RAF Bomber Command

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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 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.

1 Bomber Command 1936-1945
- 1.1 Strategic bombing 1942-45
  - 1.1.1 Casualties
2 The "balance sheet"
3 Bomber Command 1946 – 1968
4 Commanders-in-Chief
5 Battle honours
6 Further reading
7 Footnotes

[edit] 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 Zeppelins and Gotha bombers. Both the government and the general public viewed the bomber as a far more terrible weapon than it really was.

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. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Groups. No. 1 Group was soon sent to France, as indicated above. It was, however, returned to Bomber Command control after the evacuation of France, and reconstituted. No. 2 Group consisted of light and medium bombers who, although operating both by day and night, remained part of Bomber Command until 1943, when it was removed to the control of Second Tactical Air Force, to form the light bomber component of that command. Bomber Command also gained two new groups during the war: No. 6 Group and No. 8 Group "Pathfinders".

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 in that it was comprised entirely of Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadrons. The RCAF attached 14 bomber squadrons to the RAF, including 6 Group, and by the end of the war, almost a quarter of Bomber Command's personnel were RCAF personnel.[1]

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 Pathfinders. 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.

[edit] 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 effecively 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 Battle of Hamburg) in mid 1943 was one of the most successful Command operations, although Harris' extension of the offensive into the Battle of Berlin failed to decimate the capital and cost his force over 1,000 crews through the winter of 1943-44.

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.

The 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: March 1, Mannheim by 478 aircraft; 2nd, Cologne 858 aircraft; 3rd, Kamen 234, Dortmund-Ems Canal, 220; 4th, small raids; 5-6th, Chemnitz 760, (1,223 smaller raids); 6th-7th, small raids; 7-8th, Dessau 526, Hemmingstedt 256, Harburg 234 (1,276 smaller raids); 8-9th, Hamburg 312 Kassel 262 (805 smaller raids); 10th small raids; 11th Essen 1,079 aircraft; 12th Dortmund 1,079; 13th Wuppertal and Barmen 354; 14th, Herne and Gelsenkirchen 195, Datteln and Hattingen (near Bochum) 169; 14-15th, Lützkendorf 244, Zweibrücken 230 (smaller raids 812 sorties); 15-16th, Hagen 267, Misburg 257 (smaller raids 729); 16-17th, Nuremberg 231, Würzburg 225 (smaller raids 171); 17-18th, small day raids of total of 300 aircraft; 18-19th Witten 324, 277 Hanau (smaller raids 844); 19th, No. 617 Squadron RAF using six Grand Slam bombs hit the railway viaduct at Arnsberg; 20-21st, Böhlen 224, Hemmingstedt 166 (smaller raids 675). The daytime total on the 21st was 497; the nighttime total on the 21-22nd was 536, the 22nd daytime total was 708. On the 22-23rd and in daylight on the 23rd, about 300 bombers carried out small raids. On the 23-24th, 195 Lancasters and 23 Mosquitos from 5 and 8 Groups carried out the last raid on the town of Wesel. No aircraft were lost. (It is claimed that Wesel was the most intensively bombed town, for its size, in Germany: 97% of the buildings in the main town area were destroyed. The population, which had numbered nearly 25,000 on the outbreak of war, was only 1,900 in May 1945.) The attack was part of 537 sorties flown as tactical attacks in support of the British Army’s crossing of the Rhine on the 24th. On March 25 there were attacks on towns with communication support for German troops defending the Rhine: Hanover 267, 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.

The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21-22 April, when 76 Mosquitos made six separate attacks just before Soviet forces entered the city centre. Afterwards most of the rest of the bombing raids made by the RAF were tactical support attacks. The last major strategic raid was the destruction of the oil refinery at Tonsberg in southern Norway by 107 Lancasters, on the night of 25-26 of April.

Once the surrender of Germany had occurred, the Allied high command turned its attention to Japan. RAF Bomber Command represented a significant resource as the proposed invasion of Japan approached. Plans were put in place to send a detachment of about 30 British Commonwealth bomber squadrons to bases on Okinawa, under the code name Tiger Force and there was a reorganisation of groups within Bomber Command to facilitate this. However, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred before any part of the force had been transferred to the Pacific.

