Bomber Command, Royal Air Force controlled the Royal Air Force's (RAF) bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II. From 1942 onward, the British bombing campaign against Germany became less restrictive and increasingly targeted industrial sites and the civilian manpower base essential for German war production. In total 501,536 operational sorties were flown, of bombs were dropped, and 8,325 aircraft lost in action. Bomber Command crews also suffered a high casualty rate: 55,573 were killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew, a 44.4% death rate. A further 8,403 men were wounded in action, and 9,838 became prisoners of war.
Bomber Command stood at the peak of its post-war military power in the 1960s, the V bombers holding the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent, and a supplemental force of Canberra light bombers. In 1968, it was merged with Fighter Command to form Strike Command.
A memorial in Green Park in London was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 June 2012 to commemorate the high casualty rate among the aircrews. In April 2018, The International Bomber Command Centre was opened in Lincoln.
Background At the time of the formation of Bomber Command in 1936, Giulio Douhet's slogan "the bomber will always get through" was popular, and figures like Stanley Baldwin cited it. Until advances in radar technology in the late 1930s, this statement was effectively true. Attacking bombers could not be detected early enough to assemble fighters fast enough to prevent them reaching their targets. Some damage might be done to the bombers by anti-aircraft (AA) guns, and by fighters as the bombers returned to base, but that was not as effective as a proper defence. Consequently, the early conception of Bomber Command was as an entity that threatened the enemy with utter destruction. The Italian general Giulio Douhet, author of The Command of the Air, was of that view.
In 1936, Germany's increasing air power was feared by British government planners who commonly overestimated its size, reach and hitting power. Planners used estimates of up to 72 British deaths per tonne () of bombs dropped, though this figure was grossly exaggerated. As well, the planners did not know that German bombing aircraft of the day (not quite 300 Junkers Ju 52 medium bombers) did not have the range to reach the UK with a load of bombs and return to the mainland. British air officers did nothing to correct these perceptions because they could see the usefulness of having a strong bombing arm.
Early years of the Second World War
At the start of the Second World War in 1939, Bomber Command faced four problems. The first was lack of size; Bomber Command was not large enough effectively to operate as an independent strategic force. The second was rules of engagement; at the start of the war, the targets allocated to Bomber Command were not wide enough in scope. The third problem was the Command's lack of technology; specifically radio or radar derived navigational aids to allow accurate target location at night or through cloud. (In 1938, E. G. "Taffy" Bowen proposed using ASV radar for navigation, only to have Bomber Command disclaim need for it, saying the sextant was sufficient.) The fourth problem was the limited accuracy of bombing, especially from high level.
When the war began on 1 September 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the neutral United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents to confine their air raids to military targets. The French and British agreed to abide by the request, provided "that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents". British policy was to restrict bombing to military targets and infrastructure, such as ports and railways which were of military importance. While acknowledging that bombing Germany would cause civilian casualties, the British government renounced deliberate bombing of civilian property (outside combat zones) as a military tactic.
The British government did not want to violate its agreement by attacking civilian targets outside combat zones and the French were even more concerned lest Bomber Command operations provoke a German bombing attack on France. Since the had few modern fighters and no defence network comparable to the British Chain Home radar stations, this left France powerless before the threat of a German bombing attack. The final problem was lack of adequate aircraft. The Bomber Command workhorses at the start of the war, the Vickers Wellington, Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and Handley Page Hampden/Hereford, had been designed as tactical-support medium bombers and none of them had enough range or ordnance capacity for anything more than a limited strategic offensive. Of these the Wellington had the longest range at .
Bomber Command became even smaller after the declaration of war. No. 1 Group, with its squadrons of Fairey Battles, left for France to form the Advanced Air Striking Force. This action had two aims: to give the British Expeditionary Force some air-striking power and to allow the Battles to operate against German targets, since they lacked the range to do so from British airfields.
In May 1940, some of the Advanced Air Striking Force was caught on the ground by German air attacks on their airfields at the opening of the invasion of France. The remainder of the Battles proved to be horrendously vulnerable to enemy fire. Many times, Battles would set out to attack and be almost wiped out in the process. e.g. 10 May 1940 when a significant number of Battles were shot down or damaged.
