Cunningham - Through Enemy Skies: the history of Britains bombing campaign in the Second World War

Between them these ten personal accounts of RAF Bomber Command aircrew chart the history of Britains bombing campaign in the Second World War. Starting with the disastrous misemployment of the force in the opening weeks of the conflict misemployment which led to the Commands halting essays into night-navigating over Germany with propaganda leaflets , they progress from bombing raids with each aircraft acting independently, to strategic operations in which hundreds of heavy bombers were channelled towards accurately-marked release points. Some crew members detail their involvement with the electronic aids that made such precision marking possible. Others recall tours begun when the focus of operations had changed to tactical support of the Allied land forces, and defence against Hitlers indiscriminately-aimed V weapons. Later accounts close with reminders that, even after Germany surrendered, there was still a war raging in the Far East that seemed set to drag on interminably.

Although the accounts rarely touch upon any higher-level planning conferences than the pre-operation briefing, Bomber Command was never a blinkered force. Squadron commanders would tell crews what their target was; an oil facility, an aircraft factory, or a ball-bearing works, and as the invasion neared, rail and communications centres. However, such relatively junior commanders, and their crews, could only accept that the designated targets were indeed vital to the enemys war effort, and therefore, worth the sacrifice so many comrades had already made and that they were only too likely to be called upon to make themselves. At the same time they were well aware from training results how inaccurate their best efforts could be.

This introduction supplements the personal accounts by reviewing the policies that gave form to Bomber Commands six-year-long campaign.

On 8 July 1940, with Hitlers armies victorious after the battle of France, and poised to begin what Prime Minister Winston Churchill had expected, a month earlier, would be called the battle of Britain, Churchill wrote privately to the Minister for Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook, urging him to hasten the availability of the promised heavy bombers. He went on, when I look round to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path ... and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. And as Churchill was known for his meticulous use of language, the word exterminating must be given its full weight.

Other politicians who had publicly trodden similar ground remain vilified to this day. In 1932 de facto Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, accepting as a truism Italian General Douhets contention that the bomber will always get through, told the House that the man in the street should realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed ... That the only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. In 1938 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was to suffer for his seemingly complacent attitude to appeasement, and his re-use of Disraelis Peace for our time statement.