In the discussions following Casablanca, Harris summed up for the American side his strategic achievements so far and his plans for 1943. Essen, he claimed, was ‘smashed out of recognition’ and out of action for two months; Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, Cologne and Wilhelmshaven were ‘badly knocked about’ but not devastated; Hamburg, Duisburg and Stuttgart had had ‘lucky escapes’. His plan was to devastate one city and to damage three others badly each month up to September:31
This will mean 6 cities “Essenised” and another 18 badly knocked about. Taking cities more or less at random from last year’s chief targets, this might work out as follows:–
Devastated Hamburg (counted as two by virtue of its size), Bremen, Duisburg, Wilhelmshaven, Kiel.
Badly Hit Berlin, Bochum, Cassell [sic], Munich, Nuremberg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Leipsig [sic], Hanover, Stuttgart, Gelsenkirchen, Brunswick, Emden, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Magdeburg, Dortmund, Essen.
This was a crude strategy, crudely expressed, and it greatly exaggerated what Bomber Command could actually do to a city, including Essen. The ambition was not random only in the sense that most German cities housed some industry and could therefore be subject to attack; it could also be given a scientific gloss in the calculations supplied by the RE8 division and the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) on the estimated economic damage already done and the potential economic gains from further destruction. This had allowed Portal in November 1942 to present the chiefs of staff with the grisly prediction that Bomber Command in 18 months could kill 900,000 Germans, seriously injure another 1 million, destroy 6 million homes and de-house 25 million people.32 The MEW drew up a detailed list of all the important industrial and commercial targets in the so-called ‘Bombers’ Baedeker’ (once again after the famous German tourist guides). Each installation was awarded a point score: 1+ for factories of leading importance to the war effort; 1 for major plants in major industries; 2 for minor plants in major industries or major plants in minor industries; and 3 for factories of small importance.33 These scores were then calculated with population size to produce a league table of German cities which Harris kept with him at his headquarters. The list eventually reached over 100 cities, with ‘key-point ratings’ attached to each one – ranging from Berlin at number 1 with 545 to Wittenberg at number 104 with a rating of just 9. Harris crossed through each city on the list as it was attacked.34
American commanders rejected the idea of city-bombing and were sceptical of the claim that morale attacks would diminish the German war effort or create a widespread crisis. Portal tried to persuade Eaker in February 1943 that round-the-clock attacks on cities would be strategically valuable – ‘heavy blows delivered on German cities have far greater effect than they did’ – but Eaker would not be drawn in.35 The gulf between the two strategic conceptions, as has often been emphasized, reflected two very different military cultures. American strategic practice was much closer to the German model than it was to the British. Eighth Air Force officers could be genuinely puzzled by exactly what the British strategic aim was. At a meeting called in the Air Ministry in March 1943 by Sydney Bufton, now promoted to Director of Bombing Operations, the American representative asked for an explanation of what Bomber Command was trying to do: ‘Was it to kill Germans; to cause them to expend man hours; or was it to do specific damage to some certain installation?’36 There was an awkward pause until Bufton announced that it was to neutralize German man-hours, a strategic commitment not expressed in any directive. When Eaker sent a draft of the American plans for fulfilling Casablanca to Spaatz in April, Bomber Command’s effort was described no fewer than four times as little more than ‘concentrated attacks against related areas and cities’.37 The assumption in American planning was that Bomber Command would now help the Eighth Air Force, not the other way round.
