BOMBER
COMMAND CONTINUES WW2 RAF JULY 1941 JUNE 1942 WELLINGTON STIRLING 1000-PLANE
RAID COLOGNE DOUGLAS BOSTON ATTACKS ON FRENCH PORTS BREST CHANNEL DASH SCHARNHORST
GNEISENAU PRINZ EUGEN HP HAMPDEN AVRO LANCASTER HP HALIFAX RUSSIA BERLIN
BRISTOL BLENHEIM SIR ARTHUR HARRIS GROUND CREWS
VINTAGE & AUTHENTIC WARTIME SOFTBOUND BOOK
PUBLISHED BY THE AIR MINISTRY (PUBLISHED 1942)
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Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir
Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, GCB, OBE, AFC (13 April 1892 5 April 1984),
commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the
RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief
(AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic
bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In 1942, the
British Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. Harris
was given the task of implementing Churchill's policy and supported the
development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively.
Harris assisted British Chief of the Air Staff Marshal of the Royal Air Force
Charles Portal in carrying out the United Kingdom's most devastating attacks
against the German infrastructure and population, including the Bombing of
Dresden.
Harris emigrated to Southern
Rhodesia in 1910, aged 17, but returned to England in 1915 to fight in the
European theatre of the First World War. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, with
which he remained until the formation of the Royal Air Force in 1918, and he
remained in the Air Force through the 1920s and 1930s, serving in India,
Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. At the outbreak of the
Second World War in 1939, Harris took command of No. 5 Group RAF in England,
and in February 1942 was appointed head of Bomber Command. He retained that
position for the rest of the war. After the war Harris moved to South Africa
where he managed the South African Marine Corporation.
Harris's continued preference for
area bombing over precision targeting remains controversial, partly because
many senior Allied air commanders thought it less effective and partly for the
large number of civilian casualties and destruction this strategy caused in
Continental Europe.
Harris was born on 13 April 1892, at
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, where his parents were staying while his father
George Steel Travers Harris was on home leave from the Indian Civil Service.
With his father in India most of the time, Harris grew up without a sense of
solid roots and belonging; he spent much of his later childhood with the family
of a Kent rector, the Reverend C E Graham-Jones, whom he later recalled fondly.
Harris was educated at Allhallows School in Devon, while his two older brothers
were educated at the more prestigious Sherborne and Eton, respectively;
according to biographer Henry Probert, this was because Sherborne and Eton were
expensive and "there was not much money left for number three".
A former Allhallows student, the
actor Arthur Chudleigh, often visited the school and gave the boys free tickets
to his shows. Harris received such a ticket in 1909, and went to see the play
during his summer holidays. The lead character in the show was a Rhodesian
farmer who returned to England to wed, but ultimately fell out with his pompous
fiancée and married the more practical housemaid instead. The idea of a country
where one was judged on ability rather than class was very inspiring to the
adventurous Harris, who promptly told his father (who had just retired and
returned to England) that he intended to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia instead
of going back to Allhallows for the new term. Harris's father was disappointed,
having had in mind a military or civil service career for his son, but
reluctantly agreed.
In early 1910, Harris senior paid
his son's passage on the SS Inanda to Beira in Mozambique, from where he
travelled by rail to Umtali in Manicaland. Harris earned his living over the
next few years mining, coach-driving and farming. He received a more permanent
position in November 1913, when he was taken on by Crofton Townsend, a man from
near Cork in Ireland who had moved to Rhodesia and founded Lowdale Farm near
Mazoe in Mashonaland in 1903. Harris quickly gained his employer's trust, and
was made farm manager at Lowdale when Townsend went to visit England for a year
in early 1914. Having acquired the skills necessary to ranch successfully in
Rhodesia, Harris decided that he would start his own farm in the country as
soon as Townsend returned. According to Probert, Harris by now regarded himself
"primarily as a Rhodesian", a self-identification he would retain for
the rest of his life.
