The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The many pressures on German crews from the high accident rate, the stringent demands for accurate bombing, the injunction not to waste bombs, flying night after night in deteriorating meteorological conditions against a wide variety of scattered targets for a strategy whose end point was not entirely evident, all produced its own combat strain among the crews. Instructions to the bomber groups pointed out the necessity of giving flyers two days of proper rest after three days of combat. A long report on the medical condition of flying crews in late November 1940 noted increased signs of severe psychological and physical reaction to the pressure of constant combat and warned that the longer the campaign went on, the more likely it was that effective pilots would break down. The doctors recommended periods of leave in Paris or Brussels as a diversion, at least two weeks home leave every six months, and for all flying personnel, three weeks at a winter sports spa with plenty of good food and the best possible accommodation.¹⁴⁰ A rest home for psychiatric casualties was set up at the Hotel Boris in the Breton seaside town of Port Navalo. To give crews some sense of purpose, reports were prepared for distribution to every squadron on the estimated effects of their operations. An American report on impressions of London was circulated in early November: ‘London is still working, but on a much reduced scale… the apparatus that keeps London going is under strong pressure… The damage sustained in the past six weeks can hardly be made good in two years.’¹⁴¹ After the raids on Coventry and Birmingham, news was distributed about the crisis of the British steel and engineering industries, the collapsing morale of the British workforce and a widespread health crisis provoked, it was claimed, not altogether implausibly, by a combination of glassless windows and damp weather. On 23 November Göring sent out a communiqué to all the front-line squadrons assuring them that despite the difficult and tiring work in the face of enemy defences and the atrocious weather, and above all how seldom the success of operations could effectively be measured, the raid on Coventry showed that they were working for a historic victory.¹⁴² He then took a period of leave himself until the middle of January.

If the German air forces faced problems in the autumn and winter of 1940, they were as nothing compared with the problems facing their enemy. The success against German daylight operations in September accelerated the German transition to night-bombing. Against night-time attack there was still in the autumn of 1940 almost no effective defence. As long as bombers flew well clear of the ceiling of anti-aircraft fire and searchlights, or chose routes with poor anti-aircraft defences, the only factor inhibiting the impact of a raid was the difficulty of getting bombs sufficiently concentrated on the chosen objectives. Otherwise the bomber always got through. The problems of defence against night attack had been fully appreciated in Britain after the outbreak of war, and a committee was established in March 1940 to consider its implications, but the pressure of daylight fighting throughout the first nine months of 1940 left night defence as a low priority. The switch to extensive night-bombing in September 1940 provoked an immediate crisis. There were very few dedicated night-fighter squadrons and the evidence from daylight attacks showed how few aircraft could be brought down by anti-aircraft fire. When Dowding was made to account for the poor state of night defences at a meeting in the Air Ministry on 18 October 1940, he confirmed that his force had been trying for a year to intercept enemy aircraft at night ‘with negligible success’.¹⁴³