BOMBER COMMAND: THEIR FINEST HOUR

In June 1944, the Allied invasion fleet launched to begin the liberation of Occupied Europe did so in a cocoon of protective air power. Fighters swept ahead and above; maritime patrol aircraft shielded the flanks; and vast fleets of transport aircraft carried the paratroopers who would seize bridges and causeways behind enemy lines. An often overlooked contribution to Operation Overlord was the role of the heavy bombers, who attacked the Nazi shore defences and carried out several other critical missions that paved the way for Allied success 

- STUART HADAWAY

Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command had been formed in 1936, at a time when the vast majority of the RAF’s aircraft were still biplanes. Bombers were the great fear of the inter-war period; popular fiction and the press had stoked public concerns about bombing. Bombing promised the ability to knock out an enemy quickly and efficiently, while avoiding the even greater spectre of another land war like that on the Western Front. The need for bombers, and to defend against them, was one of the cornerstones of the case used to justify the continued existence of the independent RAF.

Despite the inter-war fears, when Bomber Command went to war in September 1939 it was not a success. German short-range bombers were able to inflict serious damage on cities such as Warsaw and Rotterdam, and later London, but Bomber Command faced the additional challenges of having to operate over very long distances from their bases in England. Daylight raids proved easily intercepted and prohibitively expensive, and a switch to night raids crippled accuracy.

The Command’s aircraft were inadequate, their equipment and training lacking, and their numbers too few to have any real effect. However, for the first years of the war Bomber Command remained the only way that Britain could maintain even the illusion of continuing an effective fight against Germany. The sound of bombers droning nightly into the dusk to attack the German homeland was crucial for propaganda and public morale.