When the First World War broke out
in August 1914, Harris did not learn of it for nearly a month, being out in the
bush at the time. Despite his previous reluctance to follow the path his father
had had in mind for him in the army, and his desire to set up his own ranch in
Rhodesia, Harris felt patriotically compelled to join the war effort. He
quickly attempted to join the 1st Rhodesia Regiment, which had been raised by the
British South Africa Company administration to help put down the Maritz
Rebellion in South Africa, but he found that only two positions were available;
that of a machine-gunner or that of a bugler. Having learnt to bugle at
Allhallows, he successfully applied for the bugler slot and was sworn in on 20
October 1914.
The 1st Rhodesia Regiment briefly
garrisoned Bloemfontein, then served alongside the South African forces in
South-West Africa during the first half of 1915. The campaign made a strong
impression on Harris, particularly the long desert marchessome three decades
later, he wrote that "to this day I never walk a step if I can get any
sort of vehicle to carry me". South-West Africa also provided Harris with
his first experience of aerial bombing: the sole German aircraft in South-West
Africa attempted to drop artillery shells on his unit, but failed to do any
damage.
When the South-West African Campaign
ended in July 1915, the 1st Rhodesia Regiment was withdrawn to Cape Town, where
it was disbanded; Harris was formally discharged on 31 July. He felt initially
that he had done his part for the Empire, and went back to Rhodesia to resume
work at Lowdale, but he and many of his former comrades soon reconsidered when
it became clear that the war in Europe was going to last much longer than they
had expected. They were reluctant to join the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment, which was
being raised to serve in East Africa, perceiving the "bush whacking"
of the war's African theatre as less important than the "real war" in
Europe. Harris sailed for England from Beira at the Company administration's
expense in August, a member of a 300-man party of white Southern Rhodesian war
volunteers. He arrived in October 1915, moved in with his parents in London
and, after unsuccessfully attempting to find a position in first the cavalry,
then the Royal Artillery, joined the Royal Flying Corps as a second lieutenant
on probation on 6 November 1915.
Harris learned to fly at Brooklands
in late 1915 and, having been confirmed in his rank and then promoted to flying
officer on 29 January 1916, he then served with distinction on the home front
and in France during 1917 as a flight commander and ultimately CO of No. 45
Squadron, flying the Sopwith 1½ Strutter and Sopwith Camel. Before he returned
to Britain to command No. 44 Squadron on Home Defence duties, Harris claimed
five enemy aircraft destroyed and was awarded the Air Force Cross (AFC) on 2
November 1918. Intending to return to Rhodesia one day, Harris wore a
"rhodesia" shoulder flash on his uniform. He finished the war a
major.
Harris returned to Britain in
September 1939 to take command of No. 5 Group. Appointed a Companion of the
Order of the Bath on 11 July 1940 he was made Deputy Chief of the Air Staff in
November 1940 and promoted to the acting rank of air marshal on 1 June 1941.
The Butt Report, circulated in
August 1941, found that in 1940 and 1941 only one in three attacking aircraft
got within five miles (eight kilometres) of their target. As part of the
response Harris was appointed Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of Bomber Command in
February 1942. He was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on
11 June 1942.
In 1942, Professor Frederick
Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell), having been appointed the British
government's leading scientific adviser (with a seat in the Cabinet) by his
friend, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, presented a seminal paper to Cabinet
advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign.
It was accepted by Cabinet and Harris was directed to carry out the task (Area
bombing directive). It became an important part of the total war waged against
Germany.
At the start of the bombing
campaign, Harris said, quoting the Old Testament: "The Nazis entered this
war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone
else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half
a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They
sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
At first the effects were limited
because of the small numbers of aircraft used and the lack of navigational
aids, resulting in scattered, inaccurate bombing. As production of better
aircraft and electronic aids increased, Harris pressed for raids on a much
larger scale, each to use 1,000 aeroplanes. In Operation Millennium Harris
launched the first RAF "thousand bomber raid" against Cologne (Köln)
on the night of 30/31 May 1942. This operation included the first use of a bomber
stream, which was a tactical innovation designed to overwhelm the German
night-fighters of the Kammhuber Line.
Harris was promoted to temporary air
marshal on 1 December 1942 and acting air chief marshal on 18 March 1943.
