The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945

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The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 100

by Richard Overy


  60. TNA, AIR 9/150, Bomber Command war room, details of raids and tonnages on German port targets to May 1941.

  61. Ibid., Bomber Command war room, ‘Effort Expended by Bomber Command, May to October 1940’; war room to Air Ministry (Plans), details of all sorties, 11 Oct 1940. The 1944 figures in Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 445–6.

  62. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/56, Douglas to Newall, 9 July 1940; Portal to Douglas, 16 July 1940.

  63. CCO, Portal papers, Walter Monkton (MoI) to Portal, 8 Nov 1940.

  64. Edward Westermann, Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses, 1914–1945 (Lawrence, KS: 2001), 90.

  65. TNA, PREM 3/11/1, Churchill note for Newall, 28 July 1940; Newall to Churchill, 19 July 1940, ‘Note on Attack of German Forests’; AIR 20/5813, ‘Forestry Report on Incendiary Tests with Different Types of Bombs’, 10 July 1941; ‘Report on a Trial of “Razzle” in Standing Crops’, 16 Aug 1940.

  66. Westermann, Flak, 97, 102–3.

  67. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/2, précis of a lecture by Wing-Commander G. Carey Foster.

  68. CCO, Denis Richards Archive, File VIII, Folder A, interview transcripts with Sir Ian Jacob and Sir Robert Cochrane.

  69. Harmon, ‘Are We Beasts?’, 10–14.

  70. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Vol II (London: Cassell, 1957), 567; Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 186–7, for Churchill’s views on bombing as a ‘way of winning the war’.

  71. E.g. Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940–1945 (New York: 2006), 62; Douglas Lackey, ‘Four Types of Mass Murderer: Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Truman’, in Igor Primoratz (ed), Terror from the Sky: The Bombing of German Cities in World War II (Oxford: 2010), 134–5, 144–54; Eric Markusen, David Kopf, ‘Was It Genocidal?’, in ibid., 160–71.

  72. David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: 2004), 320–22.

  73. CamUL, Boyle papers, Add 9429/2c, conversation with Harris, 18 July 1979. Harris also showed the letter to Churchill’s biographer, Martin Gilbert. See Gilbert, Churchill War Papers: Vol II, 492–3.

  74. TNA, AIR 2/7211, ‘Note on the Lessons to be Learned from German Mistakes’, 19 Sept 1940, 3.

  75. CCAC, BUFT DBOps, ‘Review of the Present Strategical Air Offensive’, 5 Apr 1941, 5, and App C, ‘The Blitz Attack by Night’.

  76. TNA, AIR 9/132, RE8 Report, ‘Consideration of the Types of Bombs for Specific Objectives Based on Experience of German Bombing in this Country’, 26 Sept 1940, 2–3.

  77. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/50/7, ‘Notes on the Work of R.E.8’, 18 Nov 1942; TNA, HO 191/203, A. R. Astbury, ‘History of the Research and Experiments Department, Ministry of Home Security, 1939–1945’, 21–3.

  78. TNA, DSIR 4/366, Building Research Laboratory, List of Enquiries Aug 1940–Nov 1941.

  79. For an excellent account see Randall Wakelam, The Science of Bombing: Operational Research in RAF Bomber Command (Toronto: 2009), 24–33.

  80. Hugh Berrington, ‘When Does Personality Make a Difference? Lord Cherwell and the Area Bombing of Germany’, International Political Science Review, 10 (1989), 18–21.

  81. NC, Cherwell papers, F398, Statistical Section, Harrod papers, ‘Bombs and Deaths’, 30 Sept 1940; G181, ‘Air Raid Casualties’ [n.d. but Sept 1940]; ‘House Damage in Air Raids’, 27 Sept 1940; ‘Bombing of London in September, October and November 1940’; G183, ‘Notes of a Conversation with Professor Zuckerman’, 26 March 1941 (attached two charts of Hanover and Frankfurt with zones of population density).

  82. TNA, AIR 9/132, minute by Plans Dept, Air Ministry, 6 Jan 1941; AIR 20/2264, AWAS Report, ‘The Bomb Censuses of Liverpool, Birmingham and London’, 29 Oct 1940; AWAS Report, ‘Bomb Census of Liverpool, Birmingham, London, Coventry, Manchester, Leeds and Special Attacks’, Apr 1941.