Following the Rotterdam Blitz of 14 May, RAF Bomber Command was authorized to attack German targets east of the Rhine on 15 May; the Air Ministry authorized Air Marshal Charles Portal to attack targets in the Ruhr, including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces (which were visible at night). The first attack took place on the night of 15/16 May, with 96 bombers setting off to attack targets east of the Rhine, 78 of which were against oil targets. Of these, only 24 claimed to have found their targets.
Bomber Command itself soon fully joined in the action; in the Battle of Britain, Bomber Command was assigned to bomb invasion barges and fleets assembling in the Channel ports. This was much less public than the battles of the Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command but still vital and dangerous work, carried out night after night.
Bomber Command was also indirectly responsible, in part at least, for the switch of attention away from Fighter Command to bombing civilian targets. A German bomber on a raid got lost due to poor navigation and bombed London. Prime Minister Winston Churchill consequently ordered a retaliatory raid on the German capital of Berlin. The damage caused was minor but the raid sent Hitler into a rage. He ordered the Luftwaffe to level British cities, thus precipitating the Blitz.
Like the United States Army Air Forces later in the war, Bomber Command had first concentrated on a doctrine of "precision" bombing in daylight. When the German defences inflicted costly defeats on British raids in late 1939, a switch to night bombing was forced upon the Command. The problems of enemy defences were then replaced with the problems of night navigation and target-finding. In the early years of the war bombers had to rely on dead reckoning navigation supported by radio fixes and astro-navigation.
Organisation Bomber Command began the war with five groups engaged in bombing operations: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Groups. Initially it comprised only RAF squadrons, although as it expanded, it came to include many squadrons formed by other Commonwealth air forces (under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan) or European countries. At the same time, many individual personnel from a wide range of Allied air forces served within RAF squadrons.
No. 1 Group was temporarily detached and sent to France to provide air cover for the BEF, but returned to the UK and Bomber Command control in 1940, after the fall of France. No. 2 Group consisted of light and medium bombers who, although operating both by day and night, remained part of Bomber Command until 1943, when it was removed to the control of Second Tactical Air Force, to form the light bomber component of that command.
Bomber Command also gained three operational groups during the war: the Pathfinder Force was expanded into No. 8 Group; No. 6 Group, Royal Canadian Air Force, and; No. 100 Group RAF, which specialised in electronic warfare. No. 8 Group, also known as the Pathfinder Force, was activated on 15 August 1942 and began operations on 8 January 1943. It was a critical part of solving the navigational and aiming problems experienced. Bomber Command solved its navigational problems using two methods. One was the use of a range of increasingly sophisticated electronic aids to navigation and the other was the use of specialist Pathfinders. The technical aids to navigation took two forms. One was external radio navigation aids, as exemplified by Gee and the later highly accurate Oboe systems. The other was the centimetric navigation equipment H2S radar carried in the bombers. The Pathfinders were a group of elite, specially trained and experienced crews who flew ahead of the main bombing forces and marked the targets with flares and special marker-bombs. No. 8 Group controlled the Pathfinder squadrons. No. 6 Group RCAF, which was activated on 1 January 1943, was unique among Bomber Command groups, in that it was a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) unit attached to Bomber Command. At its peak strength, 6 Group consisted of 14 operational squadrons and a total of 15 squadrons served with the group during the war. In addition, a few other RCAF squadrons served in other, non-RCAF groups in Bomber Command. No. 100 Group RAF, formed on 11 November 1943, was responsible for development, operational trial and use of electronic warfare and countermeasures equipment).
A number of training groups were also part of the command. For example, these included, in June 1944, No. 26 Group RAF and three operational training groups: No. 91 Group RAF,Stationed at Morton Hall, Swinderby, 91 Group was merged into No. 21 Group RAF, part of RAF Flying Training Command, on 1 May 1947; Nos 92 and 93 Groups.
Strategic bombing 1942–1945
In 1941, the Butt Report revealed the extent of bombing inaccuracy: Churchill noted that "this is a very serious paper and seems to require urgent attention". The Area Bombing Directive of 14 February 1942 ordered Bomber Command to target German industrial areas and the "morale of...the industrial workers". The directive also reversed the order of the previous year instructing Bomber Command to conserve its forces; this resulted in a large campaign of area bombardment against the Ruhr area. Professor Frederick Lindemann's "de-housing" paper of March identified the expected effectiveness of attacks on residential and general industrial areas of cities. The aerial bombing of cities such as the Operation Millennium raid on Cologne continued throughout the rest of the war, culminating in the controversial bombing of Dresden in 1945.