Arthur "Bomber " Harris.....

[San Martin]

SM, getting more mainstream all the time, dont worry. That started as far back as John Thaw's excellent portrayal of Harris many years ago, around the time the statue was unveiled. Certainly RAF veterans have no blinkers on any more.

The RAF was a strange organisation - then ALL British war planning was "odd" at times. A split personality, which led the precision bombers, the men with real skills, off to the Pathfinders and Mosquito squadrons and Beaufighters, while arguably leaving the "mass production" of entirely competent - but not outstanding - aircrew of to the heavies. Maybe this lack was due to all the old 30s hands being lost in the first two years of the war, wasted in all those daylight raids onto the continent in virtually unprotected Hampdens and the like, or in entirely nsuitable aircraft like the Whitley, operating at extreme range time after time over Germany.

In turn, Ive seen it argued that Bomber Command was an even more focused weapon than the USAAF day bomber force - because the weapons the government put at its disposal - Stirlings, Halifaxes...then Manchesters (shudder)...and finally the Lancaster were all but useless in any other role UNLESS the RAF enjoyed air superiority. Look at the legendary DAYLIGHT RAF raids in the 2nd half of the war....617 Sqdn's final sccess at the Tirpitz, and Beilefeld viaduct....both enjoyed empty skies and fighter escort.

Compare this with the Battle of Britain, when TACTICAL bombers carried out daylight raid after daylight raid with excellent results on Ten Group's airfields, enjoying ONLY fighter escort, and not always that, and certainly NOT air speriority.

Given THAT comparison - which force did the better job???

Sorry PR out of it for a while, bloody work. Exellent analysis, indeed as you imply there was a sequence of events, and who did what first is significant, not t'other way around.

Good question bringing out my real opinions, despite those often brave boys going out in flimsies like the Halifax, for me the Fighter arm gets the prize, they really innovated, and saved our bacon back in 1940, again Harris with his influence won out over them as time went by.

Not read the rest of the thread yet, soz, but that is my hasty ans. to that exellent post

[phylo_roadking]

The situation with Harris "winning out" was a miror image of what had just happened in late 1940 in Fighter Command; Dowding and Park were forced out, and Dowding replaced by Trafford Leigh-Mallory of 11 Group, of Big Wing fame.....who basically said the right things at the right time in the right ears. As much a political appointeee as anything. Same situation with Harris.
The technical side of Bomber Command and Fighter Command were complete comedies of errors, the number of types brought into service that were complete turkeys, or not up to the job is amazing in both arms. There only APPEARS to have been great continuty of service in Fighter Command of various marques of the Spitfire....because the several replacements didn't come up to scratch, the Typhoon being the most famous "failure". Even the Spitfire lagged behind in development at times, its embarassment over Dieppe at the hands of the FW190-A is legendary.
Its actually in the medium bomber and strike aircraft roles that the RAF showed what it could do, with types like the Mosquito and Beaufighter, and FINALLY the ground-atttack Typhoon.

[San Martin]

Never very big on the old Ground Attack thing back then, esp. compared to the Luftwaffe and Red Airforce. I guess as you imply it fell in between the two stools, which was not the way back then. The Mosquito is w/out a doubt a winner, hence the Germans (for once) copying it and calling it the same name.

The Typhoon and specifically the Napier Sabre H form double Vs was a masterpiece of engineering, it had so much torque that the pilots learned to instictively pull left on take off, because it would pull to the right, so much was the prop's bite on the air, as you say though they used to light up easily, and the engine only really came into it's own around 1945, and by 1953 the RAF went with the Jet age.



Ethics and war, they are not a contradiction. Otherwise why would Cicero and St Augustine bother to write about it, and why would people even grasp the concept? Perhaps furthermore v. Clausewitz should not have bothered to write on war, because it's all immoral and therefore no point on writing any principles on the thing?

No.

If you are a moral relativist, then indeed we are all swine wallowing in our own filth, and we all might not as well bother getting out of bed and trying, because, after all opinions are like arseholes, right?