  83. CCAC, BUFT 3/26, draft directive [n.d. but June 1941].

  84. TNA, AIR 40/1814, memorandum by O. Lawrence (MEW), 9 May 1941.

  85. See Richard Overy, ‘The “Weak Link”: Bomber Command and the German Working Class 1940–1945’, Labour History Review, 77 (2012), 22–5.

  86. CCAC, BUFT 3/48, ‘The Role of the Long-Range Bomber Force’; ‘Review of the Present Strategical Air Offensive’, 5 Apr 1941, App C, 2.

  87. Ibid., 3/13, Notes on Plan ZZ, 19 Nov 1941, App VI, ‘Attack on an Area of 150 Square Miles’.

  88. TNA, AIR 2/7211, bombing policy memorandum, 19 Nov 1940; AIR 20/25, Air Intelligence to Baker, 23 May 1941.

  89. TNA, AIR 20/25, memorandum on bombing policy by Baker, 7 May 1941.

  90. RAFM, Peirse papers, AC 71/13/61-2, Notes of a speech by Richard Peirse to the Thirty Club in London, 25 Nov 1941, 3.

  91. TNA, AIR 20/4768, memorandum, 23 Sept 1941, ‘The Value of Incendiary Weapons in Attacks on Area Targets’, 2.

  92. CCAC, BUFT DBOps to the director, 6 June 1941.

  93. TNA, AIR 40/1351, AI 3c (Air Liaison), ‘Air Attack by Fire’, 17 Oct 1941.

  94. CCAC, BUFT 3/26, report from BOPs 1 (Sq. Leader Morley), 18 Oct 1941.

  95. Hugh Melinsky, Forming the Pathfinders: The Career of Air Vice-Marshal Sydney Bufton (Stroud: 2010), 59.

  96. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 1, 157–64.

  97. TNA, AIR 9/150, Air Ministry War Room, Bomber Command sorties May–Oct 1940, Nov 1940–Apr 1941; DBOps to DCAS, 11 Sept 1941.

  98. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9, Peirse to Balfour, 27 Nov 1940; Portal to Peirse, 30 Nov 1940.

  99. TNA, Air 14/291, meeting at Air Ministry, 10 Dec 1940; HQ no 7 Group to C-in-C, Bomber Command, 4 Jan 1941.

  100. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 1/File 1, Churchill to Portal, 1 Nov 1940; Churchill to Portal, 30 Dec 1940.

  101. Ibid., Folder 9/File 1940, Peirse to Churchill, 24 Dec 1940; Peirse to Portal [n.d. but Dec 1940]; File 1941, Peirse to Churchill, 1 Jan 1941.

  102. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939–1945 (London: 2004), 241, diary entry for 2 Nov 1940.

  103. CCO, Portal Papers, Folder 1/File 1, Portal to Churchill, 7 Dec 1940; Folder 9/File 1940, Portal to Peirse, 5 Dec 1940; Peirse to Churchill, 24 Dec 1940. Details of raid in Middlebrook, Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries, 111, and TNA, AIR 14/2670, Night bomb raid sheets, Dec 1940, ‘Results of Night Operations, 16/17 December 1940’.

  104. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 1, 159–60.

  105. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9/File 2, Peirse to Portal, 28 Feb 1941.

  106. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/56, ‘Bombing Policy’.

  107. Ibid., draft directive, 9 July 1941; Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 135–7.

  108. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9/File 1940, Peirse to Portal [n.d.].

  109. RAFM, Peirse papers, AC 71/13/60, speech to the Thirty Club, 25 Nov 1941, 11.

  110. TNA, 41/41, RAF Narrative, ‘The RAF in the Bombing Offensive against Germany: Vol III’, 87.

  111. TNA, PREM 3/193/6A, Minister of Information to Churchill, 1 Jan 1941, ‘Conditions in Germany, December 1940’, 2.

  112. CCAC, Bufton papers, BUFT 3/11, ‘Report on the Interrogation of American Legation and Consular Officials in Lisbon, 24–31 July 1941’, 4.

  113. TNA, AIR 20/4768, Air Staff memorandum, 23 Sept 1941.

  114. FO Historical Branch, ‘Churchill and Stalin: Documents Collated for the Anglo-Russian Seminar, 8 March 2002’, doc 9, Broadcast by Mr Churchill, 22 June 1941, 1, 3.

