The Valour and the Horror

Harris, Chief Marshal Sir Arthur (l892&endash;l'84), C-in-C of British Bomber Command from 1942 to 1945, who earned the nickname 'Bomber' because of his fervent support for Area bombing.

During the First World War Harris was a bugler with the 1st Rhodesia Regiment before joining the Royal Flying Corps, and in 1918 became a squadron leader in the newly formed RAF. In September 1939 he was given command of No. 5 Bomber Group before serving for six months as deputy chief of the Air Staff and then as the head of the first RAF delegation in Washington. During his absence heavy daytime losses, and then wildly inaccurate night raids, led to the suspension of long-range sorties and the transfer of Bomber Command's C-in-C, Air Chief Marshal Richard Peirse (1892-1970), to India. Harris became Bomber Command's new C-in-C in February 1942 and was promoted air chief marshal shortly afterwards.

Harris had witnessed London burning during the Blitz and believed incendiaries would destroy a city more effectively than high explosive bombs. He proved this with early raids on Lubeck and Rostock and then displayed the effectiveness of his methods with one bold stroke. In May 1942, he risked the entire structure of Bomber Command by gathering together the maximum number of available bombers, from training units as well as all operational ones, and devastated Cologne in the first of the thousand-bomber raids. Only 40 bombers were lost, new tactics were learned and though subsequent raids of the same size were not as successful British morale was boosted by the first one, and that of Bomber Command restored, and his methods were backed by increasing bomber production.

New Electronic navigation systems and the Pathfinder force brought further successes for Harris in 1943. But his raids on Berlin, beginning in November 1943, were at variance with the spirit of the POINT-BLANK Directive (COMBINED BOMBER OFFENSIVE), issued the previous June, which made selected industries the priority targets. At first there was support for his continuing belief that area bombing alone would destroy Germany's will to fight, but heavy losses, combined with mounting evidence that German morale remained unbroken, steadily eroded it. Eventually the policy brought him into direct conflict with Portal and with Churchill, when, during the last winter of the war, he continued to pursue it.

Harris was an outstanding leader, and he inspired the total confidence of most of those under him. But his stubbornness during the last months of the war, in continuing to allocate the preponderance of his forces to a policy no one else believed could single-handedly achieve victory, caused resentment after the war and some obloquy. He had been knighted in 1942 but was ignored by Attlee's government in the victory honours list of January 1946, and his request for a special campaign medal for Bomber Command was refused. However, on his resignation from the RAF in 1946 he was promoted Marshal of the Royal Air Force and when Churchill returned to power in 1951 Harris was offered a peerage. This he refused but accepted a baronetcy (1953).

Carver, M. (ed.), The War Lords (London, l976). Saward, D., Bomber Harris (London, l974).

Courtesy of The Oxford Companion to World War II