[edit] Casualties

Overall, Anglo-American bombing of German cities claimed between 305,000 and 600,000 civilian lives.^[1] About two thirds of these civilians died during attacks by Bomber Command.^{[citation needed]} One of the most controversial aspects of Bomber Command during WWII was the area bombing of cities. Until 1942 navigational technology did not allow for any more precise targeting than at best a district of a town or city by night bombing. All large German cities contained important industrial districts and so were considered legitimate targets by the Allies. Thus the attacks of the British Bomber Command -unlike the attacks of the US 8th Air Force in daylight- were mostly targeting highly populated city centres. The single most destructive raids in terms of absolute casualties were those on Hamburg (45,000 dead) in 1943 and Dresden (25,000–35,000 dead^[2]^[3]) in 1945. Each caused a so called firestorm and left tens of thousands dead. Other large raids on German cities which resulted in high civil casualties were Darmstadt (12,300 dead), Pforzheim (17,600 dead^[4]) and Kassel (10,000 dead).

The idea that the area bombing by the RAF of German cities, particularly in the last few months of the war, represented a regrettable or excessive campaign is not widely held, and the case that it rises to the level of a war crime is even less widely subscribed to. "In examining these events [aerial area bombardment] in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property, as the conventions then in force dealt only with the protection of the wounded and the sick on the battlefield and in naval warfare, hospital ships, the laws and customs of war and the protection of prisoners of war."^[5]

Mention must also be made of the extremely high casualty rate suffered by RAF Bomber Command crews, who suffered 55,573 dead, 4,000 wounded and 9,784 prisoner. These fatalities included over 38,000 RAF aircrew (of all nationalities), 9,900 Royal Canadian Air Force personnel, and over 1,500 aircrew from the European occupied countries. It is illustrative that members of the Australian squadrons of Bomber Command equalled only two percent of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) personnel, but the 4,050 killed represented 23% of the total number of RAAF personnel killed in action (5,367) during World War II. No. 460 Squadron RAAF, which had an aircrew establishment of about 200, experienced 1,018 combat deaths during 1942-45 and was therefore effectively wiped out five times over.

Taking an example of 100 airmen:

55 killed on operations or died as result of wounds
3 injured (in varying levels of severity) on operations or active service
12 taken prisoner of war (some injured)
2 shot down and evaded capture
27 survived a tour of operations

In total 364,514 operational sorties were flown, 1,030,500 tons of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action.

The very high casualty levels suffered give testimony to the dedication and courage of Bomber Command's aircrew in carrying out their orders. Statistically there was little prospect of surving a tour of 30 operations. This was because for much of the war the loss rate hovered around 5%, about 1 in 20 aircraft would, on average, be shot down - although obviously there was great variation here, on some occasions the loss rate exceeded 10% - sometimes much higher than that.

A couple of instances of outstanding bravery must be mentioned. With the Germans breaking through, 12 Squadron, flying obsolete Fairey Battles, was ordered to attack 2 bridges on the Albert Canal near Maastricht, on May 12 1940. The whole squadron stepped forward to volunteer and 5 aircraft, all that were available, took off. Four Battles were shot down by intense flak and fighter attack, the fifth staggered back to base heavily damaged. One of the four shot down was piloted by Flying Officer Garland - diving from 6,000 feet in the face of intense fire, he succeeded in breaking one of the bridges. He and his observer Sgt, Tom Gray received the posthumous award of the Victoria Cross.

On May 14, 71 Battle and Blenheim bombers made an all out effort against the German bridgeheads over the Meuse - 40 were shot down by flak and fighters. A second example occurred on December 24, 1944. 24 Pathfinder aircraft were attempting to mark a rail junction near Cologne and encountered fierce opposition. Six were shot down. One of these was the aircraft piloted by Squadron Leader R.A.M Palmer of 109 Squadron - on loan to 582. As an Oboe leader he had to fly straight and level over the target area. Flak set two of his engines on fire and he came under fighter attack. Despite this he pressed on, and scored direct hits on the target before spiralling down in flames. The citation to his posthumous award of the Victoria Cross referred to his "record of prolonged and heroic endeavour". He was killed on his 110th operation.

These examples could be multiplied many times over.

[edit] The "balance sheet"

Some commentary needs to be made as to the effectiveness of Bomber Command's operations and its overall contribution to winning the war. The Command was overwhelmingly committed to the area offensive against Germany and it should therefore primarily be judged in that context.

