The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

122. Mark J. Conversino, Fighting with the Soviets: The Failure of Operation Frantic 1944–1945 (Lawrence, KS: 1997), 26–30.

123. LC, Doolittle papers, Box 19, Col. Old to Doolittle, 6 July 1944, 4.

124. Conversino, Fighting with the Soviets, 88–90.

125. RGAE, f.29, o.1, d.1792/1961, Production of aircraft and engines: Bombers. The figures were 1939: 2; 1940: 10; 1941: 23; 1942: 22; 1943: 29; 1944: 5.

126. Kerber, Stalin’s Aviation Gulag, 255–60.

127. RGVA, f.37878, o.1, d.722, 17–19, ‘Prospects: Protection of the People from Air Raids’, April 1945.

5. THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: BOMBER COMMAND 1939–42

1. Heinz M. Hanke, Luftkrieg und Zivilbevölkerung (Frankfurt am Main: 1991), 187–90. Charles Webster, Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 4 vols (London: 1961), vol 1, 134–5, give the wrong dates for the German pledge and the Anglo-French declaration.

2. FDRL, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 47, Ambassador Potocki to Cordell Hull, 1 Sept 1939.

3. TNA, AIR 9/202, first meeting, Committee on the Humanisation of Aerial Warfare, 8 July 1938; Air Staff memorandum, ‘The Restriction of Air Warfare’, 25 Feb 1938. Uri Bialer, ‘Humanization of Air Warfare in British Foreign Policy on the Eve of the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (1978), 79–96.

4. TNA, AIR 14/249, ‘Air Ministry Instructions and Notes on the Rules to be Observed by the Royal Air Force in War’, 17 Aug 1939, 5–7; AIR 41/5, ‘International Law of the Air 1939–1945’, supplement to ‘Air Power and War Rights’ by the former Air Ministry legal adviser J. M. Spaight, 7; Joel Hayward, ‘Air Power, Ethics, and Civilian Immunity during the First World War and its Aftermath’, Global War Studies, 7 (2010), 127–9; Peter Gray, ‘The Gloves Will Have to Come Off: A Reappraisal of the Legitimacy of the RAF Bomber Offensive against Germany’, Air Power Review, 13 (2010), 15–16.

5. TNA, AIR 9/105, Anglo-French staff conversations, ‘Preparation of Joint Plan’, 19 Apr 1939; ‘The Employment of British Bombers in the Event of German Invasion of the Low Countries’, 21 Apr 1939.

6. TNA, AIR 14/249, Air Ministry to Bomber Command, 22 Aug 1939; AIR 75/8, Newall to Ludlow-Hewitt, 23 Aug 1939. Gray, ‘The Gloves Will Have to Come Off’, 22–3.

7. TNA, AIR 75/8, Newall to Gen. Gort, 24 Aug 1939; War Cabinet Annex, ‘Air Policy’, 13 Oct 1939; AIR 14/446, Air Ministry minute, 30 Aug 1939.

8. TNA, FO 371/23093, Sir Hugh Kennard (Warsaw) to Foreign Office, 11 Sept and 12 Sept 1939.

9. Ibid., AIR 75/8, ‘Air Policy: Brief for the Secretary of State for Supreme War Council’, 15 Nov 1939, 5–8.

10. Martin Middlebrook, Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book 1939–1945 (Leicester: 2000), 42, 702–3.

11. FDRL, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 32, Chamberlain to Roosevelt, 25 Aug 1939; Roosevelt to Chamberlain, 31 Aug 1939.

12. TNA, AIR 9/131, ‘The Employment of the Air Striking Force on the Outbreak of War’ [n.d. but Aug 1939], 10. W. A. Jacobs, ‘The British Strategic Air Offensive against Germany in World War II’, in R. Cargill Hall (ed), Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment (Washington, DC: 1998), 109–10.

13. Richard Overy, ‘Air Power, Armies and the War in the West, 1940’, 32nd Harmon Memorial Lecture (Colorado Springs, CO: 1989), 8–12.

14. Webster, Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol 4, 99–102, App 6; Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: 2002), 178–80.

15. TNA, AIR 9/89, Air (Targets) Intelligence: Country: Germany, 21 Jan 1938.

16. Owen Thetford, Aircraft of the Royal Air Force since 1918 (London: 1988), 138–41, 273–6.

17. Ibid., 30–34, 313–16, 554–61.

18. Armaments Design Establishment, Ministry of Supply, ‘The Development of British Incendiary Bombs during the Period of the 1939–1945 World War’, Dec 1946; TNA, AIR 9/92, Air Ministry, ‘Bomb Stocks as at 26 April 1939’. On the poor quality of bombs see NC, Cherwell papers, G189, Cherwell to Ministry of Supply, 28 Jan 1942, memorandum, ‘Bomb Production’; F255, War Cabinet paper, ‘The Possibility of Improving Efficiency of Blast Bombs’, 6 Oct 1943.

19. TNA, AIR 14/88, Air Ministry to Ludlow-Hewitt, 27 Oct 1939; AIR 41/5, ‘International Law of the Air’, 1.

20. TNA, AIR 75/5, Slessor to Newall, 29 Mar 1940; Richard Overy, Bomber Command, 1939–1945 (London: 1997), 32–3.