Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [148]
The technical problems were enormous, and the results disappointingly small. Bomber and aircrew losses were so heavy that the British were soon forced to confine themselves to night bombing. While that cut their losses, it also cut their efficiency, as targets became harder to find and easier to miss. After a year they estimated that only one bomb in ten fell within five miles of its target. The bombing campaign thus had an extremely long gestation period, and it was months and even years before it reached the level of intensity where it began to pay dividends.
For the Royal Air Force the last months of 1940 and all of 1941 was a period of experimentation and improvisation. Both the techniques and the material slowly improved. It was February of 1941 before the first of the British four-engined heavy bombers, the Stirling, went on operations. The Stirling was outstanding as an example of the kind of thinking that prevented more rapid development in the closing years of peace. Its wingspan was limited to less than one hundred feet, that being the standard size for R. A. F. hangar doors at the time of its conception, and its fuselage was made a given width so it could take the regulation service packing case. Nevertheless, the Stirling proved a useful, docile aircraft, and a major addition to Bomber Command.
Initially, the British thought they could fly close formations of bombers, thus providing mutual protection, that they could fly in the daytime, and that they could attack specific targets with some degree of precision. They found they were wrong in all of these assumptions. As they moved on into this learning period and took their losses, they not only bombed by night, but they did it in a different manner. Instead of the formation, they flew in a “stream,” where each plane would take off, then make its way independently along a given route to its target. Over the target they had to settle for “area bombing” instead of the precision they had at first supposed possible. Officially, they held to the dogma of precision bombing, but they gradually recognized that area bombing was in fact what they were doing, and that became the policy late in 1941.
As the British learned their lessons, so of course did the Germans. Their radar network improved and so did their control of the night fighters and the fighters themselves. On both sides radar would pick up an incoming plane and vector a patrolling night fighter on to it. When it got close enough, the night fighter would find its target on its own short-range radar, then close in for a visual sighting and the kill. The scientists and the aircrew worked hand in hand on these and similar matters. The Germans sent their bombers over England and used radio beams as navigational aids; all the pilot had to do was stay on the beam till he reached his target. The British countered this by inventing a way to warp the beam, so the German bombers gradually diverged from their targets and often bombed empty spaces. As the German radar system got better, the British countered it too. They discovered that a small piece of tinfoil dropped out of a plane caused a radar reflection. So they sent decoy planes over the enemy coast to drop tinfoil—“window,” it was called—and confuse the radar operators while the real bombers flew through to their targets.
Had the bombing proponents had their way, the campaign would have escalated a great deal faster than it did, but the other services were equally adamant in their demands for resources. At the end of 1941 the British Chiefs of Staff were seriously questioning the validity of the whole bombing effort. It seemed to be absorbing an inordinate amount of matériel for the results that were being achieved, and there was discussion of abandoning the whole idea. The British desperately needed aircraft to use as convoy escorts both along the coasts and in the Western Approaches, and Coastal