Wrong, I am a moral Realist, and through consensus we can find an ethic/s that we all agree on, otherwise what point is there on even having rules for this forum, let alone in war? Why follow sport then, or even have the concept? This is the very real problem that I have with relativism, it really is worthy of swine rolling in their own feculence.

What was Nuremberg all about then, and why did thet accused not use the "But all war is immoral" gambit while shrugging their shoulders at the same time then? An inadmissable defence, clearly.

There are rules to war, as men, and war is mainly a male concern, we are rule crazy and contractarian (regarding male and female ethics, female ethics are more context based), no matter how immoral war is, concepts such as just wars, causus belli, self defence, moral clarity and etc, are all easily understood, and often followed, because they benefit all, and when they don't we get the Eastern Front total war situations, but on the Western Fronts the Red Cross and etc were respected, and medics treated the first injured they came across, regardless of the uniform worn.

I notice that the Hamburg Firestorm was not picked up on, can we blame Stalin for that one too? Did Stalin force Harris' arm for that one and the airmen were weeping into their bombsites when doing the deal broached at Yalta? Hamburg was one of the centres for Nazi resistance before the war started, and a beautiful city, what reason is there to put a 3rd wave timed to hit the emergency services with fragmentation bombs? What military value did that have? Like with Lebanon it would only discredit any pro-Allied/western elements in that city.

So, after Rotterdam and etc, does that justify carpet bombing civilian areas? What difference then between "us" and "them"? Two wrongs make a right then do they? Yes foreshortening the war, more like stopping the commies from getting any more of Europe, the same as Nuking Japan, which btw, the USSR was poised to invade from the North, what a coincidence. Saving lives, yeah right.

Even from a callous point of view, who paid to rebuild Germany after the War? The Allies did; blow it up, and then rebuild it again, and fresh gongs for the Air Marshalls please.

Agree about modern perspectives on the period at the time that would be bad history, however, why would Churchill say it was a war crime at the time then? clearly it was, even in those times, and hence the subsequent formation of rules against attacking Civilians, most specifically the 4th Geneva Convention.

Interesting that Churchill did not say the same about Hamburg, giving away his own political agenda in that case, and, as such a vehement anti-Communist, why did'nt he just tell Stalin to beggar off? After all he had pretty much done so earlier on when meeting Stalin in Moscow, so why not this time? Yup, it's all Stalin's fault, even Hamburg, hmmm...

[phylo_roadking]

I think Churchill had a very fine sense of exactly how mch he could get away with in the public's eyes, and was the closest to a political Commander-In-Chief like the US President's role than Britain has ever had before or since. Hence his condemnation of Desden - but no others. He certainly didnt worry about the preceeding couple of weeks' raid on Berlin. But Dresden was too close to the end of the war, and was further than the RAF had bombed en masse before. There were SO many exceptions surronding Dresden that it was abundantly clear that it would set intelligent minds to questioning what had happened.

As for the Napier, yes but like so many marvels of engineering its complexity caused headaches, and pilots and groundcrew alike didnt like the cartridge starting system. Unfortunately it was mated to the "standard" chunky wide-cord Hawker wings, which together with early supercharger issues damned its performance at high altitude - and unfortunately thats what it had been desinged for. Thankfully the position of the war in Europe then indicated there would soon be a need for high-performance low-level aircraft, basically replacing the P-51 razorbacks in the role they had fallen into for exactly the same reasons.

(the same thing also happened to the Americans with the P47 Thinderbolt LOL)

Whats strange about British sourcing policy is the HUGE number of types they ended up with, unlike the general American idea of standardisation even across many independent factories and companies contracted to produce the same product. I used to have a site in my Favourites that I can't find again, it listed EVERY aircraft in RAF service during the war, even down to commandeered civilian types with only a couple of aircraft in type. When you reckon ALL the British medium and heavy bombers, THEN all the Lend-lease typoes, THEN all the almost-but not quite the same aircraft types built in the US under contract and in Canada especially - there were dozens of types in service. Sometimes across whole wings the only common parts were Bristol and Rolls-Royce engine spares!

How they managed to cordinate all the different performances, ranges etc for large raids must have been a nightmare!

