Day or night strategic bombing?

[stona]

Good stuff Steve, and thanks for the warning about that book on the alleged raid on the IoW.
I saw it listed on the publisher's web-site, and considered buying it, just out of curiosity. Sounds like it might make a reasonable movie, in a similar vein to 'The Eagle Has Landed', but not much else !
.

That would be about the best we could expect of it

I have opened up a sideline recently, looking at German airborne operations. There seems to be a prevalent notion that such an operation might have been successful in the Folkestone area as part of 'Sealion' (though this ignores the disastrous operations and losses suffered by German airborne forces in Holland).
Having read Karl-Heinz Golla's book on the Fallmschirmjager and Lieutenant Colonel Brongers book for a Dutch view of the German operations in his country, I thought that maybe the Isle of Wight might have been raided by similar forces, but it turns out that, according to the author, it was just a couple of dinghy loads of commandos....ridiculous to anyone with the slightest notion of how such an operation might actually have been carried out (see Operation Biting, that's how it's done).
Cheers
Steve

 

[stona]

View attachment 367330

To clarify Stonas post, this is what a Yorkshire Nissan hut looks like, Allerton Castle used by the RCAF high command in WW2.

That would be some Nissen hut!
Unfortunately that's not what they found at Linton on Ouse or most other bases.
I was fortunate to spend a day in York early this week with a few hours free. It's a beautiful place. I visited the railway museum and had a great time, despite no particular interest in trains or railways. It's a fantastic place and FREE, though I did make a reasonable donation. The Church charged me 15 quid to see the Minster!!!!

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

That would be some Nissan hut!
Unfortunately that's not what they found at Linton on Ouse or most other bases.
I was fortunate to spend a day in York early this week with a few hours free. It's a beautiful place. I visited the railway museum and had a great time, despite no particular interest in trains or railways. It's a fantastic place and FREE, though I did make a reasonable donation. The church charged me 15 quid to see the Minster!!!!

Did you go to Bettys Cafe to see the mirror? In the sixties I have vague memories of Nissan huts all over the place, some were still at Keldy castle camp and some next to Pickering castle where my uncle was custodian. I think a substantial part of the UK population lived in them 1939/45 also the POW population as you can see at Eden camp. My father was on the railways, he worked on or fired three of the locos in the Yorkshire Railway museum and also the Nigel Gresley, in his last days he was one of the few left who could fire up a steamer in the sidings where he worked.
Bettys Mirror

 

[Airframes]

If you ever get back to York, Steve, try to get out to the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington. It's just around 8 miles from the city center, and well worth a visit.
It was the base for two Halifax squadrons, of the Free French, and apart form the aircraft and many very interesting exhibits (including the part replica, part real Halifax MkIII), the remaining wartime buildings, including Nissen and Maycrete huts, the T2 hangar and the control tower, have been preserved and fitted out as they were in wartime.
There's an impressive memorial to the French crews on the approach to the village itself, just about a quarter mile from the airfield entrance, and the 'Grey Horse' pub in the village does a good B&B rate (or did when I last visited).
Here's a couple of general shots, showing the Nissen hut of the French Officer's Mess, with the NAAFI Maycrete hut alongside, now the museum restaurant, and the control tower (or Watch Office, in WW2 RAF parlance).

 

[stona]

That will be on my list next time. Thanks for showing, and very nice photos too.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Airframes]

You're welcome Steve.
Karl (Rochie) and I have been a few times over the last three or four years, and I posted a thread covering one visit, back in 2013 I think, when we went there with Jan.
Time for another visit I think ..........

 

[pbehn]

I won my first motorcycle race and broke my collar bone in my last one at Elvington, it was a bit alarming one weekend when a parachutist landed on the hairpin half way through a sidecar race.

