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For educational purposes
"AIR WAR OVER GERMANY"
RAF Bomber Command was responsible for carrying the war to Hitler's Germany when Britain stood alone during the early days of 1940 and 1941.
By 1942, losses had grown so heavy, that the RAF adopted a policy of night bombing only, the staggeringly high casualties were borne with stoic resolve by the men who knew they had a job which had to be done.
This is the story of the air war over Germany from the British viewpoint.
"AIR WAR OVER GERMANY"
RAF Bomber Command was responsible for carrying the war to Hitler's Germany when Britain stood alone during the early days of 1940 and 1941.
By 1942, losses had grown so heavy, that the RAF adopted a policy of night bombing only, the staggeringly high casualties were borne with stoic resolve by the men who knew they had a job which had to be done.
This is the story of the air war over Germany from the British viewpoint.
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LearningTranscript
00:05In February 1945, over 700 British bombers were bound for Germany.
00:12Their mission was to bomb on an almost defenseless city.
00:15The aim was to bring the end of the war within sight by terrorizing civilians.
00:24By February 1945, the German air force was all but destroyed,
00:29and her armies were in full retreat.
00:32But the Allied offensive in the west on the ground was making relatively slow progress.
00:39Only in the east, where the Russians were still making considerable advances,
00:44was there a real prospect of a quick end to the war.
00:49It was against this background that Air Marshal Harris took the questionable decision
00:54to intensify the air raids on Germany.
00:58I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany
01:01as worth the bombs of our British grenadiers.
01:05It was clear from this that the purpose of the raid
01:08was to further sap the morale of the German people
01:11by killing thousands of women and children
01:13in the infamous destruction of Dresden.
01:30Theством of the Herald
01:31The Ор hear the name of the Herald
01:31The Herald
01:31Of the Herald
01:31The Herald
01:33The Herald
02:05As the last waves of British bombers arrived over Dresden, already a flickering glow could be seen lighting up the
02:12night sky. The target was obviously burning below them. The planes dropped down through the clouds to make their bombing
02:20runs in clear air. Their target lay beneath them, already well ablaze. These were the lights of the murderous firestorm
02:28that was destroying the ancient city.
02:34For once, everything had been in the bombers' favour. The weather had been just right, and the few remaining night
02:40fighters remained grounded through chronic fuel shortages.
02:44As the city was not considered to be a military target, there was very little flak cover, so the planes
02:50were able to fly much lower than usual, with the result that they dropped their bombs with far greater accuracy.
03:00This massive surprise attack caught the ground services unaware, and the fires spread quickly throughout the ancient wooden buildings of
03:08the town.
03:10As the ferocious flames reached temperatures of 800 degrees Celsius, they drew in all the surrounding oxygen, and fierce winds
03:18began to reach hurricane speeds.
03:20Men, men, women, and children were literally sucked into the fires to be burnt alive.
03:28Leaving their target behind as they flew home, the British pilots noticed that the glare from the town was visible
03:35for more than 100 miles behind them.
03:41Perhaps as many as 100,000 Germans were killed in a series of raids, three or four of them in
03:49one week.
03:50The true number simply isn't known, because the bodies were simply not recovered.
03:54It created an immense firestorm, which cremated people to ashes.
04:00There was no knowledge at all of how many died.
04:03In an earlier firestorm, on Hamburg in 1943, the reliable figure is something like 40,000 killed in one raid.
04:12At this point, you are talking figures which are approximately around those that were killed in Hiroshima and Murasaki.
04:23This was area bombing at its most effective.
04:27The raid was to become one of the most notorious attacks carried out by Bomber Command during the Second World
04:33War.
04:38The main weight of the attack on Dresden was carried out by the Lancasters of Bomber Command.
04:43Over 700 of these aircraft took part in the infamous night attack.
04:50The Lancaster, built by A.V. Row Limited, was probably the most famous British bomber used during the Second World
04:56War.
04:57Its very name has become synonymous with Bomber Command.
05:01Ironically, the aircraft was born as a result of failures in an earlier design by the same company.
05:09The Lancaster was greatly superior to its predecessors, to the generation of twin-engine bombers that had preceded it.
05:17It was also superior to the four-engine bombers which accompanied it, the Stirling and the Halifax.
05:24It was superior because it could carry a much heavier bomb load than most of these aircraft, and at a
05:32much greater height.
