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Sir Arthur Travers Harris

Perhaps more than any other military leader of this century, Sir Arthur Harris was surrounded by controversy, right up to his death in 1984, and indeed, even past it to the present day. He was known affectionately by his aircrews (or "Old Lags" as he affectionately called them!!) as Butch, but to the public at large he was known famously as "Bomber" Harris. He was the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command from 1942 until 1945, and under his direction he turned it into the highly honed force that undoubtedly helped to win the war. But mention the name "Bomber" Harris to most people, and it will summon from them two themes: Dresden and the ethics of area bombing. But to judge a military leader on just two issues is to do him a huge, almost immeasurable, injustice. Whilst the morality of area bombing could be argued till the end of time itself, we believe it was necessary. Let us not forget the Blitz on London in 1940, and the raids on numerous British cities throughout the war, culminating in the V-1 and V-2 rockets that rained down in Britain in the later stages of the war. But ultimately, war is not fought with any set of laid down rules - it is the aggressor that makes the rules, and the defender that must counter them. And from 1940 until mid-1944 the only way that the Allies could counter the Nazi threat was from the air. But let us get back to the subject in hand before we digress too much - Sir Arthur Harris.

Harris's story begins much earlier than the Second World War. He was born in the Spa town of Cheltenham on the 13th of April 1892. He attended a private school, and one imagines his parents had high hopes for their son, but he invoked their fury when he declined their suggestion that he join the army and instead went to Rhodesia where he prospected as a gold miner before trying his hand at growing maize and tobacco, as well as cattle rearing. However, war was never far away in those heady colonial days of the British Empire, and in 1914 Harris joined the Rhodesia Regiment as a bugler and went to war for the first time. Bugler was not Harris's preferred position in the army, but having been told that there were no vacancies in the army when he first presented himself at the recruitment office, he had tried to enlist as a machine-gunner, sweeping aside the fact that he had never even seen a machine-gun, let alone ever handled or fired one. So bugler it was, and in Harris's own words ("Bomber Offensive" pub. Collins 1947) he has been accused of blowing his own trumpet ever since!!

In 1915, he returned to the UK, and presented himself at Brooklands Aerodrome, later to become home of the legendary Vickers Aircraft Company and its legendary designer Sir Barnes Wallis. Having gained his pilots wings at Brooklands, Harris was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps in November of the same year, and initially served in Britain forming his own squadron in the Home Defence, tasked with shooting down marauding Zeppelins. It was a member of this squadron that shot down the first Zeppelin. Harris was then posted to France, and served on the Western Front where he was a Flight Commander in a squadron protecting artillery spotters. Returning to Britain in 1917 to protect the Capital against the menace of German bombers, he only had to wait a short while before gaining command of his own Home Defence Squadron (44), before moving to 191 Squadron and night-fighters. In 1918 Harris was awarded the Air Force Cross.

After the First World War had ended, Harris stayed on in the Royal Flying Corps, by now known as the Royal Air Force, and was posted to India in 1919 where he took command of a bomber squadron on the North West Frontier. Conditions were not good, and Harris vented his fury on the appalling state of his squadron's aircraft due to a lack of spares by signing his letter of resignation. Engines were woefully outdated, and even the most simple but essential commodities such as tyres were in short supply. Even the living conditions were poor, and this was a situation which continued until Harris returned to Britain in late 1924, and continued to annoy him. Displaying the qualities which so endeared him to the men and women of Bomber Command in later years, Harris frequently gave his forthright vocal opinion to his seniors on the appalling conditions which his men had to endure.

In 1925 Harris took command of 58 (Bomber) Squadron at Worthy Down, and took the squadron into a training programme of night-flying. One of his Flight Commanders was Robert (later Sir) Saundby, who would later come to prominence as Harris's Deputy at Bomber Command between 1943 and 1945. In 1927 he went on to attend the Army Staff College, raising eyebrows there with his blunt opinion on the obvious tranches between "theoretical warfare" as taught by the instructors at the college and real warfare as experienced by Harris. On departing from the Army Staff College after two years (turning down the offer to stay on as an instructor himself) Harris went to Egypt, before returning in 1933 to take command of 210 Squadron, operating fly boats at Pembroke Dock. Once again, one of his Flight Commanders at this posting would later resurface as one of his high ranking officers at Bomber Command. Donald Bennet was an Australian who had joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1930, and in 1931 travelled to England on an attachment to the RAF. After the war, Harris said of Bennet "His technical knowledge and his personal operational ability was altogether exceptional. His courage, both moral and physical, is outstanding and as a technician he is unrivaled. He could not suffer fools gladly, and by his own high standards there were many fools."

In 1934 Harris took a desk job, as the Deputy Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Air Ministry, taking promotion a year later to head of the Air Ministry Planning Department. In 1937, he took his first Group Command, when as an Air Commodore he took charge of 4 Group Bomber Command, then newly formed with Whitley squadrons. Overseeing the training programme of night flying exercises and practise bombing, Harris once again vent his frustration vocally when one after another of his choice of practise bombing ranges were denied him on what he saw as petty objections and excuses. Harris could see war looming rather closer than the horizon, and he was frustrated that those around him appeared to be blind to the fact that he needed to train his crews in readiness for it.

In July 1938 Harris again went overseas, this time a trip to America to buy some aircraft for the RAF. On returning he went to Palestine as Air Officer Commanding Palestine and Transjordan, where he oversaw, amongst other matters, operations to keep the Jews and the Arabs in order and at something at least halfway approaching peace, a task which he completed with a reasonable degree of success over the next year. But peace in the Middle East was now falling lower and lower down Harris's list of priorities. The threat of war between Great Britain and Germany was now not so much "if", but far more "when". Harris's faith in the bomber and its ability to win wars, a belief which put him very much in a minority amongst his seniors in all branches of the military and in Whitehall, was about to be put to its gravest prosecution.

In September of 1939 Harris took command of 5 Group Bomber Command, then comprising 44, 49, 50, 61, 83, 106 and 144 Squadrons, all operating the Handley Page Hampden. His headquarters were at Grantham, from where he oversaw his group's contribution to the opening shots of the bomber war, which comprised almost solely of attacks on German shipping and the laying of sea mines. The purpose of minelaying was twofold: to present a hazard to the enemy's shipping; and to engage at least a proportion of the enemy fleet on minesweeping duties, keeping it from more insidious activities against Allied naval activity. By the end of the war, the proportion of the German Navy engaged in such activities was said to be in the region of 40% - imagine the damage those ships could have done if left to wreak havoc amongst the Allied shipping. During this period in Command of 5 Group Harris also oversaw the changing of the gun mountings on the Hampden to enable it to more effectively defend itself.

In November of 1940 Harris took up yet another post, when he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, his position as Commander in Chief 5 Group being taken by Air Vice-Marshall Sir Norman Bottomley. His new job entailed a move to the Air Ministry in London, where he worked long hours but managed to turn round the air of "negativism" that pervaded the departments there. One of the major changes he made was to bring down a rung or two some of the Officers who worked there. If a unit or squadron made a request to the Air Ministry for anything, then any of the heads of department at the Air Ministry could say yes to that request, but only Harris could say no. Harris instilled in all of the staff at the Ministry the ethos they were there to help the units, not the other way around. It was this dedication to his men and women in the field which so endeared him to those in his operational command, but which so outraged and angered many of those with whom he had to work closely, and who misjudged his approach to be arrogant and cold. It was whilst he was in this post, that he famously stood on the roof of the Air Ministry whilst bombs from German bombers were raining down all around, and fires raged out of control. It is said that he remarked, with reference to the Germans, "They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind." Harris's time had arrived.

On the 23rd of February 1942, Harris assumed the post of Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command, Royal Air Force. By chance, it coincided with the introduction to service of the Lancaster, which was at this time being delivered to squadrons in steadily increasing numbers. His headquarters were just outside the village of Walters Ash, near to High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, in secluded woodland. His right hand man was Air Vice-Marshall Robert Saunby, who it will be remembered was one of his Flight Commanders when he was commanding 58 squadron at Worthy Down in 1925. When Harris took up his new position, things were at a low ebb in Bomber Command. In August 1941 the Butt Report has cast serious doubts over Bomber Command's capability to accurately bomb targets. But things could, and as it turned out would, change. As Leonard Chesire later said; "What the Commander-in-Chief at the top does filters down to the men at the front line squadrons. I don't know why but it does. When Bomber Harris arrived, you knew Bomber Command was going to see it through to the end. You felt a push, and we felt at last we were really going to have to pull our socks up and get on with it."

Harris planned a spectacular raid that would silence, if only temporarily, those critics. On the night of 30/31 May 1942, Harris assembled every available aircraft in his Command, including training aircraft from the Conversion Units, and even begged and borrowed some from Training and Coastal Commands. The result was a huge force of 1047 bombers which assembled and set course for Cologne, in the opening raid of "Operation Millennium." It was clearly a publicity exercise as much as anything else, and it was perhaps this raid which set Harris in the public eye as "Bomber Harris." The raid was a success, and two nights later Harris sent a similar sized force to Essen, although on this occasion he could muster just under a 1000 bombers. At the end of June, on the night of 25/26th, yet another 1000-bomber raid took place, although again it was just under 1000 that actually participated, when Bremen became the focus of Bomber Command's attention. Although the second two raids were not as successful as the first against Cologne, they did in part satisfy Harris's requirements of them - they silenced the critics, and Harris had made his mark as C-in-C Bomber Command.

As mentioned above, the Butt Report had highlighted grave shortfalls in the capability of bomber crews to correctly identify targets and bomb them. On the 15th of August 1942, a new group was formed within Bomber Command - 8 Group, known as "Pathfinder Force", and it was formed of some of the most experienced crews from all of the other bomber Groups. The job of the new Force was to correctly identify and mark, with coloured flares, the target. Harris was not altogether totally in support of what he perceived to be a collective of elitist squadrons, and was hopeful that the new navigational aid "Gee" would bring about the required improvements in his force's results without the need for the formation of the new force. However, the Pathfinder Force was formed, and Wing Commander Donald Bennet, with whom Harris had worked at 210 Squadron in 1933, was chosen to be its Commander in Chief. For the remainder of the year, and in conjunction with the Eighth Air Force who were now mounting daylight sorties against Germany, Bomber Command grew in size and ability. Increasing night fighter activity over Germany, coupled with more searchlights and the jamming of Gee was making the bomber crews' job increasingly difficult, but under the determined leadership of Harris morale was starting to get better.

1943 dawned and Harris had more of the four-engined "heavies" at his disposal. In March of that year Bomber Command entered into what was known as "The Battle of the Ruhr" under Harris's resolute direction. He had succeeded in persuading at least some of his critics that given the adequate strengths and equipment Bomber Command would do the job intended of it. Berlin was within Harris's sights, but he knew that his bomber force was still developing and not yet ready for an all-out assault on the German capital. And so commenced the Battle of the Ruhr. The defences of the Ruhr were formidable, and Harris knew that it was going to cost him in crews and aircraft, and indeed it did. The famous "Dams Raid" was undertaken in this part of the war. Harris had given the idea of the bouncing bomb little truck when Barnes Wallis had first approached him with it, but he later congratulated Wallis in a letter to him at Brooklands. This was typical of Harris - he would be the first to admit he was wrong if it was so proven.

From the Battle of the Ruhr Harris took Bomber Command to the "Battle of Hamburg", a series of raids on that cosmopolitan German city in July and August of 1943 by both the RAF and the Eighth Air Force. Harris had developed a force of some potency by this point, and the raids on this city resulted in the first of the "firestorms" for which Harris personally (and wrongly) was the subject of so much criticism after the war had ended. "Window", the strips of tin foil dropped from the bombers to confuse the German radar systems, was first used in the Battle of Hamburg, and proved very effective in reducing the amount of bombers that were lost. During August Harris directed some of his attention away from Germany and toward Italy, which ultimately resulted in that country's surrender to the Allies in September. In late August and early September, Harris sent three large forces of bombers to Berlin, but there then followed a short break from that city whilst Harris directed attention at other German cities before Harris started the famed Battle of Berlin in earnest in November 1943.

Harris said famously that "We can wreck Berlin from end to end if the Americans will come in with us. It will cost us between 400 and 500 planes. It will cost Germany the war." Harris planned the first major raid of the Battle of Berlin for the night of 18/19th November 1943, and sent 440 Lancasters and 4 Mosquitoes. Four nights later Harris dispatched 764 aircraft to the same target. In their book "The Bomber Command War Diaries (pub Midland Counties Publishing 1996) Middlebrook and Everitt state that this was the most successful raid on Berlin during the campaign against it in the winter of 1943/44, and that this was the highest number of aircraft sent to Berlin yet during the war. It was also the last time that Stirlings were used in an attack on Germany, due to their relatively low operational ceiling compared to the Lancaster and the Halifax. The Battle of Berlin continued unabated during that winter, and between the first raid detailed above and the third week in March, Harris sent his force to Berlin no less than 16 times. However, Berlin was not wrecked from end to end as Harris had predicted that it would be, and with the onset of the shorter nights as Spring 1944 arrived, Harris had to call to an end the Battle of Berlin. Then at the end of March 1944 came the darkest moment in Bomber Command's offensive against Germany in the Second World War.

The 30th of March 1944 dawned as just another day in the bomber offensive against Germany. By midmorning Harris and his men at High Wycombe had decided that the target for that evening would be a routine "maximum effort" raid against Nuremberg, which is generally considered to be the final raid in the Battle of Berlin described in the paragraph above. However, due to the most unfortunate combination of cloud over the target, early prediction of the target by the German Night Fighter controllers, and stronger than predicted winds leading to poor marking by some of the Pathfinder aircraft, the raid was a failure. However, it is the high losses incurred on this raid for which it has become infamous. All in all, 105 aircraft were lost, 96 of them as a result of enemy fighter activity on the way to, over, and from the target. It was the highest number of bombers lost in a single night in the entire war, and to this day is remembered by those who took part as the darkest night of the war for Bomber Command. The raid on Nuremberg signaled a temporary end of operations against Germany, as Harris now directed his force against the impending invasion of Europe with "Operation Overlord."

Harris had made it known to all concerned that he was concerned that turning the bombers' attention to the support of the land advance could provide German cities and industry with the respite that they needed to rebuild and re-group, but he also conceded that it was necessary. And he knew also that without the might of his Command at their disposal, the ground forces would most likely not succeed. And so Bomber Command, still under the direction of Harris, became an integral part of the invading forces. From the spring until late summer of 1944 it came under the overall command of the Supreme Command Allied Forces General Eisenhower and assisted the ground forces in their push into mainland Europe. The D-Day landings, and the part that Bomber Command played in their success, are well documented, and suffice to say that without the invaluable air support that the bombers afforded, the outcome (had indeed the landings taken place at all without the availability of air support) may, and most probably would, have been very different. Possibly the most famous example of the close air support that Harris and his Command were able to offer was at Caen, when on July 7th 1944, 467 aircraft attacked German troop positions that were standing in the way of the 1st Canadian and 2nd British Armies in their advance. This attack was made at the cost of just three Lancasters and one Mosquito shot down (source: The Bomber Command War Diaries, Middlebrook and Everitt, pub. Midland Counties 1995), and just one of these, a Lancaster from 166 Squadron, came down behind enemy lines. The attack on the German troop positions was made just a few hundred yards ahead of the Allied troop positions, and remains to this day a prime example of the power of close air support to ground troop positions in a combat situation.

