Bomber Harris

[Advisor]

I recall reading somewhere that "Bomber" Harris was the only WWII British military leader who was not honored after the war because of the bombing of civilian targets in Germany; and by association, the aircrew of Bomber Command were not fully recognized for their part in defeating Germany.
Why was this? Was it because the British public, and by extension, British political leaders, wanted to disown the devastating effects of the air war...acts that were cheered for during the war? Did Harris fall out of favor with the powers that be? Seems a pretty crappy thing if true.

[Bombardier]

http://www.militaryimages.net/imagehost/images/Snapper/harris.jpg

Hi Advisor
Interesting topic with many differing views about why Bomber Harris and Bomber Command were treated they way they were.

His technique of 'saturation' or 'area' bombing of German cities, causing countless civilian losses and enormous destruction, has been a matter of contention ever since.

I believe that although Bomber Command did so much to win the war while bombing Industrial Targets, the collateral damage was devastating and our Government at the time made great efforts to disassociate themselves from it at the end of the war. Infact if I remember correctly Churchill himself produced a paper which belittled the efforts and results of Bomber Command, only to withdraw it when he was reminded that it was himself that ordered most of the raids.

Despite their importance and contribution towards winning the war no campaign medal was ever issued for members of bomber command.

Sir Arthur Harris was an exception commander who won the respect of the vast majority of his contemporaries including Churchill, Eisenhower and Montgomery, who said of Harris: “I doubt any single man did more in winning the war than he did. I doubt whether that is generally realised”.

In 1946, Harris retired from the RAF and embarked on a successful business career in South Africa, but later returned to Britain where he was made a baronet. In 1992, eight years after his death, a monument was erected in central London, stirring up the debate about 'Bomber' Harris and his role in the war effort.

Responding to criticism over the destruction of Dresden, Germany
Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris:
We've been accused of murder. What would we have been accused of had we let Hitler and *his* bloody gang win the bloody war? As for Dresden, it's simple, any psychiatrist can explain it: it's all to do with German brass bands and Dresden shepherdesses! All I can say is that all the German towns *put together* aren't worth the bones of a British grenadier!


Great Topic Advisor (Y)

[John A Silkstone]

While doing my A levels on military history, I had privy to some government documents.

It would appear the Bomber Harris and Winston Churchill were not the best of friends and the main argument was about Dresden. The gist of it was that Bomber Harris was told to bomb Dresden with incensory bombs to set the town alight. This brought in all the local fire fighters from surrounding towns and villages and two hours after the bombing the second wave was sent in which resulted in the fire fighters being killed.
Harris didn’t want to do this but was ordered too.

Silky

[Unregistered]

My dear old Dad flew in Lancasters from 1942.

He recalls that Bert Harris was held in great respect by his aircrew, who resented his treatment at the end of the War as an insult to them. He was one of several who left their campaign medals on the table at the end of hostilities, feeling that Bomber Command people were treated badly.

The Dresden raids were mounted at the end of the War in response to a request by the Soviet Union. Dresden was an important communications nexus, and the Soviets were worried about Wermacht forces striking at theirs from the south. It is possible that by then those forces existed only in the imagination of the Berlin bunker, still transmitting orders to units long destroyed.

By that time Allied bombers were rather scratching for targets, and anything to accommodate the gallant Russian ally...

Churchill did get cold feet about the bombing, a bit late in the day. Ungrateful too - for a long time Bomber Command, and later the US Air Force were the only people taking the war to Germany. Harris had stood on the roof of the Air Ministry watching the raids on London and vowed "They will reap the whirlwind". The British government agreed. The Germans believed in terror bombing: they had trained in Spain, then put the lessons into practice over Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and other places. In fact societies still held together under the bombs, but it was close enough that mass bombing must have seemed a reasonable strategy at the time - a belief that persisted into the nuclear era.

So, bombing was decided on as a proper course. Ideally industrial and military targets would have been the priority, killing soldiers and industrial workers, and wrecking facilities. Two problems: aiming mechanisms and the Luftwaffe. The first was tied up with navigation, not so easy then.

