The other factor with the Battle was the Geneva Disarmament conference - there was a large anti-bomber lobby that was campaigning to ban them - unrealistic n.b many of the Lw bombers were disguised as passenger aircraft. There was a proposal to restrict the weight of bombers - although it was relaxed with the Wellington design, it was broadly kept with the Battle e.g. single-engine.
The luftwaffe was governed by other earlier treaties.
These debates were of their time and it is important to understand the atmosphere in which they were carried out.
It is noticeable that those seeking to limit air power were principally the senior officers of the other services! The War Office and Admiralty,in the 1934-9 period were ambivalent about the danger of aerial bombardment.They always underplayed it when discussing re-armament,partly to increase their own chances of obtaining a larger share of the limited funds available.They also did not believe the airmen's claim that they would decide the outcome of the next war.
Simultaneously the Admiralty was concerned about the prospect of aerial attacks on merchant shipping and the War Office was much excercised about the effect on the morale of the civilians of the working classes of attacks on them.
In January 1936 Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd,head of the Army (that really was his name!) argued,displaying Victorian attitudes to go with his Victorian name, that "air limitation,if not absolute prohibition was of infinitely greater importance to our security than the production of superior air forces." History has made Archibald look a little foolish.
Even later in November 1936 Sir Samuel Hoare,civilian head of the Admiralty,urged the government to seek an international agreement to restrict air war fare. As if the nazis would have honoured that.
A 1937 comittee,headed by Sir William Malkin of the Foreign Office was still seeking means to restrict the use of air power in warfare.
No less a figure than Harold MacMillan recalled in one of the volumes of his huge biography,published in the 1960s, that "we thought of air power in 1938 rather as people think of nuclear warfare today."
The emminent and sober men of the Committee of Imperial Defence suggested in 1936 that a well aimed air attack against "our people" might well succeed. The Air Ministry advised the committe to expect 20,000 casualties on the first day and 150,000 by the end of the first week.
This is what people then believed. Stanley Baldwin was not correct to say in 1932 that "the bomber will
always get through" but he was probably still right in 1936/7.
Cheers
Steve