Bomber Command (69 page)

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Authors: Max Hastings

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——,
With Prejudice
Cassell 1965)
Thomson, R. W.,
Churchill and Morton
(Hodder & Stoughton 1976)
Verrier, Anthony,
The Bomber Offensive
(Batsford 1968)
Watson, John,
Johnny Kinsman
(Cassell 1956)
Winfield, Roland,
The Sky Belongs to Them
(Kimber 1976)
Zuckerman, Lord,
From Apes to Warlords
(Hamish Hamilton 1978)
Official Histories
The Design and Development of Weapons
, Postan, Hay and Scott (HMSO 1958)
RAF Medical Services
, Rexford Welch (HMSO 1955)
The Royal Air Force 1939–45
, Richards, Denis (HMSO 1953)
The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany
, vols i–iv, Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland (HMSO 1961)
The War At Sea
, vols I & II, Roskill, Captain S. W. (HMSO 1954 and 1956)

It may be useful to add to the above list the following books which were published after the manuscript was completed, but which it was possible to consult while
Bomber Command
was still at proof stage. All contain important relevant material on the bomber offensive, although none caused me to wish to make significant changes to what I have written:

Dean, Sir Maurice,
The RAF and Two World Wars
(Cassell 1979)
Faber, Harold (ed.),
Luftwaffe
(Sidgwick & Jackson 1979)
Hinsley, F. H.,
British Intelligence in the Second World War
, vol i (HMSO 1979)
McLaine, Ian,
Ministry of Morale
(Allen & Unwin 1979)

Notes and references

All letters and documents quoted in the text are from the AIR files in the Public Record Office unless otherwise stated.

Foreword

1
Harris,
Bomber Offensive
(Collins 1947), p. 176.
2
Quarterly Review
, vol. 300, p. 428.

Prologue

1
3 Group report on the events of 18 December 1939.
2
Quoted Bekker,
The Luftwaffe War Diaries
(Macdonald 1964), p. 74.
3
Grant to author, July 1978.
4
Ibid.

1. In the Beginning, Trenchard: British Bomber Policy, 1917–40

1
The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany
(HMSO 1961), vol. 1, p. 10.
2
Fuller,
Tanks in the Great War
(London 1920), p. 314.
3
Liddell Hart,
Paris
(Kegan Paul 1925), p. 47.
4
Shaw,
Adventures of the Black Girl in Search of God
(Constable 1932).
5
Spaight,
Air Power and Cities
(Longmans 1930).
6
Robert Rhodes James,
The British Revolution
(Hamish Hamilton 1977), vol. II, pp. 258–9.
7
Sir Barnes Wallis to author, 8 November 1976.
8
Slessor,
Air Power and Armies
(London 1936), p. 65.
9
Quoted in the Appendices to H. A. Jones’s
The War in the Air
(Oxford 1937), along with Sir Douglas Haig’s equally interesting remarks.
10
R. V. Jones,
Most Secret War
(Hamish Hamilton 1978), p. 45.

3. 10 Squadron, Yorkshire, 1940–41

1
Denis Hornsey, unpublished MS ‘Here Today, Bomb Tomorrow’.
2
Air Vice-Marshal S. O. Bufton to the author, 12 November 1976.
3
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. I, p. 154.
4
Denis Richards,
Portal of Hungerford
(Heinemann 1978), p. 166.
5
Hornsey MS, op. cit.
6
Letter to the author, March 1978.

4. Crisis of Confidence, 1941–42

1
Churchill to John Lawrence, cited interview with the author, 7 July 1978.
2
Taylor,
The Second World War
(Hamish Hamilton 1975), p. 129. Some airmen claim that a much smaller proportion, as low as 6 per cent of the war effort, was devoted to the bomber offensive, but this is quite unconvincing.
3
Raymond Lee,
The London Observer
(Hutchinson 1972), pp. 372–3.
4
Quoted Roskill,
Churchill and the Admirals
(Collins 1977), p. 139.
5
Ibid., p. 206.
6
Quoted A. J. P. Taylor,
Beaverbrook
(Hamish Hamilton 1972).
7
Kennedy,
The Business of War
(Hutchinson 1957).
8
Craven and Cate,
The Army Air Forces in World War II
(University of Chicago Press 1949), vol. II, p. 735.
9
Roskill, op. cit., p. 137.
10
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. I, p. 180.