The second was crucial. First the RAF remembered what Fighter Command had done to Luftwaffe daylight raids in 1940, even escorted raids, causing the Germans to shift to night bombing. Bombing had to take place at night, which meant you couldn't sometimes be sure of hitting the right country, let alone the right city, so further precision was out and if civilians were under the bombs then tough - it was Hitler who declared Total War and he certainly practised it, especially in Russia.

When the Americans entered the War, the US Air Force felt they could wage effective daylight precision bombing, relying on good bombsights and very well armed aircraft. Back to my dear old Dad. Returning in the morning light from a night raid, his squadron saw a large force of Flying Fortresses heading west into Germany, some ten miles further south. In just the few minutes the US craft were in view, from his mid-upper gun dome Dad watched five Fortresses go down. There were no flashes from ground guns or from Ack-Ack shellbursts: fighters did this, probably using the same tactics as had broken up the 1940 clouds of Dorniers - take the attackers straight and level from the front, and you will get some knockdowns even before the bomber formations break up and individual planes can be dealt with singly.

The US took such heavy losses they were effectively pulled out of the line until long range escort fighters became available. The RAF continued with night bombing, with the same constraints as before in terms of targetting. No-one suggested leaving Berlin standing and both air forces worked on flattening cities as well as factories. Recall my earlier point about taking the war to Germany: neither we nor the Soviets got into Germany proper much before the end of 1944.

Gradually better navigation and aiming systems became available, so that Dad's experienced squadron was used increasingly for specialist jobs ("But it still took a hell of a lot of us to sink the bloody Tirpitz!"). 1944 daylight raids on Munich arms factories, still beyond the range of fighter cover are remembered as bloody hairy,and didn't do much for the centre of Munich, now beautifully rebuilt as it used to be (a bit soulless though), but even for specialist squadrons it was thought useful to let the home of Nazism know that Nemesis was on its way.

That world is gone, and it is hard now to see it through the eyes of the people who had to cope with it at the time, all with imperfect knowledge and in the face of the most effective armed forces since the Roman Legions. I recall that George Orwell, who had fought in Spain as well as enduring the London bombs, remarked that a depth charge on a U-boat was disproportionately horrifying because it killed a lot of high quality young men. By contrast a bomb on a town killed merely a cross-section of society. I am not sure I would buy that now, but I might have back then.

Perhaps it is possible to criticise one decision. Bert Harris was monomaniac about the bombing, and was extremely resistant to the diversion of aircraft to the Battle of the Atlantic. The U-Boats damn near throttled us. The Navy did extremely well and always displayed the sort of courage we almost take for granted in Nelson's children, but the German submarines were only really beaten when long range bombers, mainly Liberators but including at least one Lancaster with my ancestor in it, were put on the case.

[Bombardier]

Excellent Info mate. So which Squadron did your Father fly with?
Would love to see any pics you may have from around that time (Y)

[Unregistered]

Thanks, Bombardier. I will be paying my respects to the revered ancestor soon, and will open a bottle of rare malt I park at his place, cos he and I are the only people we know who appreciate it properly. I will verify and expand what I can, and come back here.

He talks about it now, and I get the occasional really scary story. What he and I regret is his own father's silence about the Somme, which the Grandpa never broke. On that subject, you might like to look at the Guardian Review for 11 November 2006, where Richard Holmes discusses the poetry of the non-famous guys. Some of it is obviously very good,and Holmes observes that most of it is cheerful and undefeatist. You seem to be on here regularly, so can judge whether the article is worth posting to the proper thread.