05:33It was also sturdy and reliable, a good, dependable aircraft.
05:39It also had a very large bomb bay, which meant that it could take specially designed bombs, like the six
05:47-ton tall boy, designed for very accurate bombing.
05:52And then finally, at the end of the war, and quite extraordinarily, it could carry the ten-ton grand slam
05:59bomb, which was an absolutely devastating conventional weapon.
06:13The twin-engine Manchester design had failed to meet the Air Ministry specification against which it had been ordered.
06:23The Manchester was clearly outstanding as a bomber design, but it was plagued by the poor performance and unreliability of
06:30its twin Rolls-Royce Vulture engines.
06:32In 1940, the decision was taken to build a longer-span version that could carry four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.
06:40So outstanding was the performance of this new design that it was put into immediate large-scale production.
06:49Deliveries began in early 1942.
06:52From then, until the end of the war, they were to fly in every major night-bombing sortie of Bomber
06:57Command over Germany.
06:59They carried a heavier load of bigger bombs than any other aircraft in the European theatre.
07:05Their defence armament, with nose, dorsal and tail turrets, enabled them to operate with a reasonable measure of security, even
07:13if fighter support was not available.
07:17So versatile was the design that they took part in the high-profile raids like the dam buster raids of
07:23617 Squadron and the area bombing raids on the major German cities.
07:28It was tough, and the four engines allowed the planes to absorb a great deal of punishment.
07:33So it was no surprise that the Lancaster was to become the most famous of British World War II bombers.
07:55The success of Bomber Command in World War II had its roots in the First World War.
08:01It was there that the use of bombers was seen to be the most effective way in which aircraft could
08:06carry the war to the enemy.
08:08Although the performance of the aircraft at that time was limited, the potential was there for all to see.
08:14And the German Air Force went as far as to launch bombing raids against Britain.
08:19But most of the bombing in World War I was concentrated against military targets.
08:26Flying behind the immediate front lines, the bombers struck at targets vital to the war effort.
08:31The choice of targets included marshalling yards, supply dumps, bridges, and lines of communication.
08:42After the First World War, the outrage of the victorious allies over the German air raids which had caused considerable
08:48civilian casualties was put to good use in the Versailles Treaty, which forbade Germany from owning an air force.
08:56This policy was further strengthened and transformed into an international agreement at a Washington conference on the limitations of armaments
09:03in 1922.
09:05The final communique stated that aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, of destroying or damaging private
09:14property not of a military character, or of injuring non-combatants, is prohibited.
09:20All the major world powers reached an agreement that no attacks were to be made on undefended towns or any
09:27other target where civilians might be hit.
09:32Sadly, for the citizens of Dresden, those noble sentiments were dead and buried by 1945, but in the early months
09:40of the war at least, it did some good.
09:43Adherence to the Washington limitations restricted the scope of bomber attacks against civilian targets during the early days of World
09:50War II.
09:51Initially, both Britain and Germany strictly observed the treaty.
09:55In the autumn and winter of 1939, bomber command was forced to concentrate its attentions on military targets and German
10:03warships at sea or in harbor.
10:05Sorties were flown over German cities, including Berlin.
10:09But on these missions, the payload was propaganda leaflets, which had little effect other than to provide the air crews
10:15with experience for raids that were made later in the war.
10:19The effect of the propaganda was nil.
10:26Bomber command was scarcely prepared at all to engage Germany in the first months of the conflict.
10:33They had very few planes with the range to reach German cities, and they tried attacking German targets in daylight.
10:42They went for precise naval targets, the harbor at Kiel, to try to bomb German warships there.
10:50They attacked in daylight.
10:52They sent about 20 Wellington twin-engine bombers out on two raids, and they lost about half of them each
10:59time.
10:59They found that they did not have the aircraft to attack in daylight.
11:04They found that the aircraft very often didn't have the range to penetrate into German targets, and they didn't have
11:12very many planes in any case.
11:15Bomber command was not ready for war in 1939.
11:21The first real offensive attacks against ground-based military targets by British bombers were made during the disastrous Norwegian campaign
11:29of 1940.
11:30In response to the German invasion in the south, an Anglo-French combined force made landings in the north of
11:37Norway,
11:37and bomber command was charged with supporting that invasion.
11:44Regular bombing runs were made against the airfields and ports in Norway being used by the Germans to build up
11:51their forces.