5. The Coming of Area Bombing, 1942

1
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 15–16.
2
Ibid., p. 336.
3
Sir Barnes Wallis conversation with the author, November 1976.
4
I must differ from the view expressed by Ronald Clark in his excellent biography of Tizard: even if Tizard was not questioning the principles on which the bomber offensive was based, he was convinced that it could not yield results in proportion to the effort being expended upon it. His disagreement with Cherwell does indeed seem ‘fundamental’.
5
See Zuckerman’s autobiography,
From Apes to Warlords
(Hamish Hamilton 1978), pp. 139–46.
6
Harris, op. cit., p. 147.
7
Harris conversation with the author, 25 April 1978.
8
Harris, op. cit., pp. 15 and 52.
9
Quoted Thompson,
Churchill and Morton
(Hodder & Stoughton 1976), p. 44.
10
Ibid., pp. 48 and 86.
11
Anthony Verrier,
The Bomber Offensive
(Batsford 1968), p. 4.

6. 50 Squadron, Lincolnshire, 1942

1
The Empire Training Scheme handled 200,000 aircrew in the course of the war.
2
Owen conversation with the author, November 1976.
3
Feelings of Esmond Romilly as quoted by Philip Toynbee,
Friends Apart
(McGibbon & Kee 1954), p. 68.
4
Harris to David Irving, 1961.
5
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. I, p. 392.
6
S/Ldr Ronald Barton,
Hampdens from Swinderby
(published privately).
7
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 394–5.
8
Dudley Saward,
The Bomber’s Eye
(Cassell 1959), p. 126.
9
Lee, op. cit., pp. 378–9.
10
Ibid., pp. 379–80.
11
Hornsey MS, op. cit.
12
Yeates,
Winged Victory
(Cape 1973).
13
Information to the author from a German-speaking aircrew POW who saw story and photograph in German Press. I have interviewed a WAAF who was once taken as a passenger on an operation.

7. Protest and Policy, 1942–43

1
See Anthony Trythall,
‘Boney’ Fuller
(Cassell 1977), p. 226.
2
See Brian Bond,
Liddell Hart: A Study of his Military Thought
(Cassell 1977), pp. 146–8.
3
Harris, op. cit., p. 58.
4
Seversky,
Victory through Air Power
(New York 1942).
5
As far as I am aware, this remarkable paper from the 4 Group files in the PRO has never before been published. It is a major reflection on Harris’s tactical judgement, and it is fortunate that he was dissuaded from pursuing his faith in daylight operations at this stage.
6
Or so the Air Ministry believed: Harris himself says that he never actually set eyes on
Pointblank
until it reached his desk in its final form in June 1943 (conversation with the author, 25 April 1978).
7
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 5.
8
Churchill,
The Second World War
(Cassell 1950), vol. II, p. 314.
9
Robert Rhodes James,
The British Revolution
(Hamish Hamilton 1976).
10
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 7.
11
Harris, op. cit., p. 143.
12
Harris, op. cit., p. 49.
13
Harris conversation with the author, 14 October 1976.
14
Bennett conversation with the author, July 1978.
15
Harris, op. cit., p. 144.

8. 76 Squadron, Yorkshire, 1943

1
Craven and Cate, op. cit., vol. II, p. ix.
2
Hank Iveson conversation with the author, 17 June 1978.
3
Hornsey MS, op. cit.
4
Webster and Frankland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 142.
5
Professor Derek Jackson, one of the scientists most closely involved in wartime radar development, has stated (letter to the
Sunday Telegraph
, 12 March 1978) that insufficient supplies of
Window
existed to enable its introduction before July 1943. But Air Vice-Marshal Addison, then commanding 80 Wing, possessed supplies stockpiled in his HQ at Radlett golf club, Herts, in mid-1942 (conversation with the author 11 November 1976).
6
Sir Barnes Wallis conversation with the author, 8 November 1976.
7
Kirkham to the author, 20 March 1978.
8
Conversation with the author, February 1977.
9
Conversation with the author, February 1978.
10
Cochrane conversation with the author, November 1976.
11
Cheshire,
Bomber Pilot
(Hutchinson 1943), p. 9.
12
Kirkham to the author, 12 November 1978.
13
Hornsey did publish one book, on his escape from France after being shot down:
The Pilot Walked Home
(Collins Blue Circle 1946).

9. The Other Side of the Hill: Germany 1940–44

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