Bomber Harris

An airman's airman      Wilfrid John 'Mike' Lewis

'I went to No 44 Squadron at the beginning of August 1939, and Harris became our AOC on 1 September 1939, two days before the war started. I got to know him very rapidly because he was a man who insisted on knowing his people. He was always coming down to the station even before the hot war started to see how we were doing and to meet the aircrews. To lead from the front as much as he could.

Slowly we came to know him and to like him. I admired his attitude, the whole business of trying to do everything for us that would improve our operating capability. He did that, certainly while he was our AOC, and I think he did that as long as he was C-in-C, Bomber Command. He was an airman's airman. Fortunately I was able to get to know him a little better. Through some kindness on his part, he invited me to his home for Christmas 1939, and I spent Christmas with him and Mrs Harris as their guest. Harris had a bit of a brusque manner but this didn't detract from his personality. You liked the person, there was warmth there. When he left in September 1940 there was certainly a drop in that personal contact with the new AOC, and it was a noticeable drop.'

Wilfrid John 'Mike' Lewis,
Bomber Command pilot

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When 'Bomber' Harris arrived      Leonard Cheshire VC

‘I don’t know how it is, that what a Commander-in-Chief is like at the remote top filters through to the man on the front-line squadron, but it does. When ‘Bomber’ Harris arrived, you knew that Bomber Command was going to see it through to the end. And you sort of felt a push. And we felt at last that we really were going to have to pull our socks up and get on with it.’

Leonard Cheshire, VC.
Bomber Command pilot

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The right man for the job      Wing Commander Rod Rodley DSO DFC AE

I think Harris came along at a fortunate time. The Air Force was just beginning to grow, just beginning to receive the better equipment and we felt, with Harris, that we were going to get somewhere, we were beginning to hit targets.

I can only describe it as long-range magnetism. People used to say "Oh, Berlin tonight, trust old Butch" but affectionately. They weren't complaining that he was sending us to Berlin or Essen or wherever it was. They realised that at last Bomber Command was making itself felt and I think that disseminates itself amongst the lower ranks. I felt this strange confidence in him. I felt that he wouldn't risk us just for the sake of it, as the SS were by Hitler. He was the right man for the job, he wouldn't be deflected from what he thought was right, either in the choice of target or in the way he attacked them. You see you can have too popular a man, a man who's too eager to be liked and he doesn't always make the right Commander, especially when the chips are down.

Wing Commander,
Rod Rodley DSO DFC AE

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Harris at work     Air Commodore Wilf Burnett DSO OBE DFC AFC

'As one of the controllers at Bomber Command Headquarters we took our turn in the ops room. The morning briefing was fairly standard. The senior Air Staff officers would gather in the underground ops room and around 9 o'clock the Commander-in-Chief would come in, look at the state board which showed the aircraft and crew availability for that night, and then sit down at a table to receive a briefing from the Command Meterological Officer. The target or targets for the night were discussed depending on the weather forecast that was given. The C-in-C always spoke very quietly and I never heard him raise his voice. After he left we got down to the detailed side of planning the night's operations, allocating targets to the various groups. This was telephoned to them on a secret line, and the groups would then allocate these targets to the squadrons. As operations controllers we took it in turn to man the operations room at night, and we had several telephones on our desk, one of which was directly linked to the Commander-in-Chief's residence.

From time to time he would ring up to enquire how the operations were going. We just prayed that it wouldn't happen when we were there. I remember one controller saying that the experience was equal to one sortie over the Ruhr. We held him in such great awe. I don't remember him ever saying thank you. If he asked you a question, you gave him the information and he terminated the conversation. The Commander-in-Chief was a very direct, down-to-earth person who exuded authority and commanded great respect and loyalty. He very seldom visited stations. He didn't have very much time to do so, but in some mysterious way his personality and influence pervaded the whole Command. What he had was leadership.'

Air Commodore,
Wilf Burnett DSO OBE DFC AFC

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In the bunker      Group Captin Sam Hall OBE DFC

'My job at High Wycombe was on the navigation staff where I mainly looked after operational requirements. But like the other members of the navigation staff I had to take my turn in the Operations Room. We would wait there for the Commander-in-Chief to come in. In the large room there was a central desk with information relating to the squadrons, the aircraft, the manning. There would be the latest intelligence photographs of the most recent raids, and there would also be up on a board the current bombing directive from the Directorate of Bombing Operations in the Air Ministry. It would be known roughly from what family of targets the particular selection would be made.

Harris would come in with his staff and liaison officers from the Navy and the United States Air Force, and there would be a short discussion and you would see files being handed over people's heads. There would be perhaps 10 or 12 people around the desk. Small fry like me would prop up the wall some distance away. You couldn't hear what they were saying very easily. After about 10 minutes, never very long, there would be a short pause and then just one word would be ground out: "Cologne" or "Dusseldorf" etc. and the Commander-in-Chief had selected the target for the night. He got up immediately. There would be no small talk. He would go to the door and Saundby would hand him his cap, and then all hell would let loose because the detailed planning had to start. What was the armament? What was the route? What was the fuel? How many aircraft?'