Jeff

[Private Parts]

Much is written by, mainly, those with a left wing agenda, vilifying Harris. Yet you never see this sort of pond life articulate on the destruction of our Cities in the early years of WW2.
Today, Coventry and Dresden have twinned, forgiveness and contrition replacing hatred and warmongering. The reason that Dresden took so much of a pasting was because everything leading up to the attack came right.
In warfare, there are so many factors to make a plan go wromg, that 'Plan B' is essential, but on the night of February 13th 1945, every single tactic, planned down to the last detail, with such precision, came right, and as a result, Dresden was annihilated. For which the chattering classes have forever pilloried Harris.
But just go back to the night of November 14th 1940, and Operation Moonlight Sonata. 500 bombers dropped 150,000 fire bombs and 503 tons of high explosives as well as 1300 parachute mines on The City of Coventry. In fact it was Hitler's intention to obliterate the City from the map. He even coined the phrase: To Coventrate, meaning to completely destroy.
This, ofcourse, wasn't the first of the bombing raids on Coventry and there were many more to follow, the death toll wouldn't reach the biblical proportions of Dresden but "As you sow, so shall you reap."
Today the two Cities are a thriving modern phoenix of their wartime shells. Both have new cathedrals, where services of remembrance and forgiveness are held. But Dresden is always the City that is quoted as suffering the worst destruction. There is a deafening silence from the so called: British Intelligensia in the forming of the word: Coventrate.
Margaret Thatcher said that in her lifetime the troubles of the world emanated from Central Europe and the English speaking countries of the world have paid to put it right..........with their blood.
In saying that. she was only paraphrasing Sir Arthur Harris.

[PanzerBob]

I'm one who in our own times has seen the end result of mass killing, (A preventable case in this event). I still say war is hell, the Germans inleashed this hell upon themselves, PERIOD. I'd say the Germans were lucky Manhatten was slower in producing it's evil spawn, because I'm sure the 3rd Reich would have looked like a Mushroom Farm in short order. Bomber Harris was a victim of post-war propaganda.

I'd say anybody who berates Dresden, wasn't fighting the freakin' war up close and personnal!!

Don't get me wrong I hate the death and carnage that war spews out, but, once the Dogs of Wars have been let loose, alot of people are going to die, FACT!! and alot of things are going to get broke, Fact!!

Nitpicking, second guessing, and revising history, to paint our brave men as criminals is the supreme act of a gutless coward.

(My namesake died in a Lanc over Germany, I'm sure he'd be appalled by what happened to Harris as well.)

IMHO Bob sal;

[Capt. Cheatham]

I'm one who in our own times has seen the end result of mass killing, (A preventable case in this event). I still say war is hell, the Germans inleashed this hell upon themselves, PERIOD. I'd say the Germans were lucky Manhatten was slower in producing it's evil spawn, because I'm sure the 3rd Reich would have looked like a Mushroom Farm in short order. Bomber Harris was a victim of post-war propaganda.

I'd say anybody who berates Dresden, wasn't fighting the freakin' war up close and personnal!!

Don't get me wrong I hate the death and carnage that war spews out, but, once the Dogs of Wars have been let loose, alot of people are going to die, FACT!! and alot of things are going to get broke, Fact!!

Nitpicking, second guessing, and revising history, to paint our brave men as criminals is the supreme act of a gutless coward.

(My namesake died in a Lanc over Germany, I'm sure he'd be appalled by what happened to Harris as well.)

IMHO Bob sal;

Well put, Bob....I could not agree more. My Dad was in the Phillipines at the end of the war, and if not for the atomic bombing of Japan, would surely have been part of the invasion of Japan. Seems I never hear any remorse or guilt about the hundreds of thousands of Chinese that the Japs killed between 1937-1945, certainly many more civilians died in China thru atrocities (IE the Rape of Nanking), than German civilians that died via the allied bombings, day or night. I'm sure that those who survived Aushwitz, Bergen-Belsen, or Dachau are not losing any sleep over the fact that 80,000 of the enemy died one night in a fire raid, or a 100,000 in an atomic blast.

No one should ever forget why we were at war, and that the goal of the Allies in Europe was to insure that Germany never, ever again would make war upon another country. The end justified the means, and remains so today.

[Hollis]

They did the best with what they had to work with at the time.