bombing attacks.

Air Staff plans for the development of attacks on oil targets in Germany were postponed by the urgent threat of the Luftwaffe’s attack on England from July onwards, and during this ‘Battle of Britain’ period Bomber Command was directed to strike at enemy ports, shipping, and barge concentrations, as well as at airframe and aero-engine works — to hinder and weaken German invasion prospects.

Meanwhile the German bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, and of other cities subsequently, had begun to change the climate of opinion in Britain, and diminish repugnance to the idea of indiscriminate bombing. That change of feeling was much accentuated by the bombs that were dropped by error on London on August 24. All these cases were, actually, products of misinterpretation — if quite natural ones — as the Luftwaffe was still operating under orders to conform to the old, and longstanding, rules of bombardment, and exceptions hitherto arose from navigational mistakes. But they created a growing desire to hit back at German cities, and indiscriminately. Awareness that Bomber Command now constituted Britain’s only offensive weapon in the near future, deepened both the instinct and the desire. Both were particularly evident in Mr Churchill’s attitude.

The change of view and attitude in the mind of the Air Staff, however, largely came from operational factors. Their weakening both to operational reality and to Churchill’s pressure was shown in their directive of October 30, 1940, ordering that oil targets be attacked on clear nights, and cities on other nights. That embodied, quite clearly, their acceptance of the idea of indiscriminate, or ‘area bombing’.

Both these aims, and views, manifested an excess of optimism. It was as nonsensical to think that Bomber Command could hit the small oil plants in Germany with the poor bombing means available in 1940, as it was to believe that the German people’s morale would crack and the Nazi regime be discredited by the bombing of cities.

The gradual accumulation of factual evidence about the effect of specific raids forced the Air Staff to admit their ineffectiveness. Even in April 1941 the theoretical average error of drop was assumed to be 1,000 yards — which meant that small oil plants would usually be untouched. However, the controversy was diverted by the need to throw Bomber Command’s resources against German naval bases and submarine bases during the 1941 crisis in the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’. Bomber Command’s reluctance to help in this sea-crisis showed a combination of short-sightedness and doctrinal rigidity.

In slow modification of, and gradual retreat from, its original position, Bomber Command attempted after July 1941 to strike at ‘semi-precise’ targets such as the German railway system. These, too, were replaced as targets by large industrial areas when the weather was not clear. But even this modified idea was found to be futile in practice. The Butt report of August 1941, made after careful investigation, indicated that only one-tenth of the bombers in the raids on the Ruhr even found their way to within five miles of their assigned target*, let alone the theoretical 1,000 yards. The mastery of navigation was all too clearly the prime problem of Bomber Command. Operational difficulties, combined with outside pressure, eventually forced the Air Staff to realise: ‘that the only target on which the night force could inflict effective damage was a whole German town’.†

* Official History, vol I, p. 178.

†
ibid
., p. 233.

As the inaccuracy of British bombing became clearer, increasing emphasis was given by the Air Staff to the effect on the morale of the civil population — in a word, to terrorisation. Breaking the enemy people’s will to fight was becoming as important as breaking the enemy forces’ means to fight.

Churchill was becoming increasingly critical of the continued optimism shown by the Air Staff, particularly in their September 2 plan for breaking Germany with a force expanded to 4,000 bombers, and their confidence that this object could be achieved in six months. Impressed by the Butt report, and others, he pointed out that an increase in accuracy would quadruple the bombing effects, and in a more economical way. He also questioned the Air Staff optimism about German morale and defences, telling Sir Charles Portal, now Chief of the Air Staff: