Wings (25 page)

The Butt Report was a devastating challenge to the Air Staff’s prevailing wisdom and came at a very bad time for the advocates of strategic bombing. All summer the Battle of the Atlantic
had been raging, a struggle that was just as vital to Britain’s survival as had been the Battle of Britain. Army and navy critics and some politicians were pressing hard for RAF resources to
be switched from what they regarded as the wasteful and ineffective business of bombing Germans to come to the aid of the convoys being sunk willy-nilly by the U-boats of the Kriegsmarine and the
Condor bombers of the Luftwaffe.

The reaction of the Air Staff, now headed by Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal, a strategic bombing enthusiast and previously the head of Bomber Command, was to deny the findings and commission
another survey. The Directorate of Bombing Operations investigation took as its model the bomb
damage caused to British cities by the Blitz. Its conclusion was much more
favourable to the bombing lobby. By their calculations, a force of 4,000 bombers would be able to destroy forty-three of the biggest towns in Germany. The message was that far from diverting
bombers away from Germany, more should be thrown into the fight.

It had been shown that estimates of what bombing could achieve were exaggerated. It was now clear – from the example of the Blitz and the failures of the RAF’s bombing of Germany
– that there was no such thing as a knockout blow. Instead of abandoning the theory, though, its advocates were in the process of refining it. In place of one devastating punch, the enemy
could be defeated by a continuous volley of body shots. The argument was given scientific legs by the indefatigable Lindemann, who, in the spring of 1942, produced a report advocating the
abandonment of the futile pursuit of ‘precision bombing’. The air force simply did not have the means of systematically hitting oil refineries, war factories and so on, he argued. The
large numbers of four-engined heavy bombers, now starting to arrive on squadrons, and Gee electronic navigation were not going to significantly improve accuracy. What the bolstered force should be
concentrating on now was hitting towns.

Lindemann’s report used statistics to make it all sound very simple. The language was bloodless, with no mention of killing. According to the ‘Prof’, as Churchill called him,
Britain should have a force of about 10,000 bombers by mid-1943. Each bomber had an average life expectancy of fourteen
bombing trips, meaning it could deliver a total load of
forty tons. Judging from the data collected in Birmingham, Hull and other blitzed towns, this meant that one bomber could make between 4,000 and 8,000 people homeless. If only half the projected
bomber force reached its target, a third of the German population could be ‘dehoused’. Investigation of the British experience ‘seemed to show that having one’s home
demolished is most damaging to morale. People seem to mind it more than losing their relatives.’ The report concluded that ‘there seems little doubt that this would break the spirit of
the people’.

The debate flowed back and forth with Lindemann’s great rival, the chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee, Henry Tizard, maintaining the projections were inflated. It was a
technical argument. The morality of ‘dehousing’ did not enter the discussion. In the intensity of total war, in the face of the enemy’s utter absence of scruples, pre-war
squeamishness about harming civilians had vanished like snow in spring. The debate was settled after the Cabinet asked a High Court judge to weigh the competing views. Mr Justice Singleton
concluded that Germany would not be able to stand twelve or eighteen months ‘continuous, intensified and increased bombing, affecting as it must, her war production, her power of resistance,
her industries and her will to resist (by which I mean morale)’.
⁷
This view became enshrined as official policy in the Directive issued to
Bomber Command on 14 February 1942, which stated that ‘the primary object of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the
enemy civilian population and in
particular of the industrial workers’.
⁸

Eight days after it was issued, Bomber Command got a new leader. Arthur Harris – ‘Bert’ to his peers, ‘Bomber’ to the public and ‘Butch’ to the crews he
led – took over on 20 February 1942. He was undoubtedly the man for the job. He had spent his early years seeking his fortune in Rhodesia, a part of the world he loved, and the crack of an
invisible
sjambok
could often be heard in his dealings with subordinates. After early war service in Africa he joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1915, stayed on in peacetime and, after his
service bombing natives on the North-West Frontier and in Iraq, had moved through a succession of staff jobs. He knew Whitehall and its ways from a stint as Director of Plans at the Air Ministry.
He also understood and got on with Americans, following a tour as head of the RAF delegation in Washington in 1941.

Harris would later complain that ‘there is a widespread impression that I not only invented the policy of area bombing, but also insisted on carrying it out in the face of a natural
reluctance to kill women and children that was felt by everybody else . . . the decision to attack large industrial areas was taken long before I became Commander-in-Chief.’
⁹
He certainly supported the policy with all his heart, pursuing it with dogged determination, even when the progress of the war eroded its value and
justification. But it was true that he had not been one of the plan’s progenitors. Its most vehement advocate inside the RAF was his boss, Sir Charles Portal, the short, beaky-nosed, highly
intelligent and obsessively
hard-working Chief of the Air Staff. If anyone in the RAF was responsible for area bombing it was him. Yet he escaped all the post-war opprobrium
and it was Harris who would forever be associated with the flattening of German cities.

Harris was just fifty in the spring of 1942, but looked rather older, due perhaps to a bristly moustache, which added to the initial impression he gave of impatience and irascibility. It was
more than an impression. Harris was rude, arrogant, pig-headed. He disliked being challenged and in the words of Bomber Command’s official historians had ‘a tendency to confuse advice
with interference, criticism with sabotage and evidence with propaganda’. The belligerence he radiated translated into an intense passion for the business of ‘smashing up the
Germans’. He was an eloquent talker and writer and he came up with a succinct description of the situation he inherited. ‘The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion
that they were going to bomb everyone else and nobody was going to bomb them,’ he declared in a broadcast. ‘At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a dozen other places, they put their
rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.’

He arrived at Bomber Command at a moment when the materials were being assembled that would make it possible for the prophesy to be fulfilled. Many squadrons were already equipped with Handley
Page Halifaxes and in March 1942 the AVRO Lancaster began to arrive. Both planes were powered by four Merlin engines and they were bigger and stronger
than any other bombers
in the world. The Halifax got mixed notices from those who flew in it. Wing Commander James ‘Willie’ Tait, one of the great aviators of the Second World War, who commanded three bomber
squadrons, hated it. The Mark II, he thought, was ‘far from satisfactory. It had accumulated a weight of extra gear, including a mid-upper turret, and the last straw was the exhaust
cowls.’ These emitted flames which provided ‘night-fighters with a good target’ and created drag, which affected handling so that the ‘performance of the loaded aeroplane at
operational height on a warm summer’s night can be better described as “waffling” than flying’.
¹⁰

To a Canadian flier, Ralph Wood, who switched from Whitleys in May 1942, the ‘Hallybag’ was a ‘beautiful four-engined bird’. He occupied the ‘dinky little
navigator’s compartment [which] was below and in front of the pilot’s cockpit. You went down a few steps and entered a small section with a navigator’s table down one side, ahead
and below the pilot’s feet.’ Wood doubled as front-gunner when needed. His weapon was a twin-barrelled Vickers, mounted on a swivel and stuck through the perspex canopy, which pumped
out .303 calibre rifle bullets. They were regarded as ‘pop-guns’ by the crews and were little protection against being shot down by a night-fighter.

The Lancaster inspired universal trust. It was a masterpiece of military aviation design. It was capable of carrying loads of up to about seven tons, yet despite its great strength was fast and
manoeuvrable. It could reach nearly 290 mph and was nimble enough to ‘corkscrew’ out of trouble when under attack
from a night-fighter. It also had the lowest
accident rate of the bombers. Tony Iveson, an ex-fighter pilot who had already notched up about 1,800 hours flying time in many different types before he encountered the ‘Lanc’,
remembered it as ‘a lovely aircraft, splendid night and day’.
¹¹
Pilot Ken Newman ‘liked the Lanc from the first moment that I
climbed aboard’. The cockpit layout was ‘much more sensible than that of the Halifax’ with everything within easy reach.
¹²
It
was only in an emergency that the main design fault became apparent. The thick spar that lay across the fuselage supporting the wings had to be clambered over when moving forward and aft, and was
an impediment when trying to bale out.

These greatly improved aircraft now had a means of finding their way in the dark. It was called Gee (for the ‘grid’ mapping system on which it worked) and it sent out radio pulses
which were picked up on a cathode-ray tube in the navigator’s cabin. Because of the Earth’s curvature, the range was limited to 350 miles and navigators had to contend with German
jamming. Nonetheless, Gee was a great improvement. It set the bombers on a correct course on the outward journey and helped to guide them back home.

The new heavy bombers conveyed a feeling of might and strength that inspired those who flew in them. Noble Frankland thought them ‘incredibly sinister and powerful’. Nobody looking
at them could doubt that they meant business.

By now there was a large pool of trained men to fly the ‘heavies’. The aircrews of Bomber Command were an extraordinarily mixed bunch. If the fighter squadrons were
a microcosm of British society, bomber squadrons were a microcosm of the English-speaking world. In any crew there might be Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Irishmen, as well
as British from all regions and every layer of society. There were also Poles, French and Czechs, eager to do to the Germans what had been done to their own people. Every one of them was a
volunteer. Those who put themselves forward for Pathfinder Force, which identified targets for the following bombers, were volunteers twice over. By 1942 the increasing complexity and size of
bombers had created distinct roles for each crew member. There were six categories: pilot, navigator, engineer, bomb-aimer, wireless operator and air-gunner. After the initial vetting process,
candidates were sent to an Aircrew Selection Centre. On the first day they faced a fairly demanding set of academic tests. These were marked on the spot and those who failed were sent home. The
following morning there was a strict medical and anyone less than A1 was weeded out. The aspirant was then quizzed by a panel, a process that was ‘more of a chat than an interview’. If
deemed acceptable, the candidate was sworn in, issued with an RAF number, placed on ‘deferred service’ and told to go home and wait.

The applicants all shared an enthusiasm which in retrospect struck some as excessive. ‘Why did it seem to us such a good idea at the time?’ mused Jim Auton, who joined up in 1940.
‘Our side didn’t appear to stand any chance of winning the war. The United States had not yet shown any signs of joining in as combatants . . . Stalin with his millions of troops was
allied with Hitler. Our gallant allies the French had swiftly
capitulated to the Germans, and the British Army had been humiliatingly kicked out of the continent at
Dunkirk.’ Auton decided that in his case it was ‘the chance to leave home and fly an aeroplane’ that was the ultimate lure. ‘Joining the Air Force made us feel that we were
real men. Little did we realize what was in store for us – some of it good, much of it bad.’
¹³

The waiting could last months. Eventually the volunteer was summoned to an Aircrew Reception Centre for basic training, where they marched, saluted, went on endless runs and listened to
terrifying lectures from the medical officer. These, according to James Hampton, the youngest of three brothers who volunteered for aircrew and the only one to survive, warned the new arrivals,
virgins almost to a man, about ‘some of the shocking and terrifying diseases that abounded and of which they had previously been unaware. These diseases had certain things in common. They
could not be caught from lavatory seats and they invariably ended with general paralysis of the insane, followed shortly by death.’
¹⁴

One of the main reception centres was at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Jim Auton recalled the members of his intake lining up in the Long Room while a civilian medic inspected their private
parts. ‘“Get your balls up,’ he bellowed at the top of his voice as he paused in front of each of us. We were rather surprised by his vulgarity and we could not understand why he
seemed to be so angry. I suppose he thought the whole process was a waste of his time. We certainly thought it was a waste of ours. “Get fell in for an FFI!” the corporal had shouted.
“What on earth does that mean?” we had asked each other.’
A worldly volunteer explained that ‘They want to see if you’ve got a dose of the
clap.’ They ‘tried not to stare at each other’s works as we stood there exposed and red-faced’.

Then the corporal ordered someone to fall out. ‘We craned our neck to see what was happening. Was it the clap? If so, what did it look like? As one of our number was hauled out of the
ranks, we saw that one of his testicles was rather larger than an orange. The other was the usual size. How the hell did that happen? Surely not the clap – but we didn’t know the
symptoms.’ The volunteers were barely out of school and ‘most of us were virgins, but keen to learn the ropes as soon as the opportunity presented itself’.
¹⁵