11:52Despite their best efforts, it became clear that the Germans were going to win the battle for Norway.
11:58The orders went out for the withdrawal of the Allied forces.
12:02With the decision taken, bomber command continued to fly sorties to cover the withdrawal.
12:10Almost immediately, the surviving aircraft from Norway had to be repositioned for a new campaign.
12:16An attack was now expected on the French border, and the border forces in France were in need of reinforcement.
12:25Plans had also been agreed for airborne attacks to be made into the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany.
12:32They were designed to cause long-term damage to the Reich's manufacturing base, and slow the advance on France.
12:39History was to record that this effort was to prove ineffective.
12:43The speed and aggression of the German advances threatened to overwhelm the forward airfields of bomber command in France.
12:51As the British Expeditionary Force fell back on Dunkirk for an orderly withdrawal,
12:55the surviving aircraft of bomber command retreated to their airfields in England.
13:01Bomber command's tactics at the beginning of the war were to some extent rooted in the experience of the First
13:08World War,
13:09because this, after all, was the major source of experience about the effects of bombing.
13:14And what had been learnt during the First World War, mostly from the Germans who bombed British cities much more
13:22often than the British bombed German cities,
13:24you could attack factories and so damage the war effort that way,
13:29but that you could also damage the war effort by causing panic and alarm amongst the civilian population.
13:35And they caused a great deal of panic in London in 1917.
13:40Thousands of people left work for hours on end because there were reported to be bombers overhead.
13:46So, to some extent, they learnt from the First World War.
13:50But there was also a great deal of theorising in the interwar period,
13:54particularly about the effect of bombs upon morale,
13:57and particularly theorising, of course, about the use of gas against the civilian population,
14:04which was never actually done, but was indeed expected.
14:09And, of course, in 1939, the British government issued gas masks to all of the British population.
14:18From these bases, they continued to fly missions against German military targets.
14:23But it soon became clear that these were not having the desired effect.
14:28Restrictions on the range of the aircraft carrying their heavy payloads,
14:31and the ability of the bombers to find their targets were the major contributors to this inefficiency.
14:37It was clear that a new set of tactics had to be found,
14:41and a new generation of bombers needed to be designed.
14:55At the start of hostilities, bomber command was dependent on aircraft developed between the wars,
15:01the best of which was the Wellington, designed by Vickers Armstrong Ltd.
15:05It first flew in 1936, and used the unusual geodetic form of aluminium construction,
15:12which gave it strength and lightness.
15:14There were some design difficulties with the wings, the machine gun nacelles, and the large bomb doors.
15:20Although once they were overcome, it became obvious that Vickers had developed an efficient and formidable bomber.
15:29Capable of being powered by a variety of different engines,
15:33including Rolls-Royce Merlins and Pratt & Whitney Wasps,
15:36it produced a maximum speed of 235 miles an hour.
15:41It had a service ceiling of 22,000 feet, and a maximum service range of 2,200 miles.
15:50Fitted with a variety of defensive armament and its twin turrets,
15:54it was produced in 16 variants, which were designed to fulfill a variety of roles throughout the war.
16:00In all, a total of 11,461 of these outstanding aircraft were produced.
16:09The Whitley was a far less successful machine, manufactured by the Armstrong Whitworth Company at its factory in Coventry.
16:16It was a rather primitive aircraft of all-metal construction, but at least it had a retractable undercarriage.
16:23Powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin X engines, it was capable of a maximum speed of 222 miles an hour.
16:30Its typical range was 1,650 miles.
16:35Defensive armament was provided by the nose and tail turrets,
16:39but its many limitations led to the aircraft being withdrawn from frontline service as soon as a better alternative was
16:46developed.
16:51One alternative was the Hampton, the last of the new bombers to enter RAF service during the expansion scheme of
16:581936 to 1938.
17:01Manufactured by Handley Page Limited, it was an outstanding aircraft for the early part of the war.
17:07It was fast, with a maximum speed of 254 miles an hour, and so maneuverable that the RAF distinguished it
17:14as a fighter bomber.
17:16The pilot was given a fixed .303 Vickers machine gun for defense.
17:21Further defense was provided by three movable machine guns mounted in the lower nose for operation by the navigator bomb
17:28aimer.
17:31Eight squadrons of Hamptons were in operation in September 1939, raiding naval installations and shipping.
