211: How to Build a Bombing Campaign

Description

This episode delves into the often-overlooked early years of Britain’s Bomber Command during 1940, revealing a story of ambitious plans, flawed assumptions, and determined aircrews. We explore how Bomber Command transitioned from pre-war theory to desperate anti-invasion efforts, laying mines and attacking German harbors as the threat of a Nazi landing loomed. Beyond the immediate crisis, we uncover the enduring belief – championed by Churchill – that strategic bombing held the key to victory, despite early failures and a fundamental misunderstanding of the challenges ahead, setting the stage for the massive campaigns to come. Join us as we uncover the realities of early war bombing and the unwavering faith in a strategy that would define much of the conflict.

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Transcript

Summary

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 209 - The Battle Before Britain Pt. 3 - How to Build a Bombing Campaign. This week a big thank you goes out to Ron and Springfield for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members. You can find out more about supporting the podcast over at historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. For what I think are pretty obvious reasons, the majority of the discussion around the Battle of Britain focuses on the air battles over Britain during the summer and autumn of 1940. This is where the fate of the campaign would be decided, and it was also the area where the British could focus in which they were very clearly winning, doing a great job really. But there were all kinds of other things happening in the war at this time, which were directly related to the ongoing air battle over Britain but were not, well the air battle of Britain. One of these was the efforts by RAF Bomber Command to maintain their own bombing campaign of German targets. These efforts were important, and they would have an important impact on the German invasion preparations throughout the summer, but they were still overshadowed both by the actions of Fighter Command as well as by the efforts of Bomber Command later in the war which dwarfed anything that they could accomplish in 1940. Bomber Command was also nearing a year in the war which had not resulted in a lot of clear success, and instead many of the operations they had undertaken had resulted not just in failure but catastrophically costly failures as well. Because we are going to spend the majority of the rest of this series discussing Fighter Command, this episode is going to focus solely on these actions from Bomber command during the first year of the war. It would be a time of learning, but also would make it clear, at the cost of many lives, that so much of the theory that had driven the creation and expansion of Bomber Command was at best incomplete and at worst completely wrong.

Just like many other air forces around the world the RAF fully believed that strategic bombing would be a critical part of how a nation would win a war during the interwar years. The belief was that a bombing force, even one the size of what was within the grasp of Bomber Command or the Luftwaffe in the late 1930s could have a decisive impact in the war, even perhaps knocking a nation out of the war through a quick and powerful bombing strike, a bolt out of the blue kind of event. Part of this was driven by the belief that bombers were safe from aerial interception, through the use of their own speed and well as the armament that they carried. The machine guns present on bombers, and particularly the power operated gun turrets that would begin to appear on Bomber Command aircraft before the war were felt to give enough protection from enemy aircraft that they no longer really needed to worry about them. The plan for these bombers was to launch a true strategic bombing campaign, and one that targeted cities not just isolated military targets. The plans, as they exited in late 1937 was that Bomber Command would follow a series of plans if a war started with Germany. These were each given a Number, WA1, 4, and 5 being the most important which were plans to attack the Luftwaffe, German rail and road communications, and then on German war industry particularly German oil supplies which had long been identified as one of the core weaknesses of the German war machine. These plans would be further refined in the years that followed as the capabilities of the Luftwaffe and the RAF continued to evolve. This idea of bombing population centers was a critical part of strategic bombing theory during the 1920s and 1930s, with the belief that attacks against those population centers would quickly cause the morale of a nation, and its willingness to continue the fight, to collapse. I only point this out because it is a bit funny that the nation that had built a Bomber fleet with the strict purpose of a strategic bombing campaign against cities would instead be on the receiving end of that type of campaign, by an air force in the Luftwaffe that had spent most of the interwar years focusing on tactical army support, not strategic bombing at all. There was some pessimism about the abilities of Bomber Command, even from within the service itself, which result in at least one lengthy report in 1939 about the inability of the forces at the RAFs disposal to actually achieve what it would need to in a war. This mindset would have important ramifications because it set up Bomber Command to be in an awkward position where it was built for one thing, the attacks on Germany, but when the war started the British really did not want to do anything to encourage the German bombers to start their own bombing efforts, because it was felt that the British were unprepared. Added to this was pressure from the French to try and minimize air attacks on any type of civilian target out of concern that it would be French cities that would be on the receiving end of German bombing efforts. In essence Bomber Command shifted from a service designed for an offensive campaign to a defensive campaign which tried to keep the “gloves on” for all of the bombing forces in Western Europe during the Phoney War period. In retrospect this was a maybe a good idea, because the results of the bombing raids that were launched were far short of expectations, and the costs were far greater than anticipated.