The aim of breaking the morale of the German working class, the ostenstible aim of the offensive, must be accounted a failure. The scale and intensity of the offensive was an appalling trial to the German people and the Hamburg attacks, particularly, profoundly shook the Nazi leadership. However on balance the indiscriminate nature of the bombing and the heavy civilian casualties and damage stiffened German resistance to fight to the end. In any case as Sir Arthur Harris put it, the Germans living under a savage tyranny were "not allowed the luxury of morale".

Sir Arthur Harris himself believed that there was a relationship between tonnage dropped, city areas destroyed, and lost production. The effect of Bomber Command's attacks on industrial production is not so clear cut. The British Bombing Survey at the end of the war was deliberately under-resourced, for Churchill wanted to put Dresden behind him. The much better provided US survey was little concerned with the RAF area bombing campaign. It pointed to the great success of the USAAF's attacks on Germany's synthetic oil plants starting in the spring of 1944 - this had a crippling effect on German transportation and prevented the Luftwaffe from flying to anything like its nominal order of battle. Further, in going for targets they knew the Germans must defend the American escort fighters were able to inflict crippling losses on the Luftwaffe's fighter force. However it should be pointed out that the RAF also made a great contribution to the oil offensive as its abilities to attack precision targets had greatly improved- by mid 1944 it was mounting huge bombing raids in daylight too. Speer, Hitler's Minister of Armaments noted that the larger British bombs did much more damage and so made repair more difficult, and sometimes impossible.

In terms of overall production decrease resulting from the RAF area attacks, the US survey, based upon limited research, found that in 1943 it amounted to 9% and in 1944 to 17%. Relying on US gathered statistics the British survey found that actual arms production decreases were a mere 3% for 1943, and 1% for 1944. However they did find decreases of 46.5% and 39% in the second half of 1943 and 1944 respectively in the metal processing industries. These losses resulted from the devastating series of raids the Command launched on the Ruhr Valley at these times.

This apparent lack of success is accounted for in several ways. The German industrial economy was so strong, its industrial bases so widely spread, that it was a hopeless task to try and crush it by area bombing. Further, up until 1943 it is undoubtedly the case that Germany was not fully mobilised for war, Speer remarked that single shift factory working was commonplace, and so there was plenty of slack in the system. It has been argued that the RAF campaign placed a limit on German arms production. This may be true but it is also the case that the German forces did not run out of arms and ammunition and that it was manpower that was a key limiting factor, as well as the destruction of transport facilities and the fuel to move.

Having dealt with the negative side of the case it is now time to put the positive. The greatest contribution to winning the war made by Bomber Command was in the huge diversion of German resources into defending the homeland, this was very considerable indeed. By January 1943 some 1,000 Luftwaffe night fighters were committed to the defence of the Reich - mostly twin engined Me 110 and Ju 88. Most critically, by September 1943, 8,876 of the deadly, dual purpose 88mm guns were also defending the homeland with a further 25,000 light flak guns - 20/37mm. The 88mm gun was the best artillery piece of the war, an effective AA weapon, it was a deadly destroyer of tanks and lethal against advancing infantry. These weapons would have done much to augment German anti-tank defences on the Russian front.

To man these weapons the flak regiments in Germany required some 90,000 fit personnel, and a further 1 million were deployed in clearing up and repairing the vast bomb damage caused by the RAF attacks. To put this into perspective General Erwin Rommel's German forces defending Normandy in 1944 comprised 50,000, and their resistance caused the Western Allies grave problems.

This diversion to defensive purposes of German arms and manpower was an enormous contribution made by RAF Bomber Command to winning the war. By 1944 the bombing offensive was costing Germany 30% of all artillery production, 20% of heavy shells, 33% of the output of the optical industry for sights and aiming devices and 50% of the country's electro-technical output which had to be diverted to the anti-aircraft role.

In Spandau prison shortly after the war's end Speer was unequivocal about the effect of this: "the real importance of the air war was that it opened a second front long before the invasion of Europe. That front was the skies over Germany...The unpredictbility of the attacks made the front gigantic...Defence against air attacks required the production of thousands of anti aircraft guns, the stockpiling of tremendous quantities of ammunition all over the country, and holding in readiness hundreds of thousands of soldiers...As far as I can judge from the accounts I have read, this was the greatest lost battle on the German side".

