The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [248]
The heavy losses in Bomber Command led to Churchill calling for press censorship in the War Cabinet on 21 September 1942. After Portal had given an extensive summary of the war in the air, the Prime Minister was recorded as arguing that ‘losses of bombers continue to be announced. Enormous convenience to Germany. Say we’ve done it for a long time but since it’s a great advantage to enemy after such and such a date we’ll not do it any more.’21 He didn’t mind the RAF knowing the figures, and would tell the House of Commons in secret sessions, but he didn’t see why the totals should be announced after each raid. Yet such was the commitment to press freedom, BBC independence and free speech as cornerstones of what Britain was fighting for, that the Cabinet preferred to rely on responsible self-censorship by news organizations rather than impose control centrally. For the most part their trust was justified, and information did not tend to be broadcast that was of use to the enemy, in terms either of morale or of operations.
The bombing offensive had its opponents within the British High Command, not simply because of its high cost in air crew but also because the resources it took up were enormous, and many strategists thought these could be better employed elsewhere, specifically in the immediate support of military operations on land and sea. On 15 February 1942 – the day that Singapore fell – for example, the Director of Military Operations at the War Office, Major-General John Kennedy, recommended simply ending the bombing of Germany and instead using the planes this freed up ‘for essential air reinforcement’ in Ceylon, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, India and the eastern Mediterranean. He considered the bombing campaign against Germany to be ‘ineffective and… beyond our means’.22 A month later on 12 March there was a major allocations debate in the War Cabinet’s Defence Committee, chaired by Churchill, which was summed up (with evident bias) by Kennedy: ‘The Air Ministry want to go on with their main bombing policy and leave the other services, particularly the Army, in their present lamentable state.’ At no stage did Kennedy, Brooke or anyone else in the decision-making reaches of the High Command ever employ humanitarian considerations among their reasons for why the aerial bombardment policy was mistaken. Brooke’s fear was that by diverting resources, raw materials (especially iron and steel), money, manpower and fuel on such a huge scale for the bombing offensive over Germany, the RAF was denuding equally worthwhile causes, such as tank production. If bombers were to be produced in such large quantities, he and others also thought, then more ought to be used against U-boats in the battle of the Atlantic and against Rommel in North Africa rather than in just bombing German cities night after night. That said, nearly one-third of all German ships sunk in European waters were by mines laid by plane.
The first two heavy four-engined bombers used early in the war, the Short Stirling and Avro Manchester, were rather sub-standard aircraft; certainly neither was as good as the pre-war medium two-engined Vickers Wellington, which was the major aircraft used in the first Thousand-Bomber Raid, launched against Cologne on the night of Saturday, 30 May 1942. The Handley Page Halifax provided some good service, but in the last six months of 1942 the Avro Lancaster became fully operational, which enormously increased the RAF’s bombing power and range. By the end of the war sixty out of Bomber Command’s eighty squadrons flew these sturdy giants. In ninety minutes over Cologne, 1,046 planes – including trainee crews roped