[Cott Tiger]

Good morning Phylo,

Andre, Harris himself seems to be a bit of a driven man. Certainly his views as expressed may have been similar - but how many people listening to his remarks knew the actual policy details behind it? It may have been indicative of a certain - vindictiveness, bt of course it was still not right.

Of course the average Briton didn’t know the complexities of decision-making within Bomber Command or the MOD in general. However, it is undisputable that the vast majority of Britons were supportive of Bomber Command and Harris as he seen took the war to the Germans when Britain was well and truly on the back foot. The fact remains, even to this day (just speak to my Grandma), that they thought it was morally justifiable.

Do I personally think, 60 years later, it can morally justified – no I don’t. But who is right, my Grandma or me?

The USAAF in the Pacific is an odd situation; there's been a lot written on their targeting policy, even over the targeting decision for the Atomic Bomb, and each time they appear to have hit ideally industrial targets, as with their targeting policy in Europe. However, the same policy was honour-bound to cause huge civilian casualties in Japan with their building materials and general lack of sheltering - both of which the Americans were aware of.They should too have a case to answer as to why this was contined in this way - except the victors are always in the right. But the war against Japan was slightly different in emotional terms for Americans - what war crimes there were, and they were many and numerous - didnt start off with genocide against a third party like the Jews and continue from there; they started with an illegal war, repeated mistreatment of prisoners, the Bataan Death March etc i.e. directly against American servicemen. So they were not as dispassionate as they maybe should have been

I am not exactly sure what you are saying here.

Are you arguing that the Americans did not intentionally target civilians in Japan (any more than the British did in Germnay)? If you are, I think you are clearly mistaken. Tokyo was firebombed in March 1945 with an estimated loss of 100,000 civilians and the destruction of 16 square miles of the City. The Americans knew exactly what they doing and what effect it would have on the population (they tried it earlier on Kobe). That one Tokyo raid was equivalent to several Dresden’s in terms of death and destruction. These firebombing raids in 1945 and the two atomic bomb attacks achieved death and destruction on par with years of RAF strategic bombing of Germany..
Also, as I have stated before, the Luftwaffe also repeatedly targeted civilians in its campaigns in the East.

Your assertion that Britain was in isolation in regards to targeting civilians is clearly wrong.

I also dispute your argument that the Americans attitude towards bombing Japan, should be viewed, emotionally, any differently to the RAF attacks on Germany. Both countries were locked in deadly global combat and were aiming to defeat the enemy by whatever means necessary.

Regarding the Atomic Bomb - Japanese morale didnt suffer from that, it was just two super-firestorms to them. News from the two cities was necessarily sparse and filtered to the rest of the country. It certainly caused VERY little hesitation for the Military, it was the rump of the civilian administration and the Emperor who took the decision to surrender, not the High Command.

The fact is Phylo they surrendered after the bombs were dropped. Revolting as it maybe, wiping out whole cities of innocent civilians was effective in ending the war prematurely. So to say targeting civilians had been proven not to work, isn’t necessarily true. It just hadn’t been proven until then. The Americans proved, in the most gruesome fashion, it could make break the will to continue.
I also believe, although I can’t provide sources I’m afraid (just background reading some time ago), that the war-time Japanese Prime Minister, had admitted that the mass terror raids by the B-29’s had a huge impact on the decision to sue for peace.

Regards,

Andre

[Helmut Von Moltke]

Guys, I thought this thread was about Bomber Harris and not the B29 raids on Japan?:?

Back to the subject, I remember reading a stactic that around several hundred thousand to 1 million German civilians were killed by Allied bombing?

K

[phylo_roadking]

Hi Andre - by my section on the USAAF I was trying to say without tramping on toes that yes they did target civilians, but again their targeting policy was supposedly only military targets. The difference maybe is that whereas the RAF trumpeted in newsreels etc that they were indeed striking back into Germany when noone else could, and each newsreel as I'm sure youve seem trumpets this or that target oor factory destroyed. I was trying to throw up the British Governments' double standard in specifically targeting the workforce when TELLING its people that they were targeting factories.