 

[stona]

I forgot Betty's mirror. I didn't have time to see it, though I am aware of it....maybe next time, along with the air museum!
Cheers
Steve

 

[pbehn]

I forgot Betty's mirror. I didn't have time to see it, though I am aware of it....maybe next time, along with the air museum!
Cheers
Steve

If you stay in a hotel near York have your breakfast at Bettys it is great to see the city coming to life, most times of the year it is getting packed by 10.30 AM and after 11 in summer people queue to get in, it is ridiculously popular. At the height of summer you could drive to Bettys in Northallerton and be served more quickly than waiting in the queue there.

 

[nuuumannn]

Like YAM; great place; not least because of their repro Halifax.

Steve, I also find myself defending both Harris and BC among peers, few really understand Harris and how effective a leader he was.

I like what Hastings said about him in his book Bomber Command;

"Harris was an inflexible man, chronically resistant to negotiation and compromise, who treated those who disagreed with him as mortal enemies. He seemed driven, in the words of one historian, by an 'elemental tenacity of purpose'. This was a quality that would earn him many enemies and abrupt dismissal at the end of the war. But it is a most useful characteristic on the battlefield. Harris was a nerveless commander of great forces, and the history of warfare shows that such men are rare. His very insensitivity rendered him proof against shocks and disappointments. He possessed the considerable gifts of clarity of speech and purpose, and from the moment he became C-in-C at High Wycombe, he infused these into his entire command. He was never afraid of taking decisions. He made his officers at every level feel that they were now part of a great design instead of merely running a ramshackle air freight service exporting bombs to Germany."

 

[pbehn]

Like YAM; great place; not least because of their repro Halifax.

Steve, I also find myself defending both Harris and BC among peers, few really understand Harris and how effective a leader he was.

I like what Hastings said about him in his book Bomber Command;

"Harris was an inflexible man, chronically resistant to negotiation and compromise, who treated those who disagreed with him as mortal enemies. He seemed driven, in the words of one historian, by an 'elemental tenacity of purpose'. This was a quality that would earn him many enemies and abrupt dismissal at the end of the war. But it is a most useful characteristic on the battlefield. Harris was a nerveless commander of great forces, and the history of warfare shows that such men are rare. His very insensitivity rendered him proof against shocks and disappointments. He possessed the considerable gifts of clarity of speech and purpose, and from the moment he became C-in-C at High Wycombe, he infused these into his entire command. He was never afraid of taking decisions. He made his officers at every level feel that they were now part of a great design instead of merely running a ramshackle air freight service exporting bombs to Germany."

Most of what I read about Harris makes me seethe. Nuuumans post describes almost everything that is required and desired of a commander in difficult times, post war it may be regretted how many civilians died but that is certainly what he was employed to do and at the time he and his staff had the support of the vast majority of people in the UK.

 

[nuuumannn]

Just as an aside, whilst in York, not far from Elvington is Breighton, which used to be a BC base; the Real Aeroplane Company is based there. Great stuff. Not far from Howden, too; former bomber base and site of the Airship Guarantee Company's shed, where R.100 was built. The base of one of the big sheds is still there.

 

[stona]

Hastings has also written some less flattering things about Harris. It is Hastings that has suggested that at 'morning prayers', when Harris was presented with various potential targets, he invariably chose to attack an area target. It is certainly true that Harris preferred an area target, but not that he invariably chose one. Perhaps the single most important deciding factor was weather, and when this was anything but ideal, and it was often far from ideal, an area target was the correct choice. Actually it was not really a choice, it was the only sensible option, given the accuracy of H2S bombing. When the weather allowed, a considerable effort was made against the 'panacea' targets. This may have been against Harris' better judgement, but he did it anyway.