Harris was just one of an influential
group of high-ranking Allied air commanders who continued to believe that
massive and sustained area bombing alone would force Germany to surrender. On a
number of occasions he wrote to his superiors claiming the war would be over in
a matter of months, first in August 1943 following the tremendous success of
the Battle of Hamburg (codenamed Operation Gomorrah), when he assured the Chief
of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, that his force would be able "to
produce in Germany by April 1st 1944 a state of devastation in which surrender
is inevitable", and then again in January 1944. Winston Churchill
continued to regard the area bombing strategy with distaste, and official
public statements still maintained that Bomber Command was attacking only specific
industrial and economic targets, with any civilian casualties or property
damage being unintentional but unavoidable. In October 1943, emboldened by his
success in Hamburg and increasingly irritated with Churchill's hesitance to
endorse his tactics wholeheartedly, Harris urged the government to be honest
with the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign: "The aim of
the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the
destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption
of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public
utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an
unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle
fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended
aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit
factories."
However at this time many senior
Allied air commanders still thought area bombing was less effective.
In November 1943 Bomber Command
began what became known as the Battle of Berlin: a series of massive raids on
Berlin that lasted until March 1944. Harris sought to duplicate the victory at
Hamburg, but Berlin proved to be a far more difficult target. Although severe
general damage was inflicted, the city was much better prepared than Hamburg,
and no firestorm was ever ignited. Anti-aircraft defences were also extremely
effective and bomber losses were high; during this time the British lost 1,047
bombers, with a further 1,682 damaged, culminating in the disastrous raid on
Nuremberg on 30 March 1944, when 94 bombers were shot down and 71 damaged, out
of 795 aircraft.
Harris was promoted to the
substantive rank of air marshal on 1 January 1944 and awarded the Russian Order
of Suvorov, First Class on 29 February 1944.
After the Southern Rhodesian Prime
Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, visited Harris in May 1944, Southern Rhodesia
asked the UK government to appoint Harris as Governor at the end of the year,
Huggins being keen to install a self-identifying Rhodesian in that office
rather than a high-ranking British figure. Though keen to take the position,
Harris felt he could not leave the war at this key stage, an opinion shared by
Churchill, who turned down the Southern Rhodesian request.
With the leadup to the D-Day
invasions in 1944, Harris was ordered to switch targets for the French railway
network, a switch he protested because he felt it compromised the continuing
pressure on German industry and it was using Bomber Command for a purpose it
was not designed or suited for. By September the Allied forces were well
inland; at the Quebec Conference it was agreed that the Chief of the Air Staff,
Royal Air Force (Portal), and the Commanding General, U.S. Army Air Forces
(Arnold), should exercise control of all strategic bomber forces in Europe.
Harris received a new directive to ensure continuation of a broad strategic
bombing programme as well as adequate bomber support for General Eisenhower's
ground operations. The over-all mission of the strategic air forces remained
"the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military,
industrial and economic systems and the direct support of Land and Naval
forces".
After D-Day (6 June 1944), with the
resumption of the strategic bomber campaign over Germany, Harris remained
wedded to area bombardment. Historian Frederick Taylor argues that, because
Harris lacked the necessary security clearance to know about Ultra, he had been
given some information gleaned from Enigma, but not informed where it had come
from. According to Taylor, this directly affected Harris's attitude concerning
the effectiveness of the post-D-Day 1944 directives (orders) to target oil
installations, as Harris did not know the Allied High Command was using
high-level German sources to assess exactly how much Allied operations were
impairing the German war effort. As a consequence Harris tended to see the
directives to bomb specific oil and munitions targets as a high level command
"panacea" (his word), and a distraction from the real task of making
the rubble bounce in every large German city. Harris was promoted to the
substantive rank of air chief marshal on 16 August 1944.
Historian Bernard Wasserstein notes
that the official history of British strategic bombing says, in what
Wasserstein describes as 'an unusually sharp personal observation', that
Harris made a habit of seeing only one side of a question and then of
exaggerating it. He had a tendency to confuse advice with interference, criticism
with sabotage and evidence with propaganda.
Historian Alfred C. Mierzejewski
argues that both area bombing and attacks against fuel plants were ineffective
against Germany's coal- and rail-based economy and that the bombing campaign
only took a decisive turn in late 1944 when the allies switched to targeting
railway-marshalling yards for the coal gateways of the Ruhr. His summation is
rejected by Sebastian Cox head of the Air Historical Branch (AHB). Cox notes
that half of the oil was produced by Benzol plants located in the Ruhr. These
areas were the primary target of Bomber Command in 1943 and the autumn of 1944.