Unlike Harris, Arnold and Eaker wanted to build on the Casablanca Directive to produce a strategic directive that made greater sense. The driving force behind American planning was the belief that whatever the air forces did over the coming year, they should contribute to making the invasion of Europe possible. The air force mission statement defined ‘fatally weakened’ as ‘so weakened as to permit initiation of final combined operations on the Continent’, which gave bombing a defined strategic purpose.38 Arnold asked the Committee of Operations Analysts in Washington, set up in December 1942 under the prominent lawyer Elihu Root Jr., to draft a list of targets whose destruction would contribute to Axis defeat; staffed by men from business and the professions, the Committee supplied the data on 19 industrial target systems by March 1943.39 Arnold instructed Eaker to work out with Portal the precise number of targets and the degree of operational effort required to destroy them, and by early April the draft plan for a Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) was ready. The final version identified 76 key targets, with the aircraft industry at the top, submarines second and ball-bearings third.40 It was sent on to Bufton by an Air Ministry colleague with a covering note that it was ‘dull as hell’ and needed to be shorter and brighter. It had been drafted chiefly by Eaker and his staff and was based on their fundamental realization that the German air forces had to be defeated first before the subsequent precision bombing of key industrial targets could be carried out without insupportable losses, and it was this argument that separated American from British bombing strategy most clearly. The adoption of a counter-force priority proved to be strategically well founded, as it had been for the German Air Force in 1940.41 The ‘intermediate target’ became in effect the primary target.
The Air Ministry planning department had already tried to alert Portal to the growing threat of the German single-engine fighter force before Eaker’s report was available, so that there was support from both air forces for the shift in priority. Harris sent Eaker a fulsome response, since the new plan was clearly designed for the American market and impinged little on what he hoped to do.42 The report was sent to Washington for Arnold’s approval and in late April Eaker travelled back to the United States to defend his plan before the Joint Chiefs, who approved it on 29 April. This was in some ways a more important moment than the argument at Casablanca since the whole offensive critically relied on political approval in Washington for speeding up bomber allocation for the Eighth Air Force. Late in May Eaker was informed from Air Force headquarters in Washington that the plan had been approved by the president and by Churchill; the Combined Chiefs of Staff endorsed it with Portal’s strong support on 18 May.43 The new Directive for what was codenamed ‘Operation Pointblank’ was issued to Harris and Eaker on 10 June 1943. The close link with the planning for Operation Overlord was explicit. The Combined Chiefs asked for regular reports on the progress of the CBO to help them judge when conditions for invasion were ripe. Portal set up a regular flow of monthly reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee, while Eaker promised Washington that Arnold would get an analysis every two weeks together with a monthly summary. In September the Combined Chiefs confirmed that the CBO was now the ‘prerequisite to “Overlord” ’, with the highest strategic priority.44 Air supremacy was the key to successful invasion, and bombing was its instrument. In America there was at last a sense that a proper air strategy was in place. Assistant Secretary for War Robert Lovett wrote to Eaker in July that the combined offensive ‘ought to have the effect of the famous old “one-two” in prize fighting’.45
These differences in command and strategy were compounded with the gulf separating the two forces in terms of current striking power. Bomber Command had been slowly expanded and modernized for three years before Casablanca and was closer to being able to redeem some of its tarnished promise in the spring of 1943 than the Eighth Air Force, which was still in the difficult throes of constructing a viable organization. Building up an effective bomber force differed markedly from the development of a major land army. Bomber commands consisted of volunteers with a high degree of long-term, expensive and specialized training. The initial equipment was complex and industrially demanding. On both coun
ts loss rates had to be kept as far as possible to a supportable minimum. The nature of air battle required numerous well-equipped permanent bases, an extensive maintenance organization, a large stock of spares and, in the case of the Eighth Air Force, a long trans-oceanic logistics tail. The sharp end of air combat was supported by a ground organization many times larger than the aircrew on which the campaign rested. There was no supporting infantry in air combat.
Bomber Command became a substantial force only in the spring of 1943 as the changeover from medium to heavy-bomber production was finally completed. By March 1943 it was planned to have 49 heavy-bomber squadrons, by June as many as 60 out of a worldwide total of 431 RAF units of all types. Heavy-bomber squadrons made up 7 per cent of RAF squadron strength in September 1942, 14 per cent by the summer of 1943.46 This was still far short of what Harris had wanted. In January 1943 there were still only an average of 514 heavy bombers and crews operationally ready. Harris’s Command reached its peak strength in heavy bombers only in 1944 and 1945; the same was true for pilot strength, which was not much greater in 1943 than it had been in late 1941, though each of the heavier aircraft they flew dropped up to four times the weight of bombs (see Table 6.1 for the growth of Bomber Command). The overall size of the Command was dictated by the need for specialized ground personnel, which meant by the start of 1943 a combat strength of 23,000 aircrew (including training and OTU personnel) and a supporting force of 138,000 men and women, a ratio of 1:6. As the force of heavy bombers and pilots expanded, the ratio changed. By the end of the war there were 49,000 aircrew supported by 174,000 ground staff, a ratio of 1:3.5.47 Women made up 17 per cent of the force by 1944.