From the British perspective it should be noted that the RAF offensive made a great contribution in sustaining morale during the dark days of the war, especially during the bleak winter of 1941-42. It was the only means that Britain possessed of taking the war directly to the enemy at that time.

[edit] Bomber Command 1946 – 1968

In the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear that the world had changed. In addition, the coming of the jet presaged an equally important change. In order for Bomber Command to keep up technologically in the early postwar years, B-29 Superfortresses were pressed into service as the Boeing Washington. However, they, and the Avro Lincoln, were only stopgap measures until the first of the new jet aircraft could come into service.

That first jet was the English Electric Canberra light bomber, some of which remain in RAF service in 2006 as photo reconnaissance aircraft. The Canberra proved to be an extremely successful aircraft, being exported to many countries and being license-built in the United States. The next to enter service was the Vickers Valiant, the first of the V bombers.

The V bombers were conceived as the replacement for the wartime Lancasters and Halifaxes. Three aircraft were developed, which many argue was a waste of resources. They contend that one design should have been pursued enabling a larger production run, however this is with 20/20 hindsight, it not being possible to predict which designs would be successful at the time. The V bombers became the backbone of the British nuclear forces. The Valiant, Handley Page Victor and Avro Vulcan were classic designs of British aviation.

1956 saw the first operational test of Bomber Command since WWII, and its last major action in anger. The Egyptian Government nationalised the Suez Canal during that year, and the British Government decided to take military action. During the Suez Crisis, Bomber Command Canberras were deployed to Cyprus and Malta and Valiants were deployed to Malta. The Canberra performed well, but the Valiant had problems. Since the Valiant had just been introduced into service, this was hardly surprising. The Canberras were also vulnerable to attack by the Egyptian Air Force, which fortunately did not choose to attack the crowded airfields of Cyprus (RAF Akrotiri and RAF Nicosia holding nearly the whole RAF strike force, with a recently reactivated and poor quality airfield taking much of the French force).

Over 100 Bomber Command aircraft took part in operations against Egypt. By WWII standards, the scale of attack was light, but it did the job at hand.

Suez was the last major operational test of Bomber Command, but it was far from its last operation. During the following twelve years, Bomber Command aircraft frequently deployed overeseas to the Far East and Middle East. They were particularly used as a deterrent to Sukarno's Indonesia during the Konfrontasi. A detachment of Canberras was also permanently maintained at Akrotiri in Cyprus in support of CENTO obligations.

As the remaining V bombers came into service in the late 1950s, the British nuclear deterrent was gaining notice. The first British atomic bomb was tested in 1952, with the first hydrogen bomb being exploded in 1957. Operation Grapple saw Valiant bombers dropping hydrogen bombs over Christmas Island.

Nuclear annihilation came dramatically to world attention during 1962. The Cuban missile crisis was one of the nearest brushes with nuclear conflict the world has seen. During that tense period, Bomber Command aircraft maintained continuous strip alerts, ready to take off at a moment's notice. Heavy bombers were effectively doing what Fighter Command had done in 1940 in terms of reaction time. However, at no time did the Prime Minister take the decision to disperse the Bomber Command aircraft to satellite airfields, lest that be viewed as an aggressive step.

By the early 1960s, doubts were surfacing about the ability of Bomber Command to pierce the defences of the Soviet Union. The shooting down of a U-2 spyplane in 1960 confirmed that the Soviet Union did have surface-to-air missiles capable of reaching the heights that bombers operated at. Since WWII, the philosophy of bombers had been to go higher and faster. That found its ultimate expression in the XB-70 Valkyrie, developed for the USAF. With the deprecation of high and fast tactics, the new mantra became ultra low level attack. However, since the Bomber Command aircraft were not designed for that kind of attack profile, problems were caused. Those problems were primarily airframe fatigue. The Valiant was the first to suffer. Severe airframe fatigue meant that all Valiants were grounded in October 1964, and permanently withdrawn from service in January 1965. Low level operations also reduced the lifespan of the Victors and Vulcans.

