CHAPTER I
POINTBLANK and Area Attacks
BEFORE many months of 1943 had passed, it became evident that
to fulfil the main provisions of the Directive issued at the Casablanca
COnference, the 'progressive destruction and dislocation of the
German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining
of the morale of the German people', would prove a costly
task, at least in daylight. The campaign opened badly, for in the
early spring of 1943 and for some time to come the Fortresses of the
United States Eighth Air Force, which had been placed under the
direction of the British Chief of the Air Staff, acting as agent for the
Combined Chiefs of Staff, had to operate without the comforting
presence of long-range fighters as escort--for at that time thee were
only in the preliminary stages of their development. The American
bomber force was, in consequence, faced with a heavy and most
perilous mission, and the first three months of 1943 proved that,
despite the gallantry with which its crews sought to fulfill it, it was
beyond their strength.
When they began operations, the Americans had believed that
heavy bombers, flying in close formation and armed with .50-inch
machine-guns, would be able to protect themselves from fighter
attack and would not need an escort. Their early sorties were based
on this theory, but the high rate of casualties they at once began to
suffer shewed it to be as false as that held at the outbreak of war by
the British Air Staff, which, under a similar delusion, had in 1939
sent Wellingtons, alone and unprotected, into the "hornet's Nest'
of Heligoland and the Bight. Bomber Command had had to seek
the protection of the dark. Not so the Americans, who from first to
last were determined to bomb by day and in the end achieved their
object with conspicuous success.
By the summer of 1943, the armament of the German Air Force
fighters had been considerably improved both in calibre and quantity.
A Focke-Wulf 190
captured intact at that time was found to be
armed with four 20-mm. cannon, two in the wings and two synchronised
to fire through the airscrew. All were electrically fired. The
cannon was the Mauser 151 model, which had been in production
grounded by cratered runways and be unable to defend targets
attacked by the Americans as soon as it was light enough to see them.
These theories and the exertions of the Combined Operational
Planning Committee did not meet with the approval of Harris. The
Air Chief Marshal felt that here was yet another attempt to compel
him to abandon area for precision bombing, a feat of which his
Command in general--the Pathfinders always excepted--was incapable
in 1943. The Bomb Target Committee, which had been in
existence since 1942, had been maintaining an indirect but sometimes
powerful pressure on him with the same object. True that committee,
which must not be confused with the Combined Operational
Planning Committee, was no more than a co-ordinating body
formed to allow representatives of the three Services to make known
their views and desires. It thus acted as a safety valve but it did
not initiate policy. It was, indeed, a bomb target information
committee, and as such it had always been suspect to the Chief of
Bomber Command. The new Combined Planning Committee
seemed to him to be no better.
To destroy the German aircraft industry, for example, precision
bombing was needed, and in this the Americans specialized. The
United States Eighth Air Force had been trained to bomb by
daylight using the most accurate bombsights which could be devised,
and with these they might reasonably be expected to hit buildings,
such as the Messerschmitt assembly plant at Augsburg or the
Vereinigte Kugallagerfabrik at Schweinfurt. Bomber Command,m
since it could operate in strength only at night, was not in a position
to follow these tactics. The navigating device 'GEE'; was in
operation and increasing in efficiency almost nightly, but 'H2S',
'OBOE' and the other scientific devices by which a greatly increased
degree of accuracy would, it was hoped, be achieved, had only just
been introduced. The bombing on a heavier scale of industrial targets
situated in cities was, therefore, Harris maintained, the only alternative
if his Command was to make an adequate contribution to
the common effort. This was recognized in the 'POINTBLANK';
Directive, in which it was stated that the primary objectives of
Bomber Command were unchanged.
The interpretation put upon the 'POINTBLANK'; Directive by Harris
was, that while the United States Air Force would attack
'the principal airframe and other aircraft factories' in Germany, he
would send Bomber Command against 'those industrial towns in
which there was the largest number of aircraft component
factories',1