The aggregate figures disguised manpower problems. By the summer of 1943 there were substantial shortages of skilled labour, much of it required by industry or by overseas air squadrons. This included a deficiency of 65 per cent of aircraft fitters (I Class), the most important category, and an overall shortage of two-fifths of skilled technicians and more than a third of all other trades.48 There was also a persistent shortage of construction labour for airfields, both for Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force. Heavy bombers required larger airfields, solid runways and extensive depots. In January 1943 there were 32,000 working on building airbases for the American force, 42,000 working for Bomber Command. As demands for training facilities also expanded, so more new bases had to be built. In addition to the 81 Bomber Command operational fields ready by January 1944, there were also 47 for training purposes.49 The Eighth Air Force initially calculated that it would need 61 completed airfields by the end of 1943, but eventually built 120, utilizing 1 million man-months of labour and laying 46 million square yards of concrete. The Royal Canadian Air Force No. 6 Group was promised 15 airfields, but ended up with only 10.50
Table 6.1: Bomber Command Strength in the United Kingdom, 1939–45
Figures for columns 1–3: 1 Jan each year. Figures for columns 4–7: July 1940, December 1941–December 1944, May 1945. Column 8: February 1942, January 1943–5.
Sources: Compiled from TNA, AIR 22/203, War Room Manual of Bomber Command Operations 1939–1945, chart 1; AIR 20/2025, RAF personnel, establishment and casualties; UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/3, Exercise Thunderbolt, Précis no. 10, ‘Administrative Aspects of the Bomber Offensive’.
The pressure on airfield space was reduced by the decision very early in the war to disperse most of the basic training overseas. It is seldom sufficiently acknowledged that the British bombing effort during the war was in reality a British Commonwealth undertaking. Britain was never ‘alone’ during the Second World War. On 17 December 1939 an agreement had been signed with the Canadian government to set up the British Commonwealth Air Training Scheme on bases in Canada. During the course of the war a peak of 73 schools were set up under the scheme, with a further 24 under RAF control. The Scheme turned out 131,000 trained aircrew, including 49,808 pilots and 29,963 navigators. By 1944 over 3,000 completed training each month. The majority (55 per cent) went into the Royal Canadian Air Force (a high proportion for Canadian units in Bomber Command), while the RAF took one-third; the remainder went to the Australian and New Zealand air forces.51 Other British aircrew were also posted to training schools in the United States under the so-called Arnold Scheme. In April 1941 the American Army agreed to allow British participation in the Southeast Air Corps Training Program in the southern United States and 7,885 pilots were sent for basic training, together with 1,200 navigators. The programme was linked with Canadian training, but the failure rate in the United States was high because of the poor level of scientific education among British recruits and the scheme petered out in 1942.52 Although crew were trained for a variety of different combat roles, the most pressing need was for bomber crew and it was here that overseas training had its greatest impact.