  115. Ibid., doc 11, Telegram from Churchill to Stalin, 7 July 1941.

  116. Bradley Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the Allies Traded Intelligence 1941–1945 (Lawrence, KS: 1996), 11.

  117. Colville, The Fringes of Power, 363, entry for 21 July 1941.

  118. RAFM, Bottomley papers, AC 71/2/29, Peck to Bottomley, 6 Apr 1944, enclosing ‘Address to Thirty Club, 8 Mar 1944’, 1–2.

  119. Middlebrook, Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries, 166–7.

  120. BA-MA, RL2-IV/28, Luftflotte 3, Gef
echtskalender, ‘Durchführung und Erfolg Juli 1941’.

  121. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 2/File 1, Churchill to Portal, 7 July 1941. On the German response see Percy Schramm(ed), Kriegstagebuch des OKW: Eine Documentation, 1940–1941, Band 1, Teilband 2 (Augsburg: 2007), 417–20.

  122. TNA, PREM 3/13/2, Churchill to Lindemann, 7 July 1941; Churchill to Sinclair and Portal, 12 July 1941.

  123. RAFM, Bottomley papers, AC 71/2/115, ‘Operational Photography in Bomber Command Sept 1939–April 1945’, June 1945, 14–29. Robert S. Ehlers, Targeting the Third Reich: Air Intelligence and the Allied Bombing Campaigns (Lawrence, KS: 2009), 96–7.

  124. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9/File 2, Portal to Cherwell, 29 July 1941; Cherwell to Portal, 30 July 1941.

  125. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 205, ‘Report by Mr. Butt to Bomber Command on his Examination of Night Photographs, 18 August 1941’; Melinsky, Forming the Pathfinders, 43–4.

  126. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 2/File 1, Churchill to Portal, 15 Sept 1941.

  127. Ibid., Cherwell to Churchill, 3 Sept 1941; Portal to Churchill, ‘Notes on Lord Cherwell’s Paper’, 11 Sept 1941.

  128. RAFM, Bottomley papers, AC 71/2/115, ‘Operational Photography’, 26.

  129. Interview with Robert Kee in Overy, Bomber Command, 75.

  130. TNA, AIR 41/41, RAF Narrative, vol III, 42. Wakelam, The Science of Bombing, 42–6.

  131. Overy, Bomber Command 74, interview with Wilkie Wanless; TNA, AIR 9/150, Peirse to Balfour, 7 Sept 1941; AIR 20/1979, Bomber Command, aircraft strengths and casualties. Between Sept 1939 and Feb 1941, 93,341 non-operational sorties were flown by day, only 3,157 by night.

  132. TNA, AIR 9/150, BOps to DBOps, 27 Nov 1941; AIR 20/283, Baker (DBOps) to Portal, 28 July 1941.

  133. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 455; TNA, AIR 9/150, DBOps to Deputy Chief of Air Staff, 11 Sept 1941.

  134. Thetford, Aircraft of the Royal Air Force, 317–22, 488–91; Brereton Greenhous, Stephen Harris, William Johnston, William Rawling, The Crucible of War 1939–1945: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Vol III (Toronto: 1994), 604–6.

  135. Ibid., 605.

  136. Sebastian Cox (ed), The Strategic Air War Against Germany, 1939–1945: The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit (London: 1998), 37.

  137. PArch, Beaverbrook papers, BBK/D/329, Air Ministry to MAP, 4 May 1941. On bombs see John A. MacBean, Arthur S. Hogben, Bombs Gone: The Development and Use of British Air-Dropped Weapons from 1912 to the Present Day (Wellingborough: 1990), 66–8; Roy Irons, The Relentless Offensive: War and Bomber Command 1939–1945 (Barnsley: 2009), 190–91, 205–6.

  138. TNA, AIR 20/5813, minute, vice chief of staff, 3 Nov 1941; ‘4lb Incendiary Bomb’, BOps 2b, 2 Jan 1942.

  139. NC, Cherwell papers, F222, minute for Churchill from Cherwell, May 1941; G182, H. W. Robinson to Cherwell, 27 Oct 1941; Chart, ‘Bombs Dropped on Germany July–Dec 1941’; G189, Cherwell to Ministry of Supply, 28 Jan 1942; PArch, Beaverbrook papers, BBK/D/330, Air Marshal Courtney to Beaverbrook, 27 May 1941. Details on bombs from Irons, The Relentless Offensive, 203–5.