17:41Lighter than the Hampton was the Bristol Type 142, the Blenheim, first ordered by the newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere as
17:49a fast executive aircraft to carry a pilot and six passengers.
17:54The completed design was the first modern stressed skin monoplane in Britain, with retractable landing gear and wing flaps.
18:02It was later further improved by the fitting of imported American variable pitch propellers.
18:11In even greater danger from German fighters was the Fairy Battle,
18:15which will always be remembered as the combat aircraft that failed to achieve the promise of its design.
18:21When it entered service with the RAF in 1937, it seemed destined to fill a vital niche.
18:27However, within four years it was being shot out of the sky in droves.
18:32It was simply a sitting duck for the new generation of fighters.
18:40Within six months of that mission, all battles were replaced in frontline units and relegated to a role as training
18:48aircraft.
18:51The bombers developed in the interwar years proved to be really rather ineffective.
18:58They didn't carry a very heavy bomb load, they had very little in the way of defences, machine guns to
19:05defend them, and their range was pretty inadequate.
19:09They were all that the technology of the time could do, however, and of course nobody at the time knew
19:16how ineffective they would prove because they had not been tested in action.
19:22It was only when they were tested against German defences that it was found that they really were inadequate bombers
19:29for attacking German cities in any length.
19:33Despite retreat from France, Bomber Command continued to pursue its primary duty of attacks against military targets.
19:40But in August 1940, that role was to change to the bombardment of civilian targets.
19:47It happened as a result of a human error.
20:01It is now accepted by both sides that the bombs that were dropped by German bombers on London were dropped
20:07by mistake, by pilots who had been briefed to bomb Rochester and Thameshaven, and that they had made a genuine
20:13human error.
20:14However, this error in target location occurred at the very height of the Battle of Britain, and the British response
20:22was naturally forceful.
20:24On the night of 25th of August 1940, the aircraft of Bomber Command made their first sortie over Berlin in
20:31a retaliatory raid for the bombs which had landed on London.
20:37It's sometimes thought that the Germans made this switch in response to British bombing of Berlin.
20:45I don't think that explanation particularly holds water, because the raid on Berlin was on the 25th of August, and
20:56yet the attack on London was not till a fortnight later, on the 7th of September.
21:02I think that the reasons why the Germans switched from attacking airfields, which was punishing Fighter Command quite heavily, to
21:11attacking London, which was not such a direct way of attacking Fighter Command,
21:16was because Göring believed that Fighter Command was on its last legs.
21:21He believed the claims of British aircraft shot down by his pilots, claims which were made in all honesty, showed
21:31that Fighter Command was very nearly wiped out.
21:35He therefore thought, let's get rid of it in one big attack upon a target which it must rise to
21:44defend, that is to say, London.
21:47We will destroy it by forcing them to come into the air and attack.
21:53In point of fact, of course, the claims made by his fighter pilots had been exaggerated.
21:59Fighter Command was in much better shape than it was thought, and the Germans suffered a considerable reverse.
22:10The British raid caused outrage in Berlin.
22:14But Bomber Command's first bombing raid on the German capital was considered to have had little military success.
22:20Only 29 crews claimed to have identified Berlin, and most of the bombs exploded in open countryside.
22:28Although it was not a tactical success as a bombing mission, the first British raid had enormous strategic consequences.
22:36Hitler's fury lured Hermann Göring, the man in charge of the Luftwaffe, into making his greatest tactical error.
22:44Just as the Luftwaffe was on the point of victory over the RAF in the Battle of Britain, he switched
22:49his forces from pounding the fighter airfields and began the systematic bombing of London and other civilian targets.
22:57This blind desire for revenge gave Fighter Command the respite it needed to gain its strength and lead directly to
23:05the British victory in the Battle of Britain.
23:09The men of Bomber Command were not aware of the significance of this turning point.
23:15They were wrestling with the difficulty that the bombers then in service had experienced in reaching Berlin with a considerable
23:20bomb load and returning safely.
23:23The huge losses in British bombers caused by German fighters in the early day raids over Germany caused a switch
23:30from day to night raids.
23:37The German pilots pounding London were flying from France and could be over London in an hour.
23:43Berlin was 650 miles from England, and with the rudimentary navigation techniques at their disposal, it was difficult for the
23:51pilots to locate their targets at such an extreme range at night.