The training programme was the prelude to a great expansion of Commonwealth and European participation in the bombing war. There were Free French, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech and Polish crew in Bomber Command, but by far the largest contingents came from the main Dominion states, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Only the Canadian units were large enough to be organized into a separate national organization because Canada, unlike Australia and New Zealand, was not directly menaced by Axis aggression and could confidently send its forces overseas. The RAF had not initially warmed to the idea of separate national units, partly because the complex training pattern made it difficult to keep crew from the same nationalities together as they went through the system. This was the problem with the limited number of Australians who contributed to the bombing war from British bases. Three Australian squadrons were activated, but even these could not be replenished regularly with only Australian airmen, while two-thirds of the ground personnel were British. In the spring of 1943 an effort was made by the Australian War Cabinet to stimulate creation of a distinctly Australian bomber group; there was resistance from the crews, already integrated with RAF units, and eventually an acknowledgement that the personnel needed to operate a full Group could not be freed from the limited labour supply in Australia needed for the Pacific War and wartime industry.53 The pressure from the Canadian government for the ‘Canadianization’ of the units organized in Bomber Command had more success. On 1 January 1943 an entirely Canadian Group, no. 6, was activated under the command of Air Vice Marshal G. E. Brookes. It was spread out across the Yorkshire countryside with headquarters at Allerton Hall, nicknamed ‘Dismal Castle’ on account of its gloomy aspect. In total, 15 Canadian squadrons were formed, though like the Australian units they were not composed entirely of Canadians. The exception was the French Canadian squadron, formed in autumn 1942, where a great effort was made to ensure that it received only French-speaking aircrew.54
The Eighth Air Force was, by contrast, an almost entirely American effort. The structure of the force set up by Spaatz and then Eaker differed from Bomber Command because it also included its own fighter, training and air service commands, which were regarded as integral to the bombing campaign. When Eaker replaced Spaatz as commander of the Eighth Air Force late in 1942, he appointed Colonel Newton Longfellow, commander of the 2nd Bombardment Wing, to take over the Eighth Bomber Command. The force was divided into three Air Divisions, and then into Combat Wings each with their own tactical headquarters, each wing made up of three heavy bombardment Groups, or squadrons, and modelled, despite the differences in vocabulary, on Bomber Command practice. The force was still very small at the start of 1943, partly because of the decision to take a large component of aircraft and crew to establish the Twelfth Air Force in the Mediterranean theatre. Some 27,000 men and 1,072 aircraft were transferred at a critical point in the build-up of the offensive, leaving Eaker temporarily with just 27,000 men and 248 heavy bombers.55 The diversion left the Eighth Air Force as little more than a skeleton. By April there were still only 250 heavy bombers, of which around half were serviceable at any one time, a reflection of the difficulty in establishing an effective supply organization an
d the need for extensive modification of the B-17s for actual combat conditions. Even by June 1943 the serviceability rates for heavy-bomber units was little more than half.56 In the second half of 1943, however, the Eighth Air Force began to expand rapidly, reaching its peak strengths, like Bomber Command, in late 1944 and early 1945 (see Table 6.2 for the build-up of the Eighth Air Force).
Even more than the RAF, the American organization relied on very extensive base facilities and a large non-combat cohort to service and maintain the force. Among the many problems facing the Eighth Air Force in the first half of 1943, the issue of supply – everything from aircrew to spare parts – was the most pressing. For Bomber Command the logistics were straightforward. For the Eighth Air Force all the combat material, except for heavy aircraft, which could be flown across the northern Atlantic, had to come by ship and be stored in large service depots set up at each bomber base to handle the incoming resources. A Truck Transport system was established which by the end of 1943 could move 1.5 million ton-miles each month. The seven principal storage depots covered an area of more than 9 million square feet.57 The most urgent need was for service personnel. In the late spring Arnold sent Maj. General Follett Bradley, Inspector General of the Army Air Forces, to England to help organize an effective programme to supply the trained manpower necessary to keep the Eighth Air Force flying. The ‘Bradley Plan’ called for 190,000 personnel in the Service Command to match the planned size of the force, but the figures were always behind target in 1943, partly because around 88 per cent of the air force had to be shipped across the Atlantic in competition with vital supplies for the Mediterranean and the build-up of forces for the eventual invasion of France.58 By June 1943 five bomber Groups had arrived in England without their ground crews or operational equipment and had to double up on bases which had them.59 The Service Command rejected the offer of help from the RAF and insisted that American aircraft should only be maintained by American workmen, but many aircraft arrived in England in need of extensive modification. To Arnold’s complaints about the low level of combat readiness of the Eighth Air Force by the summer of 1943, Eaker retorted that aircraft should have been prepared for combat in the United States rather than rely on modification depots in England, which lacked the means to convert aircraft quickly.60 It took most of the year before serviceability and replacement rates for American heavy bombers could keep more than half the air force flying.
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 43