  140. Cox (ed), The Strategic Air War, 36.

  141. PArch, Balfour papers, BAL/3, ‘Dunkirk Days–Battle of Britain’ (Balfour was Under-Secretary of State at the Air Ministry). See CamUL, Boyle papers, Add 9429/2C, Boyle to Harris, 22 July 1979, where Beaverbrook was still remembered as ‘one of the instinctive opponents of bombing Germany’.

  142. PArch, Beaverbrook papers, BBK/D/329, Portal to Moore-Brabazon, 10 May 1941, 3.

  143. Gavin Bailey, ‘Aircraft for Survival: Anglo-American Aircraft Supply Diplomacy, 1938–1942’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Dundee: 2010), 183–91.

  144. LC, Arnold papers, Reel 199, handwritten notes, Placentia Bay meeting, 11 Aug 1941.

  145. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 4–6; Melinsky, Forming the Pathfinders, 56–7, 59; Alfred Price, Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare, 1939–1945 (London: 2005), 97–9.

  146. BA-MA, RL2 IV/101, Vorstudien zur Luftkriegsgeschichte: Reichsluftverteidigung: Teil B: Flakabwehr [n.d. 1944], 12–13, 15.

  147. RAFM, Saundby papers, AC 72/12 Box 7, ‘War in the Ether: Europe 1939–1945’, Signals Branch, HQ Bomber Command, Oct 1945, 6.

  148. BA-MA, RL2 IV/101, ‘Flakabwehr’, 15–17.

  149. Werner Held, Holger Nauroth, Die deutsche Nachtjagd (Stuttgart: 1992), 115–17.

  150. BA-MA, RL2 IV/101, ‘Flakabwehr’, 18–19, 23; Bill Gunston, Night Fighters: A Development and Combat History (Cambridge: 1976), 86–9; Price, Instruments of Darkness, 55–9.

  151. Westermann, Flak, 123–4.

  152. TNA, AIR 20/283, minute by DBOps (Baker), 10 Nov 1941.

  153. Melinsky, Forming the Pathfinders, 66–7; Middlebrook, Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries, 210.

  154. CCO, Portal papers, Folder 2/File 2, Churchill to Portal, 27 Sept 1941; Portal to Churchill, 25 Sept 1941, enclosing ‘Development and Employment of the Heavy Bomber Force’, 22 Sept 1941.

  155. Ibid., Portal to Churchill, 2 Oct 1941; Churchill to Portal, 7 Oct 1941.

  156. TNA, AIR 41/41, RAF Narrative, vol III, 111; Middlebrook, Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries, 217–18; Greenhous et al., Crucible of War, 559–60.

  157. Mark Connelly, Reaching for the Stars: A New History of Bomber Command in World War II (London: 2001), 60–2; Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 1, 254–6; Anthony Furse, Wilfred Freeman, The Genius Behind Allied Survival and Air Supremacy 1939–1945 (Staplehurst, Kent: 2000), 199–200.

  158. CCAC, BUFT 3/12, ‘Report of a Visit to Groups and Stations by Wing-Commander Morley, 10 Dec 1941’.

  159. Royal Society, London, Blackett papers, PB/4/4, ‘Note on the Use of the Bomber Force’, 3.

  160. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 1, 328–9.

  161. CCAC, BUFT 3/12, minute for DBOps from Bufton, 27 Feb 1942.

  162. PArch, Beaverbrook papers, BBK/D/330, telegram from Harris to Portal and Sinclair, 18 Sept 1941; RAFM, Harris to Freeman, 15 Sept 1941, 5.

  163. Ibid., 2–3.

  164. PArch, Beaverbrook papers, BBK/D/330, telegram from Harris to Portal, 8 Dec 1941.

  165. Henry Probert, Bomber Harris: His Life and Times (London: 2006), 122–3.

  166. Warren Kimball (ed), Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence: Vol I: Alliance Emerging (London: 1984), 296, memorandum, Churchill to Roosevelt, Pt I, ‘The Atlantic Front’.