23:55The Allied bombers had to travel 650 miles by the direct route to reach their target.
24:02For the Wellingtons, Hamptons and other aircraft that flew these earliest raids on Berlin, this was approaching their operational limits.
24:11With this knowledge, the Germans concentrated their anti-aircraft and night fighters along this route.
24:18The Allied pilots had very great problems in locating their targets in the early part of the war, because they
24:25were bombing at night.
24:26They were therefore flying over occupied Europe, which was blacked out.
24:31They had therefore to rely for navigation upon the compass, upon taking sights from the stars, their own speed, and
24:41hoping that they knew the wind direction, because the wind could blow them off target.
24:45They had very great difficulty in finding the city that they were to attack.
24:50And they had even greater difficulty, of course, in identifying the factory or the marshalling yard in the city that
24:58they were to attack.
24:59So there were very great problems of navigation and identification.
25:02They also had growing problems, of course, from German defences.
25:07At first the searchlights and the anti-aircraft guns, but then from about 1941 onwards, the night fighters as well.
25:15So it was a very difficult business attacking Germany at night.
25:22With the problems of navigation, aircraft initially made their way independently across Germany, depending on the use of dead reckoning,
25:30the basis of aerial navigation at that time.
25:33This required a reliable compass and an accurate reading of the drift caused by the wind to the aircraft.
25:40Precise information on wind drift was not available until later in the war.
25:48Pathfinder aircraft such as the high-flying, high-speed Mosquito were therefore designated to fly ahead of the waves of
25:54bombers to provide up-to-the-minute weather over target reports.
25:59Early navigators were forced back onto other methods to establish their positions more accurately.
26:05It was not unusual for a pilot to locate landmarks such as rivers and railway lines and fly along them
26:12to the target.
26:13Obviously, this option was not available in cloud cover.
26:19The main focus of Allied bombing in the early years of the war was upon military targets.
26:26The British tried to bomb German oil refineries, railway marshalling yards and war production factories.
26:34They did not directly try to target the civilian population.
26:40Many of the bombs missed, of course, and hit civilian areas, but in the early part of the war, there
26:46was no particular design to attack civilians.
26:49Indeed, in the early part of the war, they would have regarded any such attack as abhorrent.
27:01The performance of planes and crews continued to be honed during 1941, when repeated raids were made into the ruin.
27:10The targets were the oil refineries and power stations, so vital to the German war effort.
27:17Orders were also issued to continue the bombing campaign of Berlin.
27:21In retaliation, the German bombers did the same to London and other English cities, as the deadly game of tit
27:28-for-tat raids continued to spiral out of control.
27:34The navigation aids available to bomber command were improving.
27:38So, at last, was the performance of the aircraft that were to fly the missions.
27:45They tried to solve the navigational problems by using wireless direction systems.
27:51Basically, these amounted to following a radio beam, and either a beeping noise or something like that would indicate if
27:59you had moved off the beam,
28:00or you would follow one beam and wait until another beam intersected it, and that would tell you that you
28:08were over the target.
28:10In addition, they began using early versions of radar, which was not a very good device at that time,
28:18because it didn't give a very good definition of targets on the ground, cities and so forth, on the ground.
28:25Perhaps the most important change that was made in order to deal with navigational problems, however, was the creation of
28:35the Pathfinder Squadrons.
28:37These were skilled, elite crews, good at navigation, which went ahead of the main force to locate the target, drop
28:46flares on it and incendiaries on it to set fire to it,
28:49and thus provide both a target and an aiming point for the main force, which would then move in a
28:55few minutes later.
29:01The introduction of the Lancaster, Halifax, and other long-range bombers meant that the extra flying range could be used
29:08to vary the approach route to the target.
29:11Consequently, the Germans were not slow to adapt their defense tactics to this new development.
29:16The early bombing raids carried out by Wellington aircraft early in the war had shown the benefit of formation flying.
29:24However, the Germans found a weakness.
29:28The fighters were directed to attack the formations from above and behind, and consequently the formations were broken up,
29:35and the bombers picked off one by one by German night fighters.
29:49On the route to Berlin, night fighters like these were used with deadly effect.
29:54The bombers were forced to fly most of their journey over enemy territory.
29:59By now, Germany had effective radar, and this was used to direct the night fighters.
30:04One deterrent tried with some success by the bombers was to drop thousands of metal strips, called windows, to confuse
30:12the radar signals.