Cox concludes that the targets were highly vulnerable to area attacks and
suffered accordingly. The American official history notes that Harris was
ordered to cease attacks on oil in November 1944, as the combined bombing had
been so effective that none of the synthetic plants were operating effectively.
The American history also includes information from Albert Speer, in which he
points out that Bomber Command's night attacks were the most effective.
Harris was awarded the American
Legion of Merit on 30 January 1945.
The most controversial raid of the
war took place in the late evening of 13 February 1945. The bombing of Dresden
by the RAF and USAAF resulting in a lethal firestorm which killed a large
number of civilians. Estimates vary but the city authorities at the time
estimated no more than 25,000 victims, a figure which subsequent
investigations, including one commissioned by the city council in 2010,
support. Raids such as that on Pforzheim late in the war as Germany was falling
have been criticised for causing high civilian casualties for little apparent
military value. The culmination of Bomber Command's offensive occurred in March
1945 when the RAF dropped the highest monthly weight of ordnance in the entire
war. The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21/22 April, just
before the Soviets entered the city centre. After that, most of the rest of the
attacks made by the RAF were tactical missions. The last major strategic raid
was the destruction of the oil refinery in Tønsberg in southern Norway by a
large group of Lancasters on the night of 25/26 April.
Whenever the bombing campaign of
World War II is considered it must be appreciated that the war was an
"integrated process". As an example, quoting Albert Speer from his
book Inside The Third Reich, "ten thousand [88mm] anti-aircraft guns ...
could well have been employed in Russia against tanks and other ground
targets". The Soviet commanders clearly recognized Harris' efforts, as
shown by the 29 February 1944 award of the Russian Order of Suvorov First Class
to the air marshal.
After the war, Harris was awarded
the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta First Class on 12 June 1945, advanced to
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 14 June 1945 and appointed a
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil on 13 November
1945. He was also awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the United States
on 14 June 1946 and promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 1 January
1946.
Within the postwar British
government there was some disquiet about the level of destruction that had been
created by the area-bombing of German cities towards the end of the war. Harris
retired on 15 September 1946 and wrote his story of Bomber Command's achievements
in Bomber Offensive. In this book he wrote, concerning Dresden, "I know
that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the
war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our
earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I
will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military
necessity by much more important people than myself." Bomber Command's
crews were denied a separate campaign medal (despite being eligible for the Air
Crew Europe Star and France and Germany Star) and, in protest at this
establishment snub to his men, Harris refused a peerage in 1946; he was the
sole commander-in-chief not to become a peer.
Disappointed to have missed the
opportunity to return to Southern Rhodesia as governor because of the war,
Harris wrote to Huggins in June 1945 that he would like to be considered if the
office were ever open again, and that he would be interested in other Southern
Rhodesian government appointments relating to aviation or perhaps entering
politics there. "If I have deserved anything of my countryRhodesiait
would delight me to have opportunity to serve her further," he wrote.
Huggins replied that he was sympathetic, but that none of these ideas was
practical: Harris would be too old by the time a new Governor was needed; it
might take years for Harris to enter Southern Rhodesian politics as he would
first need to meet residency requirements, then cultivate support in a
constituency; and Huggins felt he could not make promises about aviation posts
with a general election coming up the following year. Harris finally dropped
his dream of a return to Rhodesia, deeming it unworkable, and in 1948 moved
instead to South Africa, where he managed the South African Marine Corporation
(Safmarine) from 1946 to 1953.
In February 1953 Winston Churchill,
now prime minister again, insisted that Harris accept a baronetcy and he became
baronet. In the same year he returned to the UK, and lived his remaining years
in the Ferry House in Goring-on-Thames, located directly adjacent to the River
Thames.
In 1974 Harris appeared in the
acclaimed documentary series The World At War produced by Thames Television and
shown on ITV. In the 12th episode entitled "Whirlwind: Bombing Germany
(September 1939 April 1944)", narrated by Laurence Olivier, Harris
discusses at length the area-bombing strategy that he had developed while
AOC-in-C of Bomber Command.