  167. LC, Arnold papers, Reel 199, Proceedings of the American-British Joint Chiefs of Staff Conferences, 24 Dec 1941, 2.

  168. Ibid., Annex 1, American-British Strategy, 2, 5.

  169. Kimball (ed), Churchill & Roosevelt Correspondence: Vol I, 314–23, Churchill to Roosevelt, 7 (?) Jan 1942.

  170. USAFA, Colorado Springs (USAFC), Hansell papers, Series III, Box 1, Folder 2, ‘Can We Be Bombed?’ [n.d. but late 1939], 22–3.

  171. NARA, RG94.580, memorandum from the chief of air staff, 10 May 1940; LC, Andrews papers, Box 11, memorandum for the Executive by Carl Spaatz, 5 Jan 1935, ‘Comments on Doctrines of the Army Air Corps’, 1.

  172. Haywood Hansell, The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler (Atlanta, GA: 1972), 53–63, 92–3.

  173. Douglas Lackey, ‘The Bombing Campaign of the USAAF’, in Igor Primoratz (ed), Terror from the Sky: The Bombing of German Cities in World War II (Oxford: 2010), 41–5; Ronald Schaffer, ‘American Military Ethics in World War II: The Bombing of German Civilians’, The Journal of American History, 67 (1980), 320–22; Conrad Crane, ‘Evolution of U.S. Strategic Bombing of Urban Areas’, Historian, 50 (1987), 16–17, 21–4.

  174. On Roosevelt see Jeffery Underwood, The Wings of Democracy: The Influence of Air Power on the Roosevelt Administration 1933–1941 (College Station: 1991), chs 7–8.

  175. TNA, FO 371/23093, Dept of State communiqué from Ambassador Anthony Biddle, 13 Sept 1939; FDRL, President’s personal files, 554, Bid
dle to Roosevelt, 10 Nov 1939.

  176. Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: 1987), 97–8.

  177. NARA, RG 107, Lovett papers, Box 138, memorandum for Lovett, ‘Blackout Alarms’, 24 Dec 1941; Lovett to Donald Douglas (President, Douglas Aircraft Company), 27 Jan 1942; Office of Civilian Defense to all Regional Directors, 22 Dec 1941.

  178. Ibid., Engineer Board, US Army, ‘Traffic Control during Blackouts’, 5 Oct 1942; Joseph McNarney (Deputy Army CoS) to Vice Chief of Naval Operations, 5 June 1942.

  179. Ibid., Box 139, Federal Works Agency, ‘Air Raid Protection Code for Federal Buildings’, Aug 1942, 13–20, 21–5.

  180. Ibid., Box 139, Civilian Front, vol 11, 15 May 1943, 7; HQ Army Service Forces, Periodic Report to Lovett, 2.

  181. Ibid., Box 139, James Landis, ‘We’re Not Safe from Air Raids’, Civilian Front, 15 May 1943.

  182. James Parton, ‘Air Force Spoken Here’: General Ira Eaker and the Command of the Air (Bethesda, MD: 1986), 128–34, 149. Eight Air Force activation in Maxwell AFB, Eighth Air Force, 520.056, Statistical Summary 8th Air Force Operations, 1.

  183. TNA, AIR 14/792, Eaker to Harris, 30 July 1942; Bottomley to Portal, 8 Feb 1942; Baker to Bottomley, 2 Feb 1942.

  184. Richard G. Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (Washington, DC: 1993), 67–71.

  185. Ibid., 48–53.

  186. LC, Arnold papers, Reel 89, Harold George (Asst CoS) to Arnold, 25 Feb 1942.

  187. John W. Huston (ed), American Airpower Comes of Age: General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold’s World War II Diaries, 2 vols (Maxwell, AL: 2002), vol 1, 282–4, 310.

  188. Ibid., vol 1, 304, entry for 30 May 1942.

  189. Based on Probert, Bomber Harris, chs 2, 4–5.

  190. ‘Rabbits’ in CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9/File 3, Harris to Portal, 2 Mar 1942; ‘weaker sisters’, RAFM, Harris papers, H51, Harris to Peck (Air Ministry), 1 May 1942; ‘Fifth Columnists’, CCO, Portal papers, Folder 9/File 3, Harris to Portal, 5 Mar 1942; ‘impertinent’, RAFM, Harris papers, H9, Harris to Bottomley, 13 Jan 1945.

 

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