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It found fame in two eras, under the leadership of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris during World War II, when its aircraft destroyed many German cities, and in the 1960s, when it was at the peak of its postwar power, with the V force of Valiant, Victor and Vulcan nuclear bombers, and a supplemental force of Canberra light bombers.
When Bomber Command was formed, "The bomber will always get through" was the mantra of the day, said by Stanley Baldwin (from Giulio Douhet). Until advances in radar technology in the very final couple of years before war broke out, this statement was effectively true. Bombers attacking could not be detected early enough to assemble defending fighters to prevent them getting through. Some damage might be done to the bombers by AAA guns, and by fighters as the bombers returned to base, but that was not the same as a proper defence. Consequently, the early conception of Bomber Command was in some ways akin to its later role as a nuclear deterrent force. It was seen as an entity that threatened the enemy with utter destruction, and thus prevented war. However, in addition to being made obsolete by technology, even if the bomber did always get through, its potential for damage to cities was massively overrated.
The problem was that the British Government was basing its data on a casualty rate of 50 per ton of bombs dropped. The basis for this assumption was a few raids on London in the later stages of World War I, by Zeppelins and Gotha bombers. It, and indeed the general public thus viewed the bomber as a weapon far more terrible than it really was.
At the start of WWII, Bomber Command was hampered by three problems. The first was simple lack of size; Bomber Command was not large enough to effectively attack the enemy. 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 British Government did not want to violate international law by attacking civilian targets, and the French were even more concerned lest Bomber Command operations provoke a German bombing attack on France. Since the Armée de l'AirThe Air Force of France. See also Military of France Patrouille de France precision aerobatic demonstration team List of military aircraft of France List of aircraft of the WWII Armee de l'Air List of aircraft of the Armee de l'Air redirect only External had almost nothing in the way of modern fighters, and no defence network comparable to the British chain of radar stations, France was effectively prostrate before the threat of a German bombing attack. The final problem was lack of good enough aircraft. The main Bomber Command workhorses at the start of the war were the BattleThe Fairey Battle was a light bomber of the Royal Air Force built by Fairey Aviation in the late 1930s. The Battle was essentially a stretched fighter, powered by a single engine but laden with a three-man crew and bomb load, it was slow, vulnerable and l, BlenheimThe Bristol Type 142 Blenheim was a high-speed light bomber used extensively in the early days of World War II, built by Bristol Aeroplane Company. The design had started as a civilian aircraft, a project of Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail. In or, HampdenThe Handley Page HP. 52 Hampden was a twin-engine medium bomber of the Royal Air Force that was one of the main front-line bombers at the start of World War II. Along with the Whitley and Wellington bombers, the Hampden bore the brunt of the early bombing, WellesleyThe Vickers Wellesley was a 1930s light bomber built by Vickers for the Royal Air Force. While it was obsolete by the start of World War II, and unsuited to the European air war, the Wellesley prospered in the desert theatres of East Africa, Egypt and the, WellingtonThe Vickers Wellington was a twin-engine, medium bomber designed in the mid-1930s at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey, by Vickers-Armstrongs' Chief Designer, R. It was widely used in the first two years of World War II, before being replaced as a bomber by and Whitley. None of them had enough range or ordnance capacity.
Bomber Command was further reduced in size 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 was for two reasons; to give the British Expeditionary ForceThe British Expeditionary Force was the British army sent to France and Belgium in World War I and British Forces in Europe from 1939 1940 during World War II. World War I The British Expeditionary Force was established by Secretary of State for War Richa some air striking power, and also to allow the Battle to operate against German targets, since it lacked the range to do so from British airfields.
The Sitzkreig (or Phoney War) mainly affected the Army. However, to an extent, Bomber Command was not properly at war during the first few months of hostilities either. Bomber Command flew many operational missions, and lost aircraft, but it did virtually no damage to the enemy. Most of the missions either failed to find their targets, or were leaflet dropping missions. The attack in the west in May 1940, changed everything.
The first bomber aircraft to go fully to war were the Battles of the Advanced Air Striking Force. They were partially disabled by German strikes on their airfields at the opening of the invasion of France. However, far from all of the force was caught on the ground. The Battle proved to be horrendously vulnerable to enemy fire. Many times, Battle forces would set out to attack, and be almost wiped out in the process. This was somewhat ironic given the fact that due to French paranoia about being attacked by German aircraft, during the Sitzkrieg, the Battle force had actually trained over German airspace at night!