The events of the early months of the war were different than what many strategic bombing advocates during the interwar years had predicted. And this was because from September 1939 to May 1940 there was not a lot of strategic bombing happening during the war. During the Polish campaign the Luftwaffe was of course heavily focused on events in Poland, and while there were a few Allied bombing raids of German targets they were strictly focused on relatively isolated military targets like the German fleet base an Wilhelmshaven. The French were never going to be the ones to initiate a bombing campaign of German targets because, if the RAF was not prepared for the war in 1939 the French were in an even worse position in the air. Instead they favored husbanding their bomber strength until they were required to assist with the inevitable ground war which would eventually happen, even if they did not know when. Also, there was something to be said for force conservation, the French and British plan was to win the long war, after their industrial powers had been fully utilized to simply out build the German, but that took time. Every experienced pilot that was killed in the early months of the war was a pilot that they would not have when the next generation of aircraft were introduced, and the bombing campaigns began in earnest. The only major campaign that the British bombers would undertake was a leaflet dropping campaign over Germany, where the goal was to drop informational leaflets over German cities under the belief that this would in some way cause the German citizens to rise up against Hitler. With the benefit of hindsight these efforts seem absurd, quaint, honestly I would use the word silly here, especially when compared with the scale of destruction of bombing raids later in the war. You might use the word funny, but that is probably inappropriate because while the British were dropping leaflets over Germany the Luftwaffe was bombing the streets of Warsaw causing immense damage and no small number of civilian casualties. But at the time there was the honest belief in London that the Germans did not support Hitler, and that all they needed was a little push to cause them to lash out at the government and defeat Germany from within. It is one of those early war efforts that at the time seemed reasonable, but it would not work, and then it would be overtaken by what would happen later.

The more reasonable operations undertaken by Bomber Command would the raids against German naval targets. Naval targets had the benefit of often being somewhat separated from civilian areas, with the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven presenting many options for bombing attacks with essentially no risk of really hitting anything that was civilian in nature. This would cause the prewar plans for bombing raids against German warships in the port to be activated after the start of the war. Some some reconnaissance flights over the German anchorage the bombing efforts began in earnest, but the results would end up being less than spectacular. Over the course of the Phoney War period about 61 tons of bombs would be dropped by British bombers against German naval targets, both in Wilhelmshaven and in the North Sea. This represented over 850 total bombing sorties, which means there were 850 individual bombers that would launch their attacks, and they would be able to claim just 7 direct hits. And even those hits only resulted in one U-boat and one Minesweeper actually sunk, with the cruisers Admiral Scheer and Emden damaged. The reason for this would be similar to the reason that almost all early war bombing raids were only marginally successful, it was really hard to find targets and it was really hard to hit them. During these early months the typical British bombing raid was far more disjointed than they would be later in the war, and instead of massive aerial armadas and a constant bombing stream the individual bombers and squadrons were often sort of doing it on their own. This resulted in many smaller attacks, but also many more instances where the bombers got lost and could not even find their targets. This was try both during the daylight bombing and during night bombing efforts, although the later added the additional challenge of, you know, being at night. The initial costs of the daylight raids though would force more and more of the bombing sorties to be at night, even if they were less successful in finding their targets and dropping bombs. Overall the results were disappointing, but mostly in comparison to expectations that had been set before the war for what Bomber Command would accomplish. It was not fault of the crews or the machines that those expectations were simply too high, and the lofty goals and promises made by Bomber command leadership were simply impossible. They had been fueled not by realistic analysis but instead by over promises to try and justify greater funding, with the fear being that if realistic expectations were used then there would be different decisions made about how the RAF should spend their available funds.