Group Captin,
Sam Hall OBE DFC
Bomber Command navigator

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The eternal dilemma

Punching back

The price of freedom

An absolute necessity

The point of the spear

Moral judgements

The eternal dilemma

The eternal dilemma

The eternal dilemma      Peter Hinchliffe OBE

'There was always at the briefing some military reason given for our attack. It was either a steel-producing town or there was a lot of small industry making precision instruments. But the policy was the destruction of towns. You destroy a town, you hinder the war effort in many ways, and that in itself was the justification. The big mistake was to think that by breaking German morale it would end the war. The morale of the German population was utterly and completely broken, but this had no effect on the hierarchy, the people who were actually directing the war. In the Third Reich the popular voice could not have any influence. Something we do have to remember is that from D-Day in June 1944 to the end of the war, the losses among Allied troops were less than for any one major battle of the First World War. When the Americans and British landed in France they were facing a continent that was completely softened up by the Allied bombing. Had that bombing not taken place, leaving aside the morality of it, God knows if we would have survived as an invading force. There are people who say if that had been done, or if this had been done, but you do what seems to be right at the time, and bombing Germany as we did seemed to be right at the time. In fact there was very little alternative .I personally have no regrets in having participated. I do think about these things. It was terrible, but everything you do in war is terrible. If you stick a bayonet into someone it's terrible; if you shoot someone it's terrible; if you put people in concentration camps, it's terrible. But what is the alternative? Should we not have used the force in the best way that seemed possible? Or run the risk of concentration camps in our country? It's the eternal dilemma of peace and war.'

Peter Hinchliffe OBE
Bomber Command

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The price of freedom      Wing Commander Rod Rodley DSO DFC AE

I never spent much time wondering what was going on down below. I eased my conscience by feeling that the Germans must do what we'd been doing, which was to evacuate non-participants. I'd done my duty, which was to take a load of high explosive to an aiming point laid down by those in authority above me, whom I trusted. If I'd been an imaginative character I might have wondered exactly what happened when those bombs hit, but I merely hoped that I was hitting a factory, or machine tools or something of that ilk. The only way I could have got a picture of the effect of bomb attack on people was to go to the East End of London.

I was not troubled in my conscience because we were fighting a very ruthless enemy. We all knew this. Our families were home behind us and we were rather like a crusader with his sword in front of them. My thoughts at the time were that I have a family, and a bigger family - the public - and I was going to do my damnedest to stop the Germans coming across. If you go into war you've got to win it, and if you are too weak you suffer the trials and tribulations of being a slave race. Some of our intelligentsia are writing in the peace and warmth of their homes about how wicked the bombing campaign was. They don't realise that they wouldn't have had that freedom to do so if we had not had 55,000 aircrew who lost their lives for their sake.'

Wing Commander,
Rod Rodley DSO DFC AE

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An absolute necessity     Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss KCB KBE

'If you start a major world war you expect to get a bloody nose. Any country that was faced with Nazi Germany did everything it could to make sure that they lost. It's always unfortunate when people get killed, particularly civilians and children, but you should not start wars. We did what was absolutely necessary. We did a great deal in shortening the length of that war. I don't think any one of those young men who died would have felt any differently. I didn't expect to survive, not in any morbid way, but because I felt I was doing something that had to be done in order to save this country from a fate worse than death.

War is horrible; war is immoral. But you fight it the way you can. Look what happens to innocent civilians when armies roll across great territories and take cities. How many civilians died at Stalingrad? Outside Moscow? Or Leningrad? We were fighting one of the most immoral entities on the planet, and we had to fight it the best way we could. I just cannot and will never accept that bombing Germany was immoral.'

Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss KCB KBE
Bomber Command navigator

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The point of the spear      Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE DSO DFC

'We accepted the fact that as a necessary part of the prosecution of the war there were civilian deaths. It occurred in Britain, it occurred in Germany. One got used to the fact that civilians were suffering, and they were suffering all over the eastern front and the Jews in eastern Germany. Everyone accepted that this was total war. We were doing the job we were asked to do, and we thought it was essential under the circumstances we were in.

While I was in training France was conquered, and there was the Continent under the heel of Hitler. While I was in training we had the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Without America in the war the only way we could hit at the Germans was through Bomber Command. The whole attitude of Bomber Command was that we were the point of the spear and we had a job to do. It was highly dangerous. We had to accept that in modern war civilians were killed. In our eyes we were in a desperate situation, and we knew it. The trials of the German nation did not worry us an awful lot.'

Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE DSO DFC
Bomber Command observer

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Moral judgements      Charles Patterson

'Bomber Command was the only weapon we possessed. Bomber Command was available and had to be used every day and every night, weather permitting. Had that force been available and Churchill had got up and said, in the House of Commons, "Well, we have this large bomber force available, but I'm afraid we mustn't use it because as it operates at night we can't be sure of hitting specific targets, and women and children may get killed", the British people would have been outraged and they would have said, "Not attack them because civilians might get killed? Have you gone mad? Hitler's been killing civilians all over Europe, including England." If Churchill had said that he wouldn't have survived as Prime Minister. Morality is a thing you can indulge in an environment of peace and security, but you can't make moral judgements in war, when it's a question of national survival.'

Charles Patterson,
Bomber Command pilot

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Punching back      Mike Lewis

I was there to do a job and I was doing it to the best of my ability and I felt very strongly that I wanted to do that job. You can't experience the blitz in London and Coventry and Cardiff and all these other places without getting a very natural human reaction of wanting to punch back and so I punched back and I'm very proud and pleased that I did.

Mike Lewis,
Bomber Command pilot