Bomber Command

 

 

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

+ This reminds me of an episode in Max Hasting’s Bomber Command, where a Blenheim Light Bomber got struck by lightning on a foggy night and lost its primitive navigation system. When the plane reemerged from mists, the crew thought they were following the Rhine River (when it was actually the Thames) and dropped their payload on what turned out to be an RAF airfield. Fortunately, they killed only a bunch of nearby sheep because even in perfect daylight the Blenheims could rarely hit their targets.

+ Hastings’ book, originally published in 1979, is one of the best accounts of the origins of modern warfare, its absurdities, delusions and daily atrocities. The early debate inside the RAF was whether the bombing campaigns against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy would be “precision” (i.e., against designated targets like power plants, shipyards, oil refineries, military factories) or “area bombing” (i.e., the bombing of industrial cities.)

The question proved academic because if the British bombers flew by daylight nearly a third of them would be shot down or disabled before they reached their targets. If they flew by night, which soon became the preferred method, they would rarely come within miles of hitting their targets. Often they had no idea where they were dropping their bombs, hitting Hamburg when they were meant for Berlin. Several squadrons couldn’t even find Norway.

We think of the firebombing of Dresden as one of the great crimes of World War II. But in fact the bombing of civilian areas had been the de facto British policy since 1941 and Churchill became one of its strongest and most unapologetic advocates. Since even in daylight, it proved nearly impossible for British bombers to hit specific targets, like oil depots or communications centers, bombing cities became the default strategy.

The justifications came later under the anodyne term: morale degradation. The theory being that if the bombers couldn’t destroy factories, they could at least blow up the communities–homes, groceries, streets, schools, theaters–lived in by industrial workers, who after enduring such destruction would lose faith in their own government and rise up against it. This was foolhardy, as England’s own experience during the Blitz should have proved. It’s almost universally true that the bombing of cities, from London to Berlin, Hanoi to Baghdad, Kabul to Kiev–solidifies the resistance of the bombed and makes them want to slit the throats of their bombers.