The US in the Pacific were a little LESS hidden - doesnt make it right, but given how japanese warcrimes against Americans were trumpeted to the American public throughout the war, thats not suprising, just regrettable at this remove. In Europe the vast majority of Nazi war crimes only became known in full AFTER the war or the liberation of occupied countries.

The Luftwaffe targeting civilian centres in the east is very ambiguous; dont forget they did exactly the same in Belgium and France to drive populations onto the road and prevent troop movements. Given the encyclopedia definition of Blitzkrieg it would be harder in the German military mind of the day to distingish between, say, a road nexus that had to be either blocked, or opened up to the Wehrmacht....and a town or village. This is not apologia - in a war of manourver the means of manouver - freeing it up for yourself and denying it to the enemy - can be viewed on as a legitimate target. EQUALLY regrettable at this remove, but a fair and actually legal argument. Again - it doesnt make it right. After all, look at how French civilians clung to ruined villages in both the Werstern Front in WWI and the liberation of France in 1944 - how many civilians were in Caen?

[Pirx]

Luftwaffe never had strategic weapon. Heavy bombers with long range could be very dangerous weapon in Hitlers hands, especially 1939-1941.

[Cott Tiger]

Hi Phylo,

Hi Andre - by my section on the USAAF I was trying to say without tramping on toes that yes they did target civilians, but again their targeting policy was supposedly only military targets. The difference maybe is that whereas the RAF trumpeted in newsreels etc that they were indeed striking back into Germany when noone else could, and each newsreel as I'm sure youve seem trumpets this or that target oor factory destroyed. I was trying to throw up the British Governments' double standard in specifically targeting the workforce when TELLING its people that they were targeting factories.

The US in the Pacific were a little LESS hidden - doesnt make it right, but given how japanese warcrimes against Americans were trumpeted to the American public throughout the war, thats not suprising, just regrettable at this remove. In Europe the vast majority of Nazi war crimes only became known in full AFTER the war or the liberation of occupied countries.

I agree that there were differences in propaganda and also differences in how the bombing campaigns were perceived. That doesn’t however alter the fact that Britain was not alone in targeting civilians, but I take your point.

The Luftwaffe targeting civilian centres in the east is very ambiguous; dont forget they did exactly the same in Belgium and France to drive populations onto the road and prevent troop movements. Given the encyclopedia definition of Blitzkrieg it would be harder in the German military mind of the day to distingish between, say, a road nexus that had to be either blocked, or opened up to the Wehrmacht....and a town or village. This is not apologia - in a war of manourver the means of manouver - freeing it up for yourself and denying it to the enemy - can be viewed on as a legitimate target. EQUALLY regrettable at this remove, but a fair and actually legal argument. Again - it doesnt make it right. After all, look at how French civilians clung to ruined villages in both the Werstern Front in WWI and the liberation of France in 1944 - how many civilians were in Caen?

The Luftwaffe, whilst not capable of the huge bomber raids of the RAF still targeted civilians throughout the rest of the war. Leningrad and Stalingrad in Russia for example saw indiscriminate bombing of purely civilian areas and no differentiation between combat and non-combat personal was taken into account.
Also what about the continued raids over Britain? German bombing of British cities didn’t totally cease in 1941. Also what about the V1 and V2 rocket attacks? It was an indiscriminate weapon devised to cause maximum terror and carnage in the civilian population.
The Germans had no hesitation in targeting civilians and did so as much as their resources would allow them throughout the war,

Regards,

Andre

[Torquez]

In Europe the vast majority of Nazi war crimes only became known in full AFTER the war or the liberation of occupied countries.

That is untrue. In 1940 Polish government in exile published "Black Book of Poland" documenting German atrocities in German occupied Poland.
In 1942 it also published vast information about murder and discrimination of Jews. There were also BBC broadcast with Poles who escaped German occupied Poland and who saw concentration camps.

[Cott Tiger]

Never very big on the old Ground Attack thing back then, esp. compared to the Luftwaffe and Red Airforce. I guess as you imply it fell in between the two stools, which was not the way back then. The Mosquito is w/out a doubt a winner, hence the Germans (for once) copying it and calling it the same name.

