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