Bomber Command's other main function was to provide tanker aircraft to the RAF. The Valiant was the first bomber used as a tanker operationally. Trials had been carried out with air to air refuelling using Lincolns and Meteors, and had proved successful, so many of the new bombers were designed to be able to be used in the tanker role. Indeed, some Valiants were produced as a dedicated tanker variant. As high level penetration declined as an attack technique, the Valiant saw more and more use as a tanker. With the introduction of the Victor B2, the earlier models of that aircraft were also converted to tankers. The withdrawal of the Valiant from service caused the conversion of many of the Victors to tankers to be greatly speeded up. The Vulcan also saw service as a tanker, but not until an improvised conversion during the Falklands War. Ironically, in the tanker role, the Victor not only outlived Bomber Command, but also all the other V bombers by nine years.

In a further attempt to make the operation of the bomber force safer, attempts were made to develop stand-off weapons. With a stand-off capability, the bombers would not have to penetrate Soviet airspace. However, efforts to do so had only limited success. The first attempt was the Blue Steel missile. It worked, but its range meant that bombers still had to enter Soviet airspace. Longer range systems were developed, but failed and/or were cancelled. This fate befell the mark 2 of the Blue Steel, its replacement, the American Skybolt ALBM and the ground-based Blue Streak program.

However, attempts to develop a stand-off nuclear deterrent were eventually successful. The American Polaris missile was procured, and Royal Navy submarines built to carry them. The modern form of the British nuclear force was thus essentially reached. Royal Navy submarines relieved the RAF of the nuclear deterrent mission in 1969. However, by that point, Bomber Command was no more.

In the postwar period, the RAF slowly declined in strength, and by the mid-1960s, it was clear that the home command structure needed rationalisation. To that end, Fighter Command and Bomber Command were merged in 1968 to form Strike Command. Coastal Command also followed shortly thereafter.

Bomber Command had a successful period of existence. Its early potential was at first not realised, but with the development of better navigation and aircraft, it carried the war to the enemy in spectacular fashion. Postwar, it carried Britain's nuclear deterrent through a difficult period, and continued the fine traditions existing in 1945.

[edit] Commanders-in-Chief

At any one time several air officers served on the staff of Bomber Command and so the overall commander was known as the Air Officer Commander-in-Chief, the most well-known being Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris. The commanders-in-chief and their dates of appointment are listed below with the rank which they held whilst in post.

14 July 1936 - Air Chief Marshal Sir John Steel
12 September 1937 - Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt
3 April 1940 - Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal
5 October 1940 - Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse
8 January 1942 - Air Vice Marshal J E A Baldwin (Acting C-in-C)
22 February 1942 - Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris
15 September 1945 - Air Marshal Sir Norman Bottomley
16 January 1947 - Air Marshal Sir Hugh Saunders
8 October 1947 - Air Marshal Sir Aubrey Ellwood
2 February 1950 - Air Marshal Sir Hugh Lloyd
9 April 1953 - Air Marshal Sir George Mills
22 January 1956 - Air Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst
20 May 1959 - Air Marshal Sir Kenneth Cross
1 September 1963 - Air Marshal Sir John Grandy
19 February 1965 - Air Marshal Sir Wallace Kyle

[edit] Battle honours

Honour: "Berlin 1940-1945": For bombardment of Berlin by aircraft of Bomber Command.
Honour: "Fortress Europe 1940-1944": For operations by aircraft based in the British Isles against targets in Germany, Italy and enemy-occupied Europe, from the fall of France to the invasion of Normandy.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Footnotes

^ German Deaths by aerial bombardment (It is not clear if these totals includes Austrians, of whom about 24,000 were killed (see Austrian Press & Information Service, Washington, D.C) and other territories in the Third Reich but not in modern Germany)
- 600,000 about 80,000 were children in Hamburg, Juli 1943 in Der Spiegel © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003 (in German)
- Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls lists the following totals and sources:
  - more than 305,000 (1945 Strategic Bombing Survey);
  - 400,000 Hammond Atlas of the 20th Century (1996)
  - 410,000 R. J. Rummel, 100% democidal;
  - 499,750 Michael Clodfelter Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618-1991;
  - 593,000 John Keegan The Second World War (1989);
  - 593,000 J. A. S. Grenville citing "official Germany" in A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994)
  - 600,000 Paul Johnson Modern Times (1983)
^ Bergander, Götz , Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen (Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1977)
^ The Bombing of Dresden in 1945:Falsification of statistics, by Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, a detailed critique of problems with David Irving's book .
^ Pforzheim - 23 February 1945 by Christian Groh. In German. http://babelfish.altavista.com translates the web page from German into a form of English which can be used to verify facts.
^ International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363 The Law of Air Warfare (1998)