In mid-Sptember, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces relinquished control over Bomber Command, and Harris once more found himself under the direction of the Air Ministry, although Harris was told that his force might still be called upon to offer assistance to the ground forces should it be necessary. Harris learned in late September, via a directive from the Air Ministry, that he should concentrate his force's efforts on the systematic destruction of the German synthetic oil industry. Harris was not altogether in agreement with this new policy, preferring to continue his campaign against the German cities, believing that a sustained attack against them would cause the final collapse of Germany without the need for a ground invasion. However, the proponents of the oil targets won the day, and Harris set about sending his force against them, although to be fair, at the same time he managed to give the German cities a reasonable amount of attention also. The offensive against the oil targets soon bought many German tank divisions and aircraft units almost to a halt through lack of fuel, and the damage done to the railway and road networks by Bomber Command effectively stopped fuel from being bought in from other areas. However, it should be noted that the night fighter units remained a constant and sizeable threat to Bomber Command's nocturnal excursions to Germany.

As 1944 drew to a close, Harris could look back over a year of immense achievement by his Command, aided in no small measure by his qualities as a leader, and as 1945 opened, it was clear that final victory was not far away. The winter of 1944/45 had seen perhaps a small change in the way Bomber Command operated. Harris had always used the long winter nights to effect deep penetration raids against cities in the east (although not totally at the expense of targets closer to home) that the short summer nights precluded him from attacking. Readers will remember "The Battle of Berlin" in the winter of 1943/44 described earlier as a clear example of this - sustained attacks against the German capital, woven into a campaign of more generalised targets against major German centre of production. The winter of 1944/45 saw eastern and western centres attacked on a more equal basis - the Ruhr came in for particular attention during the autumn of 1944. Bigger question marks were also being raised at about this time over the use and deployment of Bomber Command, and against Harris in particular, in the Air Ministry, but more pertinently, in the House of Commons. It was asked how beneficial it would be if the Germany that was liberated was one that was half-destroyed by bombing. However, the most controversial raid of the war was yet to come.

In order to appease the Russians, who had made advances against German positions in the east, Bomber Command was asked to conduct raids against three important centres of communication and supply. We would ask you to remember, at this point, those words, "important centres of communication and supply". The three raids were to be grouped together under the name "Operation Thunderclap" (Berlin was also included in Operation Thunderclap, but the attacks on this city were left to the Mosquitoes of the Light Night Striking Force), and had the backing of Churchill - indeed he actively encouraged them and took a direct hand in the planning of them. Churchill later tried to distance himself from these plans, and denials from various Air Ministry departments and senior officers flew around like the flak on a bad night over the Ruhr. The three cities detailed in these plans were Leipzig, Chemnitz, - and Dresden.

The raid against Dresden has subsequently gone down in history as perhaps the most controversial of the entire war. 796 Lancasters and 9 Mosquitoes in two waves dropped 1,478 tons of high explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiaries on the city. A firestorm consumed great parts of the city. The one argument that we constantly hear is that Dresden was an insignificant outpost, not worthy of such a large raid, and that it was nothing more than a raid organised by Harris to display, to a German nation on the brink of collapse, the might of his bomber force. But remember the words above - important centre of communication and supply, and at that ones that stood in the way of the Russian advance. Dresden was one such centre. To what targets do we send our military forces in war if not to such important centres? The raid on Chemnitz the following night was not as successful as that to Dresden, with many of the bombs falling in open country. But it was Dresden that was to remain in the minds of the many uninitiated for many years to come - indeed judging by comments made to us even now, 54 years later, by people far too young to remember the event, it would appear that history has not accurately recorded the facts. But at the time, Harris was too pre-occupied with bringing about a successful conclusion to the bomber campaign to pay much mind to the critics.