While the Phoney War would see little offensive British bombing effort, there was still a plan to launch just such a campaign if and when the Germans started an invasion of France. The general idea was that as soon as such an invasion started, the gloves would come off and Bomber Command would begin an operation against the German industrial targets that were concentrated in the Ruhr region. These targets had the benefit of being relatively close to French and British airfields, and their dense positioning in the Ruhr just made things all the easier. But when the Germans crossed the Belgian and Dutch borders on May 10th, the plan to launch this offensive had not yet been approved by the British cabinet. This episode is not the time to go into a full discussion of the events over France, Germany, and the Low Countries over the course of the German invasions of May and June 1940. There are just a few important themes and moments that are worth highlighting, as they relate to future events in some interesting ways. The first is actually from the German perspective, and the bombing of Rotterdam. While Rotterdam was not the first major bombing raid against a civilian population center strictly for the purpose of attacking those civilians, it was the latest in May 1940. Using the same blueprint as against Warsaw, and really even back to the bombing raids against Guernica during the Spanish Civil War a hundred German He-111s would launch a bombing raid against the Dutch city on the afternoon of May 14th. 800 civilians would lose their lives, and 78,000 would be made homeless due to the destruction caused by the German bombers. It was a clear reminder of what kind of war was being fought, and the fact that there were few limits in this new conflict. Theoretically the British could have responded quite quickly, using their own force of bombers, which were roughly comparable to what the Germans were using. Just as an aside it is often common to think quite negatively of the British bombers at the start of the war, but most of the really negative comparisons only occur when you compare them to bombers later in the war, sort of the next generation of bombers. When comparing them to their German contemporaries the comparison is much more favorable, although the British bombers were a bit slower than their German cousins. These bombers would be put to the test when they launched their first bombing raid over the Ruhr on the night of May 15th and 16th. 111 bombers would attack, or at least try to attack 16 different targets. During this raid the British would experience all of the problems that would plague their early night bombing efforts, all of which revolved in some way around it being quite challenging to know where they were and where their targets were in the darkness. They would also suffer from another problem that the bomber squadrons of every nation suffered from, the inability to really evaluate the success of their raids. It was always problematic to trust the reports of airmen, air combat just moved so quickly and there were so many unknowns, and bombing would not be an exception. The results were disappointing, even if the airmen did not know it. It is important to say that while the Phoney War had been a disappointing start to the war, the actions over France were far more costly than anybody could have imagined. The German Luftwaffe exercised a lot of control in the airspace over the battlefield, and German anti-aircraft guns exacted a heavy toll when the British bombers attempted to destroy some of the more important targets of the campaign like the pontoon bridges over the Meuse that were so important to the movements of Guderian’s Panzer divisions. While the RAF never completely abandoned the French, after the crippling losses of the first week of the campaign, there were discussions about force preservation in London that grew in urgency, although this did not prevent major commitments of Bomber Command resources to actions in mid-June to try and bolster French resolve at the critical point in the campaign. In the end as many aircraft as possible were evacuated from France to participate in the next campaign, the defense of Britain.

As it became clear the France would soon be exiting the war, Bomber Command’s focus began to shift to anti-invasion efforts, just as every arm of the British military began to make that exact same shift. Bomber Command was seen to play an important role in these efforts, with its offensive air striking capabilities seen as one of the key components that could prevent a German invasion from being successful. Due to this, the harbors and the shipping used to prepare for the invasion were given clear number one priority for Bomber Command efforts, with part of this effort being direct attacks, but also a major effort to lay sea mines in areas that would have the greatest impact when the German ships began to make their way out of those ports. There would be some nights were essentially all of the squadrons that Bomber Command had were sent out in these attacks, particularly those against the barges that were being assembled for the effort. Along with these attacks, there were also efforts by Bomber Command to launch the exact same types of attacks that the German bombers were launching against British targets during this same time period. These included attacks against German airfields that were being used by the Luftwaffe for their attacks against Britain, and then bombing raids against the German aircraft industry. How this ended up breaking down was about a 1/3 of all of Bomber Command’s sorties from July and October were flown against naval invasion targets, and then a 1/5 and a 1/6 were flown against airfields and the aircraft industry respectively. In these efforts, it is worth mentioning, that they were joined by the aircraft of Coastal Command, which had been formed to play a maritime support role but which were pressed into bombing and reconnaissance service against the invasion preparations due to the urgency of the overall situation.

While the anti-invasion efforts were taking up most of Bomber Command’s time during the summer of 1940, there were big plans for what they could do in the future. All of the failures, or at the very least disappointments of the first year of the war never destroyed the belief among some British leaders, including importantly Churchill, that Bomber Command was a critical piece of how the British would eventually win the war. It was understood that, even if the German invasion was halted, the British Army was very far away from being able to do anything meaningful on the continent, especially as the fighting in North Africa began to increase in intensity resulting in more and more Imperial troops being rerouted to Egypt. And so Bomber Command was seen as the way, maybe the only way, that the British could strike directly against Germany. The Royal Navy was all well and good, and it could protect British trade and prevent German trade, but its ability to directly attack Germany was limited, unlike Bomber command. Much of this faith in the ability of British bombers to decisively impact the course of the war was still based on the faulty pre-war assumptions about strategic bombing and the German economy. A general underestimation of both the number of bombers that would be required and the strength of the German economy, even when cut off from imports from outside of Europe. There was also the somewhat odd belief that German morale and willpower to withstand bombing was in some way weaker than the British? One of those weird strands of racism that pops up from time to time. The theory was that there was something special about the British public that made them more resistant to the fear and demoralization due to bombing, which was pretty much completely untrue. Looking ahead a little bit, the road to the massive bombing raids of the later war years was not a smooth one, and over the course of the years that followed the Battle of Britain there would be times of frustration and disappointment with what Bomber command was accomplishing, although the campaign would never be abandoned, or ever truly questioned. But in 1940 those huge city busting raids were in the future, and all that the airmen of Bomber Command could do was fly their pre-war bombers and try their very best to accomplish the tasks in front of them. Or to quote Churchill was one of his most famous speeches, which we will cover in more detail in the future episode “we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their target in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often at serious loss, with deliberate careful precision and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war making structure of the Nazi power.”