Canada and the Second World War: Essays in Honour of Terry Copp

8. “Strike Hard, Strike Sure”: Bomber Harris, Precision Bombing, and Decision Making in RAF Bomber Command

159 8 “Strike Hard, Strike Sure” Bomber Harris, Precision Bombing, and Decision Making in RAF Bomber Command Randall Wakelam At the outbreak of the Second World War, staff of RAF Bomber Command believed it had the doctrine, technology and procedures that would allow it to conduct daylight precision strategic bombing against Germany. Heavy losses, however, forced a switch to night bombing by early 1940, from which point evidence began to show that crews were failing to find and hit their targets. A statistical analysis, conducted at the behest of Churchill’s scientific adviser in the summer of 1941 and known as the Butt Report after its author, confirmed this problem. Flyers and junior commanders had by this time developed some ideas on how to mitigate the situation; their proposals centred on the creation of a “fire raising force” that, by hitting a target accurately with incendiaries, would draw other crews to the target area. When these proposals were put before Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Air Officer Commanding in Chief of Bomber Command, and his group commanders in the spring of 1942, Harris rejected the concept. Only through the intervention and direction of the Chief of the Air Staff, Harris’s superior, was a target-finding force created. Subsequently Harris would be critical of the role played by a number of younger officers who pestered him with their brilliant ideas, leaving readers of his Bomber Offensive1 and Despatch on War Operations2 with the conclusion that they were, at best, a pain in the side. But this is a hasty conclusion, for in fact the small staff within the Directorate of Bomber Operations at the Air 160 “Strike Hard, Strike Sure” Ministry had made a detailed study of the matter, collecting data and opinions from a large number of experienced flyers and COs, and their proposals were sound. Rebuffed by Harris, they did not give up. The chief instigator, Group Captain Sydney Bufton, used office politics to convince the CAS of their scheme. Once in place, however, the Pathfinder Force (PFF), a name Harris picked in the end, would not prove the panacea that its promoters had thought. In examining the specifics of this case, the paragraphs that follow attempt to do a number of things, all of them related in many ways to the teaching and research of Professor Terry Copp. First, this study reviews the facts surrounding the target-finding challenges of Bomber Command; it does this using primary sources. Second, it reviews the debate around the creation of the actual Pathfinder force and its subsequent performance. And finally, the paper analyzes the decision making around the PFF debate using contemporary Canadian military leadership theories and concepts, for as Terry will often say, the purpose of his teaching is to examine the past with a view to understanding some aspect of current thinking. It is hoped that the story that follows will illuminate the nature of decision making and staff interactions in complex military organizations. Some might think that the formation of the PFF has, like all Bomber Command topics, been studied ad nauseam. Such is not the case. While there is sufficient information about the circumstances leading to the creation of the PFF in the RAF official history, the Canadian companion study gives it just a few paragraphs.3 Some mention is made in a number of biographies and memoirs, including those of Bomber Harris and Donald Bennett, the flyer who would form and command the force, and in the more recent biography of Air Chief Marshal (ACM) Wilfrid Freeman, the Vice Chief of the Air Staff.4 Only the latter lays bare some of the institutional politics of the affair. These matters and more are to be found in the personal papers of both Harris and his chief antagonist Bufton, but these have not been broadly reported.5 The British official history does a decent job of describing how Bomber Command stumbled from a would-be daylight precision force into a disorganizedcollectionofaircraftgropingacrossGermanyinthedeadofnight. Even by the closing days of 1939 there were those, including Air Commodore Arthur Coningham, the AOC of 4 Group and later the commander of the Desert Air Force, who felt that the problems were more than could be 161 RandallWakelam surmounted. “‘The real constant battle,’ the 4 Group Commander pointed out, ‘is the weather … The constant struggle at night is to get light on the target” and he foresaw ‘a never ending struggle...