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Bomber Country
Hitler's air campaign against England failed to prepare the way for invasion, and as the tide of war turned, RAF Bomber Command, joined by the mighty U.S. Army Eighth Air Force, took the war to the enemy with round-the-clock bombing raids launched from dozens of airfields hastily constructed throughout south-eastern England.

By Roger A. Freeman

A journey through eastern England will almost inevitably take the traveller over or close by the site of a Second World War airfield. However, most airfield sites are no longer recognizable, the majority having long since had their runways removed and buildings demolished, the land restored to agriculture. But a flier's map of wartime Britain looks as if the island had a bad case of measles, with each red spot indicating the location of an airfield—nearly 800 of them in a land smaller than the state of Colorado.

The largest concentration lay in the counties of Lincolnshire, south Yorkshire, and the greater East Anglia area, for here was "Bomber Country" where the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force had their bomber bases. For three years the United Kingdom and the United States combined to mount a massive bomber offensive against Nazi Germany from these airfields. The British flew chiefly at night, the Americans by day—"round-the-clock bombing" as Winston Churchill liked to call it. The objective was to bring about the collapse of Hitler's Third Reich by destroying armament and ordnance factories, shipyards, aircraft and armoured vehicle plants, oil refineries, chemical works, and any other type of target that would deny the enemy the means to make modern war.

...a flier's map of wartime Britain looks as if the island had a bad case of measles, with each red spot indicating the location of an airfield

RAF Bomber Command, like the German Luftwaffe, had largely forsaken daylight operations early in the conflict because of heavy losses to enemy fighters. The cover of darkness offered a degree of safety but mitigated against finding precise targets. Because of this, the night bombers were sent to attack the towns and cities where war industry was located, for if the bombs did not hit the factories they would destroy the infrastructure of the area and eliminate many of the workers. The U.S. Eighth Air Force, America's first offensive air force, operated in daylight. Its leaders believed it could succeed where the British and Germans had failed by flying in the sub-stratosphere with heavily armed bombers in massed formations. Turbo-supercharging and automatic oxygen systems allowed engines and airmen to operate at the then-high altitudes of 20 to 30 thousand feet. A remarkable computing bombsight enabled precision attacks to be made on targets from these altitudes, although for various operational reasons the bombing was often not precise.

The early American raids were promising, but Luftwaffe fighter opposition grew in strength, and some of the fiercest and most prolonged air battles of the war took place as the B-17 Fortress and B-24 Liberator crews fought their way to and from their targets. Each of the four-engine aircraft was crewed by 10 men and defended by a dozen heavy machine guns. By the autumn of 1943, Eighth Air Force losses were critically high. Four missions flown during a week in October, 1943, brought losses of 110 bombers and as many badly damaged from a total of 900 involved. Although the bombers' defensive machine gun fire shot down many Luftwaffe fighters, it was clear that the Eighth Air Force could not continue to sustain what amounted to a 12-percent loss of its available force.

Long-range fighter escorts were needed to deal with enemy interceptors and save the daylight bombing campaign, but the small fighters couldn't carry enough fuel for such long flights. With the addition of external fuel tanks, the fighters were able to escort the bombers all the way to the most distant targets and back. In protecting the B-17s and B-24s, American fighter pilots dominated the sky over the enemy homeland, and from the spring of 1944 Luftwaffe strength was in decline. The German fighters continued to offer combat, if only sporadically, until the end of hostilities, but the Allies had achieved air supremacy. From the summer of 1944, anti-aircraft artillery—"flak"—was the bombers' main tormentor. Although flak took a heavy toll, losses from all causes decreased to where 85 percent of all airmen survived a combat tour, whereas only one man in three had done so during 1943.

While RAF Bomber Command had operated in darkness to reduce losses, developments in airborne radar during 1943 resulted in German night fighters shooting down an increasing number of Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Stirlings. (Fighter escorts could not be provided for the night bombers because of the danger of collision.) However, by the summer of 1944 losses declined, and new equipment and techniques, notably target marking by illumination, enabled the RAF to achieve good results with precision bombing at night. RAF heavy bombers could carry heavier loads and larger and more specialized bombs than the American B-17 Fortresses and B-24 Liberators and wielded greater destructive power at difficult targets. Most notable was the low-level attack with "bouncing bombs" on the Ruhr damns, carried out in moonlight by a small force of Lancasters in May, 1943.

Related Links
	• Bomber Country Trip Planner • Bletchley Park • Cabinet War Rooms • The Landings • Life During Wartime • Remembering the Day of Infamy • The Trinity Site

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Roger A. Freeman has authored more than 50 books, most concerned with Second World War airmen, aircraft, and air warfare. He also has written for television and worked in films.