The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The results of the efforts to restrict damage to military production were mixed. Intense raids on the arsenal at Woolwich in the attack on 7 September resulted in heavy temporary losses of munitions output (except for bombs, ironically enough, which lost only 2 per cent); raids on Southampton damaged 30 per cent of Spitfire production based there.¹³³ But these figures were often only temporary disruptions. Work was either further dispersed or the plant repaired, covered with tarpaulins and running at almost full capacity within days. For all the anxiety about Britain’s war industries, it was found that among the smoke and debris much less damage was done than at first appeared. Reporting to Churchill on the bombing of the Midlands aero-industry in November and December 1940, Beaverbrook found that only 700 machine tools had been destroyed and 5,000 damaged out of a total regional stock of 120,000. A study of 200 Birmingham city-centre factories after five heavy raids found that only 15 per cent had called in repair services and only 22 per cent had suffered serious damage but with most tools intact. The heavy raids on Merseyside in December left ‘negligible’ damage to factories in Bootle and all machines intact in the aircraft plants in Manchester. The Regional Commissioner in his report concluded that ‘permanent damage is very small indeed’.¹³⁴ The pattern in 1941 was similar. The Ministry of Home Security calculated that out of 6,699 economic ‘key points’ – industry, utilities, food stocks, oil – only 884 had been hit; a mere eight out of 558 factories attacked had been destroyed beyond repair. Figures for weekly output of iron and steel show a higher output figure for every month of the Blitz compared with September 1940. By the end of the bombing, the monthly output of aircraft was almost a quarter higher than it had been before it started. The report concluded that the War Material Production Index was affected more in April 1941 by the Easter holidays than by bombing. More effective damage, as the Manchester report suggested, required far greater numbers of aircraft, more effective bombs, repeated raiding and the occasional lucky hit.¹³⁵

The protection of food stocks and food supplies was a greater challenge, since food could only be imported through a handful of major ports and perishable food was stored in large quantities on or near the quayside. So anxious was the government to protect food stocks that air-raid precautions were introduced in 1940 at embarkation points for food supplies from West Africa and southern Asia.¹³⁶ The supply of food from overseas depended on keeping open Britain’s major ports, which is why the German Air Force attacked them with such regularity. Ports could not be dispersed like factories, though the shipping could be diverted to smaller and less vulnerable coastal towns. But the attacks seldom succeeded in closing an entire port, damaging though they were. In Liverpool, subject to a detailed study after the Blitz, only the raids in May 1941 seriously affected the operation of the dock area, resulting in the loss of the equivalent of three working days. In the five weeks before the raid an average of 91,000 tons had been unloaded each week; in the week of the raids the figure fell to 35,000 tons, but a week later was back up to 86,000. During the same period the average weekly number of stevedores was 510,000; during the week of bombing this number fell to 299,000, but by the third week of May had risen to 518,000. The damage had been extensive, including 69 out of 144 berths, but arriving ships were instead unloaded in midstream while the docks were repaired.¹³⁷ In most cases there seems to have been only a temporary decline in dock work following the raids, though workers depended on the local authorities providing them with food, temporary accommodation and transport.