A bit of good news...

[ndicki]

The Bomber Command Memorial has at last been granted approval. About time!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/rafbombercommand/7721453/Bomber-Command-veterans-celebrate-after-memorial-approval.html

[Pat Pattle]

At last. Excellent news, thanks Nigel.

[ndicki]

If you've read "Bomber Boys" by Patrick Bishop, you'll have some very thoughtful insight into the Bomber Command quandary, and why in the immediate aftermath of the War, there was no official recognition whatsoever. Despite their unparalleled casualty rate, and the fact that for effectively three years they were the only Allied forces actually striking the Germans in their own country, they were disowned by the British government of the day. This memorial is long overdue.

[MajorMagee]

There are several possibilities:

It's hard for the public to idolize bombing when all you experienced was the receiving end of the Blitz.

Harris made too many enemies doing what he did in the way he got it done.

Cassino, Dresden, and Hiroshima made the bombers into the ultimate destroyers of civilization..

Soviet subversion.

[ndicki]

The British government had tried to boost the morale of the public with the rather dubious impression that the RAF was 1. hitting military targets for six, and 2. striking in a precise and surgical manner. The truth was that for a good half of the war, more often than not they couldn't even find the town the target was in... until the town became the target. Harris's "area attacks" meant just that - hitting the town, and if any military targets got hit, so much the better.

Immediately after the War, it became obvious that we had not just rendered unto Caesar... And the politicians were more than wary of boasting about our obliterating houses, streets and cities rather than factories - or more to the point, slaughtering civilians rather than soldiers. True, the Germans had started it with Coventry, but the sheer scale of the destruction wrought by Bomber Command was in a completely different league. And the politicians felt guilty about it.

I don't, though. Not one bit. Nor do any of the bomber crews I've spoken to. And funnily enough, many of the Germans I've asked feel that in a way, they deserved it.

Meanwhile, the USAAF kept up the pretence of precision bombing of military targets, rather than adopting the RAF's "plaster the lot" approach. Whether it was better to be killed by precision bombing of entire cities or area bombing of entire cities is unclear, because the result was the same.

The RAF's reputation for highly precise strikes comes above all from such units as the Light Night Striking Force and 617 Squadron; the main force squadrons had no such claim to accuracy, even in the later part of the War when navigational aids were available. So if Harris wished to use the force he had painstakingly created, there was only the one way.