Bomber Command itself soon fully joined in the action. With the immensely quick collapse of France, invasion seemed a clear and present danger. As its part in Battle of Britain, Bomber Command was assigned to pound the invasion fleets assembling in the Channel ports. This was much less high profile than the battles of the Spitfires and Hurricanes of Fighter Command, but still vital work.
Bomber Command was also indirectly responsible, in part at least, for the switch of Luftwaffe attention away from Fighter Command itself to bombing civilian targets. A German bomber on a raid had got lost due to poor navigation. It bombed London. 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 Americans later in the war, Bomber Command had first concentrated on 'precision' bombing in daylight. However, when several raids were cut to pieces by German defences, a switch to night attack tactics was forced upon the Command. The problems of enemy defences were then replaced with the problems of finding the target. It was common in the early years of the war for bombers relying on dead reckoning navigation to miss entire cities! One of the most urgent problems of the Command was thus to find technical aids to allow accurate bombing.
Bomber Command was made up of a number of Groups during the war. It began the war with Nos. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5 Groups. No. 1 Group was soon sent to France, as indicated above. It was, however, returned to Bomber Command control after the evacuation of France, and reconstituted. No. 2 Group 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 two new Groups during the war. No. 6 Group was activated on 1 January, 1943. It was unique in that it was entirely made up of Royal Canadian Air Force crews and aircraft. No. 8 Group was actived on 15 August, 1942. It was a critical part of solving the navigational problems referred to in the previous paragraph.
The navigational problems of Bomber Command were solved by two methods, technical aids to navigation and Pathfinders. The technical aids to navigation took two forms. One was external radio navigation aids, as exemplified by Gee and the later Oboe systems. The other was the H2S radar, which was carried on the bombers themselves. The Pathfinders were a group of elite crews who flew lighter aircraft ahead of the main bombing forces, and marked the targets. No. 8 Group controlled the Pathfinder squadrons.
Professor Lindemann was liked and trusted by Winston Churchill. Churchill appointed him the British governments leading scientific adviser with a seat in the Cabinet. In 1942 Lindemann presented a seminal paper to the Cabinet advocating the aerial bombing of German cities by carpet bombing in a strategic bombing campaign. It was accepted by the Cabinet and Harris was appointed to carry out the task. It became an important part of the total war waged against Germany. Professor Lindemann's paper put forward the theory of attacking major industrial centrers in order to deliberately destroy as many homes and houses as possible. Working class homes were to be targeted because they had a higher density and fire storms were more likely. This would displace the German workforce and reduce their ability to work. His calculations showed that the RAF Bomber Command would be able to destroy the majority of German houses located in cities quite quickly. The plan was highly controversial even before it started, but the Cabinet thought that bombing was the only option available to directly attack Germany, (as a major invasion of the continent was years away,) and the Soviets were demanding that the Western Allies do somthing to relieve the pressure on the Eastern Front.
Bomber Command was increasing massively in size. In the early days of the war, it was commonplace for raids to consist of a few tens of aircraft. By late 1941, raids into the hundreds of aircraft were being regularly mounted. However, in mid-1942, the new Air Officer Commanding in Chief, Sir Arthur Harris, wanted a spectacular propaganda effort. By scraping together virtually every aircraft in Bomber Command that could fly, including those from the more advanced training units, a raid was mounted on Cologne that consisted of 1,000 aircraft. This was an effort that could not be repeated routinely in 1942. However, by 1944, Bomber Command did have a genuine operational capability to put 1,000 aircraft over a target without out of the ordinary efforts.
Along with an increase in the size of the Command came a massive increase in the capability of the aircraft it was using. In 1942, the main workhorse aircraft of the later part of the war came into service. The Halifax and Lancaster made up the backbone of the Command, and had a longer range, higher speed and much greater bomb load than the earlier aircraft. The classic aircraft of the Pathfinders, the Mosquito, also made its appearance.
One of the most controversial aspects of Bomber Command during WWII was the area bombing of cities. It is often argued that this constituted a war crime. However, it must be remembered that navigational technologies of the day, even late in the war, did not allow for much more precisely targeting than a town or city, or a the very smallest an area of a city, by night bombing. The two single most destructive raids in terms of absolute casualties were those on Hamburg in 1943 and Dresden in 1945. Both caused a firestorm and left tens of thousands dead. Both cities contained important industrial areas, and so were legitimate targets for attack by that measure.
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