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RAF Bomber Command was the organisation that controlled the RAF's bomber forces. It was formed on 14 July 1936 from the bomber element of the Air Defence Of Great Britain and absorbed into the new Strike Command in 1968. Bomber Command first found fame during World War II , when aircrews under the command of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris , destroyed a significant proportion of Nazi Germany 's industries and many German cities. Many of Bomber Command's personnel and squadrons during the war were neither British nor part of the RAF; a large proportion came from Commonwealth countries, or were exiles from Occupied Europe . Bomber Command came to prominence again in the 1960s , when it was at the peak of its postwar power, with the V Force of Valiant , Victor and Vulcan Nuclear bombers, and a supplemental force of Canberra light bombers. BOMBER COMMAND 1936-1945 When Bomber Command was formed, Giulio Douhet 's slogan "the bomber will always get through" was popular, and was cited by figures like Stanley Baldwin . Until advances in Radar technology in the late 1930s, this statement was effectively true. Attacking bombers could not be detected early enough to assemble fighters fast enough to prevent them reaching their targets. Some damage might be done to the bombers by AA guns, and by fighters as the bombers returned to base, but that was not the same as a proper defence. Consequently, the early conception of Bomber Command was in some ways akin to its later role as a nuclear deterrent force. It was seen as an entity that threatened the enemy with utter destruction, and thus prevented war. However, in addition to being made obsolete by technology, even if the bomber did always get through, its potential for damage to cities was massively overrated. The problem was that the British Government was basing its data on a casualty rate of 50 per ton of bombs dropped. The basis for this assumption was a few raids on London in the later stages of World War I , by Zeppelin s and Gotha Bombers . Both the government and the general public viewed the bomber as a far more terrible weapon than it really was. The early years of the war At the start of World War II, Bomber Command was hampered by three problems. The first was lack of size; Bomber Command was not large enough to effectively attack the enemy as a pure, stand-alone strategic force. The second was rules of engagement; at the start of the war, the targets allocated to Bomber Command were not wide enough in scope. The British Government did not want to violate international law by attacking civilian targets, and the French were even more concerned lest Bomber Command operations provoke a German bombing attack on France. Since the '' Armée De L'Air '' had few modern fighters, and no defence network comparable to the British Chain Of Radar Stations , France was effectively prostrate before the threat of a German bombing attack. The final problem was lack of good enough aircraft. The main Bomber Command workhorses at the start of the war were the Battle , Blenheim , Hampden , Wellesley , Wellington and Whitley . All had been designed as tactical support medium bombers, and none of them had enough range or ordnance capacity for anything more than a limited strategic offensive. Bomber Command was further reduced in size after the declaration of war. No. 1 Group , with its squadrons of Fairey Battles, left for France to form the Advanced Air Striking Force. This was for two reasons; to give the British Expeditionary Force some air striking power, and to allow the Battle to operate against German targets, since it lacked the range to do so from British airfields. The "Sitzkrieg" (or Phony War ) mainly affected the army. However, to an extent, Bomber Command was not properly at war during the first few months of hostilities either. Bomber Command flew many operational missions, and lost aircraft, but it did virtually no damage to the enemy. Most of the missions either failed to find their targets, or were leaflet dropping missions. The attack in the west in May 1940, changed everything. The Fairey Battles of the Advanced Air Striking Force were partially disabled by German strikes on their airfields at the opening of the invasion of France. However, far from all of the force was caught on the ground. The Faireys proved to be horrendously vulnerable to enemy fire. Many times, Battles would set out to attack, and be almost wiped out in the process. This was somewhat ironic given the fact that due to French paranoia about being attacked by German aircraft, during the ''Sitzkrieg'', the Battle force had actually trained over German airspace at night. Bomber Command itself soon fully joined in the action. With the immensely quick collapse of France, invasion seemed a clear and present danger. As its part in Battle Of Britain , Bomber Command was assigned to pound the invasion barges and fleets assembling in the Channel ports. This was much less high profile than the battles of the Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command , but still vital and dangerous work. From July 1940 to the end of the year, Bomber Command lost nearly 330 aircraft and over 1,400 aircrew killed, missing or PoW. Bomber Command was also indirectly responsible, in part at least, for the switch of ''Luftwaffe'' attention away from Fighter Command to bombing civilian targets. A German bomber on a raid got lost due to poor navigation and bombed London. Churchill consequently ordered a retaliatory raid on the German capital of Berlin. The damage caused was minor, but the raid sent Hitler into a rage. He ordered the ''Luftwaffe'' to level British cities, thus precipitating The Blitz . Like the United States Army Air Forces later in the war, Bomber Command had first concentrated on a doctrine of "precision" bombing in daylight. However, when several late 1939 raids were cut to pieces by the organised German defences, a switch to night attack tactics was forced upon the Command. The problems of enemy defences were then replaced with the problems of simply finding the target. It was common in the early years of the war for bombers relying on dead reckoning navigation to miss entire cities. Surveys of Bombing photographs and other sources published during August 1941 indicated that less than one bomb in ten fell within 5 miles of its intended target. One of the most urgent problems of the Command was thus to develop technical navigational aids to allow accurate bombing. Bomber Command was made up of a number of ''groups''. It began the war with Nos. (RCAF) contributed No. 6 Group and a Pathfinder group, No. 8 Group was formed. Many squadrons and personnel from Commonwealth and other European countries were distributed throughout Bomber Command. No. 6 Group, which was activated on 1 January , 1943 , was unique among Bomber Command groups, in that it was not an RAF unit; it was a Canadian unit attached to Bomber Command. At its peak strength, 6 Group consisted of 14 operational RCAF bomber squadrons,Milberry, Larry (General Editor). ''Sixty Years - The RCAF and CF Air Command 1924 - 1984''. Toronto: Canav Books, 1984. (p. 166), and 15 different squadrons served with the group.Dunmore, Spencer and Carter, William. ''Reap the Whirlwind: The Untold Story of 6 Group, Canada's Bomber Force of World War II''. Toronto: McLelland and Stewart Inc., 1991.