The Typhoon and specifically the Napier Sabre H form double Vs was a masterpiece of engineering, it had so much torque that the pilots learned to instictively pull left on take off, because it would pull to the right, so much was the prop's bite on the air, as you say though they used to light up easily, and the engine only really came into it's own around 1945, and by 1953 the RAF went with the Jet age.



Ethics and war, they are not a contradiction. Otherwise why would Cicero and St Augustine bother to write about it, and why would people even grasp the concept? Perhaps furthermore v. Clausewitz should not have bothered to write on war, because it's all immoral and therefore no point on writing any principles on the thing?

No.

If you are a moral relativist, then indeed we are all swine wallowing in our own filth, and we all might not as well bother getting out of bed and trying, because, after all opinions are like arseholes, right?

Wrong, I am a moral Realist, and through consensus we can find an ethic/s that we all agree on, otherwise what point is there on even having rules for this forum, let alone in war? Why follow sport then, or even have the concept? This is the very real problem that I have with relativism, it really is worthy of swine rolling in their own feculence.

What was Nuremberg all about then, and why did thet accused not use the "But all war is immoral" gambit while shrugging their shoulders at the same time then? An inadmissable defence, clearly.

There are rules to war, as men, and war is mainly a male concern, we are rule crazy and contractarian (regarding male and female ethics, female ethics are more context based), no matter how immoral war is, concepts such as just wars, causus belli, self defence, moral clarity and etc, are all easily understood, and often followed, because they benefit all, and when they don't we get the Eastern Front total war situations, but on the Western Fronts the Red Cross and etc were respected, and medics treated the first injured they came across, regardless of the uniform worn.

I notice that the Hamburg Firestorm was not picked up on, can we blame Stalin for that one too? Did Stalin force Harris' arm for that one and the airmen were weeping into their bombsites when doing the deal broached at Yalta? Hamburg was one of the centres for Nazi resistance before the war started, and a beautiful city, what reason is there to put a 3rd wave timed to hit the emergency services with fragmentation bombs? What military value did that have? Like with Lebanon it would only discredit any pro-Allied/western elements in that city.

So, after Rotterdam and etc, does that justify carpet bombing civilian areas? What difference then between "us" and "them"? Two wrongs make a right then do they? Yes foreshortening the war, more like stopping the commies from getting any more of Europe, the same as Nuking Japan, which btw, the USSR was poised to invade from the North, what a coincidence. Saving lives, yeah right.

Even from a callous point of view, who paid to rebuild Germany after the War? The Allies did; blow it up, and then rebuild it again, and fresh gongs for the Air Marshalls please.

Agree about modern perspectives on the period at the time that would be bad history, however, why would Churchill say it was a war crime at the time then? clearly it was, even in those times, and hence the subsequent formation of rules against attacking Civilians, most specifically the 4th Geneva Convention.

Interesting that Churchill did not say the same about Hamburg, giving away his own political agenda in that case, and, as such a vehement anti-Communist, why did'nt he just tell Stalin to beggar off? After all he had pretty much done so earlier on when meeting Stalin in Moscow, so why not this time? Yup, it's all Stalin's fault, even Hamburg, hmmm...

Hi San Martin,

You make a very valid point about Hamburg. The Allied bombing debate is sometimes taken down a cul-de-sac in relation to Dresden because it fits many political agendas. Many myths were built up and around Dresden, encouraged by spurious historians such as David Irving, not least the death toll being exaggerated by 10 times.

Hamburg suffered greater losses insofar as human suffering goes, yet it is often overlooked for the more “convenient” arguments that fit the bombing of Dresden.

Both raids essentially caused needless death and suffering to the civilian population, although that is not to say that they didn’t both contain legitimate industrial or military targets, just that severe “overkill” was deployed in relation to both.

I respect the moral position you take on this issue, and I concur with your argument about ethics and war not having to be a contradiction.