I don't find Harris to have been invariably inflexible either. He could be persuaded, but only by solid evidence. If the available evidence persuaded him that he should undertake a certain course of action he would. He certainly backed the PFF, but only after it had been more or less forced on him. The evidence showed that it almost immediately increased the concentration if not the accuracy of bombing, which to Harris was a step in the right direction.
If the evidence persuaded him to the contrary then he could be inflexible, his resistance to the Transport Plan is a good example, founded on solid data that showed what a huge effort most of the targets in that system actually required, as opposed to that which others less qualified supposed they required.
I would agree that he was resistant to compromise. He viewed any compromise in terms of a dilution of effort, and he was not much for negotiation which would lead to such compromise.

I don't find Harris insensitive either. He was acutely aware of his losses and, contrary to much written about him, actively argued, cajoled and demanded systems and equipment which might mitigate them. I would say, unscientifically, that Bomber Command's ORS only expended more effort on developing means of increasing bombing accuracy than it spent on understanding the causes of losses and developing ways of mitigating them. This aversion to losses was a trait shared by many senior officers of his generation, including Montgomery for whom he had great respect. It was also something many senior American officers simply could not understand about the British.
Many of the officers who worked closely with him were not only respected him and were unswervingly loyal to him, they actually liked him.
Sam Elworthy, as Wing Commander Ops 1b, got off to a disastrous start with Harris whilst briefing him on the use of increased incendiaries in bomber loads, so bad that Harris fired him. A few days later he was summoned back to the C-in-C. According to Elworthy's account Harris said.

"I don't think I was altogether fair. I lost patience with you because I wasn't in sympathy with what you were telling me. It wasn't your fault, you were telling me what you were told to. If you're prepared to stay I'd like you to do so. If in the light of what I said to you the other day you want to leave I shall quite understand."

Elworthy did stay.

Even R V Jones was surprised when he finally bearded Harris in his den to find that Harris not only received him pleasantly, but spoke with great common sense and allowed Jones to personally brief the crews targeting the V-1 sites. He would later write.

"I was dismayed that Harris was appointed C-in-C, he had been so critical of electronic warfare, but who else could have stood up to what we had to do?"

Diana Collins, wife of Padre John Collins (a man who contrary to popular writing had a friendly relationship with Harris, despite their very different views on bombing) often visited the Harris with her husband. She would write.

"Arthur, when not too exhausted or weighed down by his responsibilities, was very good company. With his wife, Jill, he enjoyed entertaining, and was a humorous, somewhat cynical observer of the human comedy, witty and amusing, and never pompous or self admiring."

This from the wife of a man that the press of the day portrayed as an arch enemy of Harris!
As an aside, there was a thread sometime back in which some photographs of demonstrations against the buying of Japanese goods were posted. I thought I recognised the clergyman in one of the photos. I can't find the thread, but I think that the clergyman in question might be Collins.

The image of Harris that most people have gathered from the writing about his military career is very one dimensional, and has no understanding of the man himself.

He certainly was a driven man. He believed absolutely that, in Bomber Command, he had been entrusted with a tool which might potentially win the war and he was guilty of a blinkered vision. He was also fundamentally wrong, though neither he, nor anyone else, could have known so at the time.
No bomber force has ever won any war single handed, no war has been won by air power alone, but it doesn't stop people trying. The contribution of air power to the winning of conflicts has been immense, and it was in WW2.
In Harris' time, as he said himself, winning a war by 'bombing......has never been tried, and we shall see'.
Well, we did see. It is others who have failed to learn the lesson, but this does not reflect on Harris. Modern writers often fail to make the distinction.

Cheers

Steve

 

[michaelmaltby]

well said ....

 

[pbehn]

This aversion to losses was a trait shared by many senior officers of his generation, including Montgomery for whom he had great respect. It was also something many senior American officers simply could not understand about the British.

Great post Steve.