(p. 375). Apart from 6 Group, many individual Canadians served with British and other Commonwealth squadrons; by the end of the war, almost a quarter of Bomber Command's personnel were RCAF personnel. {Link without Title} No. 8 Group, also known as the Pathfinder Force, was activated on 15 August , 1942 . It was a critical part of solving the navigational problems referred to above. The navigational problems of Bomber Command were solved by two methods. One was the use of a range of increasingly sophisticated electronic aids to navigation and the other was the use of specialist Pathfinder s. The technical aids to navigation took two forms. One was external Radio Navigation aids, as exemplified by Gee and the later highly accurate Oboe systems. The other was the centimetric navigation equipment H2S Radar which was carried in the bombers. The Pathfinders were a group of elite, specially trained and experienced crews who flew ahead of the main bombing forces, and marked the targets with flares and special marker bombs. No. 8 Group controlled the Pathfinder squadrons. Bomber Command was increasing massively in size. In the early days of the war, it was common for raids to consist of a few tens of aircraft. By late 1941, raids by hundreds of aircraft were regularly being mounted. Strategic bombing 1942-45 The government's chief scientific adviser, Professor Frederick Lindemann was very close to Winston Churchill , who gave him a seat in the Cabinet. In 1942 , Lindemann presented a seminal paper to the Cabinet advocating the "aerial bombing of German cities by Carpet Bombing " in a Strategic Bombing campaign. Due to the inability of Bomber Command to hit specific industrial targets or even whole cities with any accuracy, his paper put forward the theory of carpet, or area, bombing major industrial centers as the only way to effectively attack the Reich war machine. An effect of this policy would also be to destroy as many homes and houses of the workers in those vital industrial centers. Working Class homes were to be targeted because they had a higher density and were more likely to be destroyed by fire. This would displace the German workforce and reduce industrial output. Lindemann's calculations showed that Bomber Command would be able to destroy the majority of German houses located in cities quite quickly. The plan was highly controversial even before it started. However it was considered an integral part of the " Total War " which the German leaders had begun, and the British Cabinet all agreed that bombing was the only option available to directly attack Germany, since an invasion of Western Europe was years away. The Soviet Union was also demanding that the Western Allies do something to relieve pressure on the Eastern Front . The plan was readily accepted by the Cabinet and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris as Air Officer Commanding was charged with carrying out the task. Harris decided to mount a Massive Raid On Cologne on May 30 , 1942 by scraping together virtually every aircraft in Bomber Command that could fly — including those from advanced training units — to form a force of 1,000 aircraft. Cologne was virtually destroyed; only 300 houses in the whole city escaped damage. However, this was not an effort that could be repeated on a regular basis by the RAF in 1942, but had proved that given the right conditions, investment and technology Bomber Command could inflict serious damage. Henceforth the building up of Bomber Command would take up a huge portion of the British industrial war effort. Along with an increase in the size of the Command came a massive increase in the capability of the aircraft it was using. In 1942, the main workhorse aircraft of the later part of the war came into service. The Halifax and Lancaster made up the backbone of the Command, and had a longer range, higher speed and much greater bomb load than the earlier aircraft. The classic aircraft of the Pathfinders, the Mosquito , also made its appearance. A prolonged offensive against the industrial centers of the Ruhr (what the RAF crews called "Happy Valley") in early 1943 caused both major damage and high RAF losses. The series of raids on Hamburg (the after midnight of August 17 / 18 August 1943 , was the opening of Operation Crossbow Neufeld, Michael J. ''The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era''. The Free Press: New York, 1995. (p 198) By April 1944, Harris called off his strategic offensive as the bomber force was seconded (much to his annoyance) to tactical and communications targets in France prior to D-Day . The anti-transport offensive proved highly effective. By late 1944, back attacking Third Reich targets, Bomber Command did have a genuine operational capability to put 1,000 aircraft over a target without extraordinary efforts. Ironically by this time the land battle through Northern Europe was making the Bomber Offensive increasingly meaningless. The most controversial RAF raid of the war took place in the very early morning of February 14 1945 with the Bombing Of The City Of Dresden resulting in a lethal Firestorm which killed several tens of thousands of civilians. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LeftThe Town Of Wesel, Germany In 1945]] The Peak Of Bomber Command's Operations Occurred In The Raids Of March 1945, When Its Squadrons Dropped Their Highest Amount Of Ordnance (by Weight) For Any Month In The Entire War The Targets Included: 267, | "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/information/entry/Munster" class="copylinks">Munster 175, Osnabruck 156 On the 27th, there were attacks on Paderborn 268, Hamm area 150 and smaller raids 541 On the 31st Hamburg was attacked by 469 aircraft |
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