30:14Despite this, the German radar operators still had plenty of time to direct their night fighters,
30:19and many aircraft were shot down on the long return flight.
30:26A great deal of German development effort went into improving the night fighter defense force.
30:32While it made raids on Berlin and the other targets within their territory extremely hazardous,
30:37the relentless effort had its effect in other areas of the war.
30:42Despite these improved air defenses, it was the use of large formations that was to carry the bombers back to
30:49Berlin.
30:51Great success had been achieved in raids on the Ruhr and other industrial regions for this type of attack,
30:56led by the Pathfinder Squadrons, in which a master bomber, in charge of the raid,
31:02flew ahead of the main bomber waves with aircraft specifically equipped to mark the target,
31:07using special incendiary devices called target indicators.
31:18The de Havilland Mosquito, with its unique, nearly all-wood construction, was to become well known for fulfilling this role.
31:26Entering service in 1941, they were to excel, using their speed to evade the unwelcome attentions of the enemy defending
31:34fighters.
31:36By making use of the electronic guidance aids and accurate navigation,
31:41the Pathfinder would mark the target under the guidance of the master bomber circling high above.
31:47The master bomber would measure the accuracy of the target indicators.
31:51The master bomber could then guide the main waves of bombers accurately onto their targets.
31:59Even with these new tactics, bomber command struggled to get sufficient planes into the air at any one time,
32:05as the years of war were beginning to take their toll and very few pioneers were left.
32:11There was also a lack of experienced pilots and crews, as many had been killed or taken prisoner after crashing
32:18on earlier missions.
32:20Those that were left had to be spread thinly amongst the ranks of the young, enthusiastic and freshly trained crews.
32:28But help was near at hand.
32:41When the United States of America entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
32:47the resources available to bomber command on long-range missions increased tremendously.
32:53Not only were components, engines and complete aircraft manufactured to British designs being brought to this country from American factories,
33:02but soon new aircraft would be seen in the sky.
33:06The Boeing Airplane Company's B-17 fortress was to play its part in the climax of the bombing campaign on
33:14Berlin.
33:17In theory, and in terms of propaganda put out at the time, the entry of the Americans was a considerable
33:24augmentation,
33:26because the propaganda spoke of round-the-clock bombing.
33:31The idea was that the Americans would attack in daylight, the British at night,
33:35and therefore the German defenses would be stretched continuously on a 24-hour basis.
33:40In practice, it didn't quite work out like that, because really the two air forces fought independent wars,
33:48and seldom consulted very much in choosing target systems adjacent to each other,
33:54or attacking the same target on successive days, for example.
34:00Air Marshal Harris, leader of bomber command, still believed that given sufficient aircraft backed up with an accelerated production line,
34:09he could inflict such a state of devastation on Berlin and the rest of Germany that German surrender was inevitable.
34:17In November 1943, he requested help from the Americans.
34:22We can wreck Berlin from end to end if the Americans will come in on it.
34:27It will cost us 400 to 500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war.
34:34The reality was to prove more difficult.
34:375,000 British and American aircraft would ultimately be lost, and 60,000 airmen would fall into German hands.
34:49During the winter of 1943-1944, Berlin was subject to a concentrated series of heavy attacks.
34:56The German night fighter force was at the peak of its strength and efficiency, and bomber casualties were heavy.
35:05The final phase of the Battle of Berlin alone was to cost 1,047 British aircraft.
35:13This unusual propaganda film for Germany shows scraps from British aircraft being turned into anti-aircraft guns to protect Berlin.
35:23The Americans were not ready for such long-distance missions in the autumn of 1943.
35:28It wasn't until March 1944 that they were to be seen over Berlin.
35:33By then, the Mustang long-range fighter had been developed to provide the necessary fighter escort.
35:40These fighters used the tactics that had been hard learnt in the Battle of Britain, and ensured air superiority.
35:48They flew in large formations, and were able to sweep the skies clean of defending aircraft by their weight of
35:54numbers.
35:55Bomber Command was at last fulfilling the purpose for which it was originally designed.
36:04Now, the Germans had been in the habit of intercepting the American formations, which, remember, up to this point were
36:11not escorted by fighters.