British commanders had historically taken care to avoid losses, well at least the good ones did. The first world war with its madness of attrition was a bit of an aberration. Wellington took steps to protect his troops for the simple reason that he didnt have many and there was a huge difference between a trained, experienced regiment and a bunch of civilians with matching clothes and a new musket. Montgomery and Harris were both drawing on the same comparatively small pool of men and machines. The British armed forces already relied on people from the commonwealth and occupied countries, there was not an endless supply of Poles and Czechs coming to the UK and their was not an endless supply of young men in UK and elsewhere to be "called up". The US eventually had to conserve its assets in both men and machines by bringing in such things as escort fighters and even an apparent madman like Stalin learned that you cannot continue indefinitely sacrificing divisions and executing generals.

 

[stona]

The first world war with its madness of attrition was a bit of an aberration.

I believe it is here that lie the roots of that British (and Commonwealth) aversion to losses. It also underpinned Harris' determination that no such situation would be allowed to develop in Europe again, and his belief that air power could prevent it by denying the enemy the means to fight such a war (or any war).

You would have thought that the American Civil War would have taught the Americans a similar lesson, but then by WW2 it was just about fading from living memory, and there wouldn't be any 100 year old officers still active .

Cheers

Steve

 

[Robert Porter]

I hardly think the Americans were not adverse to losses. Read a few of their biographies. But they tended to have a more get it done mentality. I agree the British experience in WW1 was probably why British officers were less likely to be adventurous with their men than a similar American officer. The civil war, while in the more distant past, set the tone for American officers for generations. Of course by the North. (Since I moved to the American South I have learned the proper name for the American Civil war is actually the War of Northern Aggression. )

You can see that attitude in McAulliffe's reply of Nuts when being offered surrender terms during the Battle of the Bulge. American units did on occasion surrender when faced with overwhelming odds but much more often than not preferred to fight on. American military culture is/was vastly different from most European versions in that American troops were given far more latitude and often told "what" to accomplish as opposed to "how" to accomplish it. Especially seasoned troops.

I had occasion to witness this in action myself, I met with a group of British sailors that had taken an in port tour of an American missile frigate. We were all at the NCO club (I was transiting duty stations and stayed at a naval base) and the Brits were both shocked and in awe at the informality of American sailors to their officers. The lone American sailor in the group said he was in awe of the tradition of British sailors being allowed alcohol on board.

 

[stona]

You should have seen what happened to the helpful soldier who took me (a civilian contractor) into an office on an RAF station to ask for a first aid kit for my injured hand, but who failed to recognise that the woman he asked was in fact an RAF officer
(She might have been WRAF back then, it was a while ago.)
Cheers
Steve

 

[Robert Porter]

I know I was far more worried about what my "First Shirt" thought of me than my commanding officer. In all honesty during the majority of my years as active duty I dealt with a lot of officers but at arms length as it were. They never directly tasked us with anything. Because of my duties, when on duty, we were considered one rank above anyone we were dealing with officially. Not in the sense that we would receive a salute but if I told a Colonel to "Freeze" he froze. No Lone Zone violations could and did result in officers being shot with no warning. Not often, but often enough we received a great deal of respect and latitude in our jobs.

On one occasion I was involved in a situation where an officer, a Major, attempted to bull his way into a secure area without being on the access list. Even though he technically commanded the unit. He tried browbeating us into letting him pass. And was somewhat of an asshole about it. It ended with him stripped to his skivvies and handcuffed to a chain link fence in Nebraska in February. He never did learn and through the whole ordeal continued to threaten us with all kinds of dire consequences. In typical officer fashion they quietly transferred him elsewhere. No it was not a test to see if we could be bullied into a violation he was just an asshole.

Thankfully officers like him were the exception. When I was based in Wyoming I was a passenger in a vehicle driven by a drunk airman, he crashed the car in sight of the base front gate. I was knocked about pretty good and somewhat the worse for wear. I could have been cashiered just for being involved. But the officer in command of the gate unit quietly pulled me into the gate office before the base LE's arrived and held me there until someone from my unit could come collect me. The only thing he said to me was, "That's your one and only pass. Do it again and I own your ass."

 

[fubar57]

This the thread Steve....?

Boycott Japanese Toys