As the final months of the war were being eked out, the bomber losses fell considerably, thanks in no small part to the German shortage of fuel (which restricted severely the sorties that the Germanf fighters could fly) bought about by the campaign against the oil refineries, although at just over 1,000 bombers lost between January the 1st 1945 and V-E Day, the figures still present harrowing reading. Harris sent his force to Nuremberg, the scene of Bomber Command's worst losses at the end of March 1944, for the last time on the 11th of April 1945. In contrast to the previous all-Lancaster raid, this was a small all-Halifax force totaling 129, and no aircraft were lost. At about this time, some of Harris's Group Commanders were stood down, being replaced for the final few weeks of the year by new Group Commanders whom it was felt would benefit from the experience of leading a Group in war-time. March 1945 produced the "peak" figure of bombs dropped by the Command, with more than in any other month during the war, and indeed at a tonnage of 67,637 was equal to the tonnage dropped in the first two years and ten months of the war (The Bomber Command war Diaries, Middlebrook and Everitt, pub. Midland Counties 1995). However, some of the last operations directed by Harris were not bombing missions, but food drops to Holland as part of Operation Manna, in order to relieve the starvation of many people in that country who had endured terrible conditions at the hands of the Germans.

And so the war in Europe came to a close. Harris was made Marshall of the Royal Air Force, but did not receive the life peerage that so many of the other operational commanders from the war received. He had overseen, during the period of his Command, the expansion of Bomber Command to the potent force that it became, and fielded much criticism from his peers along the way. But perhaps the bitterest pill that Harris had to swallow, was the fact that his airmen, his "old lags", didn't receive their own campaign medal which they so richly deserved. What is not generally known is that just a few days before Harris's appointment to Commander in Chief in February 1942, a new directive had been issued to Bomber Command by the Air Ministry. Its basis was the focusing of Bomber Command's attention on the morale of the enemy civilian population, and in particular the industrial workers. However, this order was repeatedly denied by the Air Ministry when questions were asked in Parliament both during and after the war. And against this background, the brave men of Bomber Command, and their finest leader, have all been denied, for over fifty years, the recognition which is due to them. Without them, the war in Europe would have had a very different conclusion.

In 1946 Harris "retired" from the Royal Air Force (although in effect this was a paper retirement only - holding the rank of Marshall of the RAF meant that he would continue to remain on the "active" list) and moved back to his beloved South Africa where he ran a shipping line for several years until he returned to the UK in 1953, where he remained until his death on April the 5th 1984.

However, even after his death, Harris has been able to cause controversy. In 1992 the Queen Mother unveiled a statue of Harris in Whitehall. Protests were many and far-reaching, from the German Chancellor and numerous German civic leaders, to much closer to home, with the media playing a part in whipping up support on both sides of the argument. For a man used to being at the centre of controversy, it would probably bring a smile to Harris's face.

Summing up his life, it would be fair to say that Harris was a born leader, and one of the greatest military minds of this century. Perhaps no-one understood better than him how important it was to motivate those in his command, and how important it was to remain both in touch yet at a distance from the campaign with which he was placed in charge. His leadership of various squadrons in the inter-war years, and then 5 Group at the outset of war, gave him an appreciation of tactics perhaps unsurpassed in any other in the Royal Air Force. To Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Travers Harris, GCB, OBE, AFC, we shall leave the final word, from his book "Bomber Offensive (pub. Collins, 1947):-

"There are no words with which I can do justice to the air-crew who fought under my command. There is no parallel in warfare to such courage and determination in the face of danger over so prolonged a period, of danger which at times was so great that scarcely one man in three could expect to survive his tour of thirty operations..... It was, furthermore, the courage of the small hours, of men virtually alone, for at his battle station the airman is virtually alone. It was the courage of men with long-drawn apprehensions of daily "going over the top." They were without exception volunteers, for no man was trained for air-crew with the RAF who did not volunteer for this. such devotion must never be forgotten. It is unforgettable by anyone whose contacts gave them knowledge and understanding of what these young men experienced and faced."

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