36:13They were in the habit of sending up not just their good day fighters, the Focke-Wulfs and the Messerschmitts,
36:19but they also used their night fighters as an augmentation,
36:24because these fighters, though not very fast or nimble, could pick off damaged bombers, and could also, because they carried
36:33heavy armor,
36:34sit on the edge of the bomber stream, outside the range of American guns, and fire their 20mm cannon into
36:41the bomber stream.
36:42So they were in the habit of coming up to attack the bomber stream.
36:46Now, when the Mustangs encountered these planes, slow, twin-engined, and festooned with radar, they were really cold meat for
36:55them.
36:55And on some occasions, half a squadron could be shot down by the Mustangs.
37:01The effect, therefore, was that the escorting Mustangs shot down the night fighters in the daytime situation.
37:09And amongst those they shot down were the aces, because it is the case that something like one-half of
37:16the planes shot down at night
37:18were shot down by less than 10% of the crews. And in 1944, the Mustangs got them in about
37:26equal proportions.
37:27And so made the life of bomber command aircrew much safer.
37:37The nature of that campaign was always to be a political decision.
37:41It was in an internal war office minute of 1st of April 1941, commenting on the German invasion of Yugoslavia,
37:49that the commander-in-chief of bomber command, Sir Arthur Harris,
37:53first mentioned the concept of area bombing of civilian targets.
37:58In order to give support to other countries that stood against the German blitzkrieg,
38:03he proposed using the weapon of offensive bombing.
38:06He wrote,
38:08Our objective should be to do the maximum damage and destruction to the populated areas,
38:13as a demonstration of that ruthless force which we shall have to employ against Germany sooner or later,
38:19if we are to get the full moral effects out of our air defence.
38:27There was a considerable political background to this decision.
38:31In 1942, bombing was the only way that the British could attack Germany.
38:38So they had to bomb.
38:40But they had found in 1939 that they couldn't bomb by day.
38:45And in 1941, they found that their night attacks were tremendously inaccurate.
38:51It was found by identifying bomb bursts from photographs,
38:58that only one bomber in three was bombing within five miles of the designated target,
39:06which effectively meant that the bombing was having very little effect at all.
39:12In other words, they discovered that night precision bombing did not work.
39:17With day bombing out as well, the only recourse left was to go to night area attack.
39:24It was that or stop bombing Germany altogether.
39:28And that was politically unacceptable in 1942 for all kinds of reasons.
39:34Not least, of course, because the Russians in 1942 were screaming for a second front to take the pressure off
39:41them.
39:42And the only way that Churchill could show that the British were assisting the Russians was the bombing attack on
39:49German cities.
39:50So there was a very considerable political background to this.
39:54But the essential point is that the British had no choice.
39:58It was a question of night area bombing or no bombing at all.
40:04The Americans in particular were always uneasy about the morality of area bombing against civilian targets.
40:11The ruthless Air Marshal Harris was less queasy.
40:16Churchill and Roosevelt met in Casablanca in January 1943 to discuss how to bring about the unconditional surrender of Germany.
40:24A memorandum was issued at the time of their meeting instructing both the British and United States bomber commands that
40:31their primary objective was the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system.
40:40The list concluded with other targets of great importance either from the political or military point of view.
40:48Berlin was therefore designated as a target of great importance from a political point of view.
40:56As the war moved towards its inevitable conclusion, Berlin was raided again and again by flights of mass bombers.
41:04On their raids, they were accompanied by fighters who, using the tactics of the Allies in the Battle of Britain,
41:11ensured complete air superiority, thus carrying the war into the heartland of the enemy.
41:17Therefore, Operation Overlord was ordered and began on D-Day.
41:26Bombing was the only effective way the British could attack Germany for many years of the war and that area
41:33bombing was the only form of bombing that was possible for bomber command to achieve any results.
41:40The situation began to change towards the end of the war because by then the British and the Americans had
41:50amassed a truly frightening bomber force.
41:54The British had something like 1,000 heavy four-engine bombers, mostly Lancasters.
42:01The Americans had something like 2,000 B-17 flying fortresses and there was virtually no German opposition to speak
42:10of.
42:10This immense force of bombers had matured in tactics, in marking targets, in accuracy, in the whole organisation of raids.
42:22The result is that by the early part of 1945, indeed by late 1944, bomber command and the Americans were
42:31capable of one in one raid, of inflicting the sort of damage that one atomic bomb could do.
42:41By the time of the mass bombing raids on Berlin, many of the aircraft being flown by British bomber command
42:47were of American design and manufacture.