Regards,

Andre

[phylo_roadking]

Andre - leningrad and Stalingrad are odd situations; there their own LEADER made the civil population part of the direct war machine by requiring them to remain in situ - or in city. Their continued presence made them combatants, just like kevin's medieval sieges. Again not right, their own leaders should NOT have put them in that place; this could bring up a HUGE discussion, but to be brief - politics is as you know the process by which resources are divided...and the resource of protection and well-being is what a citizen gets back from their govenment in return for their support upwards. Different words and way of doing it in the 21st and 20th century, but its exactly the same process as feudal scutage - a villein or serf can't provide their own protection, so in return for rent/support/service....they get it from above. Obliging these civil populations to stay put was an abrogation by Stalin of what he SHOULD have owed downwards to them - protection, or letting them GO to a place he could protect. I know thats a bit woolly, I'm trying to condense two years of political science into one paragraph LOL

German bombing of Britain didnt cease, but because very mch more targeted, focused on military targets, because the Luftwaffe in the West didnt have the resources to squander on terror bombing. Hence raids on ports and indutrial towns. A lot of the raids too were diversions, the Lftwaffe had for a time a policy of an intruder raid like that covering mining operations in the Tyne, Forth, Clyde, Mersey etc.

The V1 and V2 is a very odd, definitely criminal activity - and made even stranger by some of the nearly-forgotten aspects. German rocketry as a process was driven by the SS, as the Wehrmacht had shown little interest.So from its very start it was taken ot of the "legitimate" national military process and broght into the Nazi Party machinery. They were Nazi weapons, not German weapons, and not enough people answered for that after the war. Two other points - there was a lot of trouble with the Luftwaffe squadrons that later were tasked to air-drop V1s, because they didnt want to be involved in the process. Also, Ive seen a lot of Nazi propaganda film over the years, and when youre looking deep into the whole German nuclear programme and the Maud Committee its hard not to get taken off towards the rocketry element of the Wunderwaffen. There is little or no trumpeting of the fact that it was British civilians that these were indiscriminately targeted at - rather, the whole tone is that the entire South of England was an armed camp for the invasion and after, and it was THIS that the V-weapons were targeted at. A strange ommission, given that the RAF was meanwhile being quite indiscriminate. The only mention is that the terror meted out to the German volk was being revisited upon Britain.

What I think we should do here is acknowledge that there is and was a great difference between what each population was TOLD, against what was really happening - which is the true story...what people believed the war was being fought for, and how? Or the way their leaders were doing it in secret from them?

[Pirx]

In Europe the vast majority of Nazi war crimes only became known in full AFTER the war or the liberation of occupied countries.

That is untrue. In 1940 Polish government in exile published "Black Book of Poland" documenting German atrocities in German occupied Poland.
In 1942 it also published vast information about murder and discrimination of Jews. There were also BBC broadcast with Poles who escaped German occupied Poland and who saw concentration camps.

Vast majority of Nazi war crimes only become known in full after war.
In 1942 or 1940 only small part of crimes was known. Even by Polish goverment in exile.

[Pirx]

The V1 and V2 is a very odd, definitely criminal activity - and made even stranger by some of the nearly-forgotten aspects. German rocketry as a process was driven by the SS, as the Wehrmacht had shown little interest.So from its very start it was taken ot of the "legitimate" national military process and broght into the Nazi Party machinery. They were Nazi weapons, not German weapons, and not enough people answered for that after the war....

Those Nazis had no nationality? Or they were German nazi?
I disagree with that separation: Germans were innocent, guilty were nazis. Rubbish. If some Poles made pogrom in Kielce, they were Poles, not only antysemits.

[Cott Tiger]

Guys, I thought this thread was about Bomber Harris and not the B29 raids on Japan?:?

Since when did you become a Moderator?

Back to the subject, I remember reading a stactic that around several hundred thousand to 1 million German civilians were killed by Allied bombing?

Try some further reading.

Estimates obviously vary, but the general consensus is that between 360-370,000 German civilians died as a result of Allied bombing.

Wikidedia quotes Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Bd. 9/1, ISBN 3-421-06236-6. with this information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_ ... sche_Reich

Regards,

Andre