Read Online Bomber Command by Max Hastings - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Max Hastings
Ads: Link
Centre, but devoted the weight of his limited resources to the study of arms-related industries rather than to assessing the broad industrial potential of the German economy.
Until the mid-1930s at least, the Air Staff showed no awareness of the speed with which aircraft technology was changing. Specifications were issued for biplanes a few miles an hour faster than those already in service, when designers were already feeling their way towards the 400 mph, retractable-undercarriage, monoplanes that would dominate the war. Because there had been no scientific analysis of the problems of destroying a modern aircraft, there was no understanding of the need for heavy-calibre automatic weapons on both fighters and bombers – the inadequate .303 machine-gun was the basis of all RAF armament at the outbreak of war, and until the end of the war in Bomber Command. Barnes Wallis, the Vickers designer who later became famous as the creator of the dambusting bomb and other remarkable weapons, notes that it was not until after the outbreak of war that there was any understanding in the RAF of the need for big bombs because there had been no analysis of the problems of destroying large structures. 7 Most senior officers preferred to see a load of ten 200-lb bombs on an aircraft rather than one 2,000-lb bomb, according to Wallis, because they thus increased the chance of hitting a target at least with something. For the first three years of the war, the RAF used an explosive markedly inferior to that of the Luftwaffe, having failed to develop anything comparable for itself in twenty years of peace. When Wallis first proposed the creation of really big bombs in the 1930s, Air Ministry ‘experts’ replied that they doubted whether it was possible properly to detonate large quantities of explosive in a bomb, and argued that it would probably fizzle outwith a mere damp-squib effect. Likewise, the development of bombsights was lamentably sluggish. The early Mark 7 automatic bombsight, with which the RAF went to war, lacked any facility for taking account of an aircraft’s gyrations on its bombing run, and required a pilot to make an absolutely steady approach to the target – a suicidal concept under operational conditions.
The RAF trained for more than two decades guided only by a Trenchardian faith that it would somehow be ‘all right on the night’. The Air Staff stand condemned for failure to inspire advanced aircraft design – the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the Mosquito are the most famous examples of aircraft that reached production only thanks to independent initiatives by British manufacturers. In his anxiety to create a strong organizational base for the new RAF, Trenchard devoted a surprisingly generous proportion of his budget to the building of solid, elegant stations and the staffing of an overweight Air Ministry, while almost totally neglecting research and development. There were three Air Ministry officials for every aircraft in squadron service, and in the 1920s one-fifth of the RAF’s budget was spent on buildings. It is possible to blame the politicians for all the quantitative shortcomings of the RAF at the outbreak of war, but the airmen themselves must accept overwhelming responsibility for the qualitative failures.
Much of the above has been often remarked. Yet there has never been a satisfactory explanation of why these huge omissions were made by men who, contrary to later allegations, were neither knaves nor fools. Many of them stemmed directly or indirectly from a reluctance openly to discuss the real nature of a strategic bomber offensive. Both in those years and up to the present day, RAF officers have asserted that they were planning for an attack on the industrial infrastructure of the enemy, by destroying his factories and vital installations. Air Vice-Marshal Sir John Steel, later Bomber Command’s first C-in-C, declared in 1928 that ‘there has been a lot of nonsense talked about killing women and
Until the mid-1930s at least, the Air Staff showed no awareness of the speed with which aircraft technology was changing. Specifications were issued for biplanes a few miles an hour faster than those already in service, when designers were already feeling their way towards the 400 mph, retractable-undercarriage, monoplanes that would dominate the war. Because there had been no scientific analysis of the problems of destroying a modern aircraft, there was no understanding of the need for heavy-calibre automatic weapons on both fighters and bombers – the inadequate .303 machine-gun was the basis of all RAF armament at the outbreak of war, and until the end of the war in Bomber Command. Barnes Wallis, the Vickers designer who later became famous as the creator of the dambusting bomb and other remarkable weapons, notes that it was not until after the outbreak of war that there was any understanding in the RAF of the need for big bombs because there had been no analysis of the problems of destroying large structures. 7 Most senior officers preferred to see a load of ten 200-lb bombs on an aircraft rather than one 2,000-lb bomb, according to Wallis, because they thus increased the chance of hitting a target at least with something. For the first three years of the war, the RAF used an explosive markedly inferior to that of the Luftwaffe, having failed to develop anything comparable for itself in twenty years of peace. When Wallis first proposed the creation of really big bombs in the 1930s, Air Ministry ‘experts’ replied that they doubted whether it was possible properly to detonate large quantities of explosive in a bomb, and argued that it would probably fizzle outwith a mere damp-squib effect. Likewise, the development of bombsights was lamentably sluggish. The early Mark 7 automatic bombsight, with which the RAF went to war, lacked any facility for taking account of an aircraft’s gyrations on its bombing run, and required a pilot to make an absolutely steady approach to the target – a suicidal concept under operational conditions.
The RAF trained for more than two decades guided only by a Trenchardian faith that it would somehow be ‘all right on the night’. The Air Staff stand condemned for failure to inspire advanced aircraft design – the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the Mosquito are the most famous examples of aircraft that reached production only thanks to independent initiatives by British manufacturers. In his anxiety to create a strong organizational base for the new RAF, Trenchard devoted a surprisingly generous proportion of his budget to the building of solid, elegant stations and the staffing of an overweight Air Ministry, while almost totally neglecting research and development. There were three Air Ministry officials for every aircraft in squadron service, and in the 1920s one-fifth of the RAF’s budget was spent on buildings. It is possible to blame the politicians for all the quantitative shortcomings of the RAF at the outbreak of war, but the airmen themselves must accept overwhelming responsibility for the qualitative failures.
Much of the above has been often remarked. Yet there has never been a satisfactory explanation of why these huge omissions were made by men who, contrary to later allegations, were neither knaves nor fools. Many of them stemmed directly or indirectly from a reluctance openly to discuss the real nature of a strategic bomber offensive. Both in those years and up to the present day, RAF officers have asserted that they were planning for an attack on the industrial infrastructure of the enemy, by destroying his factories and vital installations. Air Vice-Marshal Sir John Steel, later Bomber Command’s first C-in-C, declared in 1928 that ‘there has been a lot of nonsense talked about killing women and
Similar Books