42:50Chief amongst these was the Boeing B-17.
42:53Hundreds of these aircraft were used by the RAF in Coastal Command and their special bomber support aircraft.
43:01The aircraft was designed to a US Army Air Corps specification issued in 1934.
43:06This called for a multi-engine anti-shipping bomber.
43:10Boeing's design used four Pratt & Whitney Hornet engines to carry its bomb load higher and faster than other designs.
43:19While a huge financial risk for the Boeing company, the aircraft that they produced was to go on to be
43:25a giant amongst combat aircraft.
43:31This aircraft was to be the first weapon of the US 8th Bomber Command in England.
43:36They were to use it for three difficult years of daylight strategic bombing raids in Europe.
43:42The combat version of the B-17 produced included the type XB-40, which carried extra defensive guns to help
43:49protect the main bomb groups.
43:50As well as a reconnaissance version, executive transports, and lifeboat carrying air-sea rescue versions.
43:57The total production run of this type of aircraft amounted to 12,731.
44:05The other major American aircraft in British service was the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation Model 32, known as the B
44:14-24, the Liberator.
44:18Conceived five years after the B-17, it did not improve on the older bomber's performance.
44:24In the hands of an average pilot, there was less stability and control was significantly inferior.
44:33It had a curious layout, dictated by the slender wing placed above the tail bomb bays.
44:39This wing contributed to the efficiency in cruising flight.
44:43The Liberator had a longer range than any other land plane of its day.
44:49The early versions that were supplied to the RAF were deemed not to be combat proof,
44:54and were therefore used as transport on the Atlantic return ferry service.
44:59However, later versions proved acceptable, and saw service in the Middle East and for coastal command.
45:06They enabled the RAF to close the Mid-Atlantic Gap, and to hunt U-boat packs in areas previously out
45:12of aircraft range.
45:24By the end of the war, Bomber Command once more had at its disposal the most up-to-date aircraft,
45:30capable of delivering the tasks that were required of them.
45:34In essence, the tactic had remained unchanged from the inception of the RAF at the end of the First World
45:41War.
45:42The philosophy of Bomber Command was to take the war deep into the heartland of a potential enemy.
45:51This tactic was seen at its most effective in the mass bombing of Dresden and the resulting firestorm.
45:59Even at the time, questions were raised about the morality of this course of action.
46:03Following an off-the-record briefing at the War Office, an association press correspondent filed a story that, in part,
46:11stated that the Allied air chiefs had made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of German population
46:18centers as a ruthless expedient to hastening Hitler's doom.
46:25The story was denied within five hours, but it was too late.
46:30It broke in the American newspapers and caused considerable embarrassment on each side of the Atlantic.
46:36Questions were even asked in the British House of Commons.
46:40But I think it has to be said that in 1943-1944, when area bombing was in full spate, the
46:49mass of the British population would not have been upset if the truth had been told to them.
46:54After all, the Germans had directly attacked them with no qualms.
46:59And secondly, the war simply had to be won against the Nazis.
47:03And if it took night area bombing to win it, then unfortunately this would go ahead.
47:11Air Marshal Harris was himself drawn into the argument.
47:15He did not point out that it was not his decision alone, but one taken and shared by those at
47:20a much higher political level.
47:22He did not remind those who questioned the action that this had been and still was the role assigned to
47:27bomber command.
47:27His answer was much more clear.
47:30Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government center, and key transportation center to the east.
47:37It is now none of these things.
47:40The aircraft of bomber command had carried out their orders and completed their mission.
47:49The role of the bomber is still crucial to today's aerial warfare tactics.
47:54The precision laser-guided bombs delivered from modern high-speed jets may have replaced the massive payloads of high-explosive
48:02and incendiary bombs dropped from the Lancasters and Wellingtons of the Second World War, but the job of bomber command
48:08remains the same.
48:11To destroy material and resources vital to an enemy's war effort, even though it is located far from the front
48:18line of the fighting.
48:21The actions that were carried out by bomber command during the Second World War have ensured bomber command its lasting
48:28place in the history of aviation warfare.
48:32The war had remained under theular military.
48:38The war was mounted on the heavy missions to the sun in the wing of the central world in the
49:02end of the Greatn decorations.
49:02The method that was once again, the war was destined to be the exact same for the world and the
49:02wind of the strong movement of the state.
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