The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

In the summer of 1941 that is not how the future looked to either side. As noted, the German intention was to return to finish Britain off once the Soviet Union had been defeated in a six-month campaign. So confident was Hitler that the war would work out this way that in July 1941 he ordered the large-scale expansion of aircraft output and naval equipment to meet the expected renewal of the contest with Britain in 1942. Göring was able to extract a special priority order from Hitler (the so-called ‘Göring Programme’) to produce a fourfold increase in output, including a complement of around 400 heavier four-engine bombers (principally the Heinkel He177) in 1942 and around 1,000 in 1943.²⁰⁹ The development of very long-range bombers – nicknamed the ‘Amerikabomber’ – was moving out of the realm of fantasy. The Messerschmitt company had begun work on the Me264, which with a maximum range of over 9,000 miles would be capable of reaching American cities and returning to Europe. The idea circulated at Hitler’s headquarters from autumn 1940 of occupying the Azores as a potential base for long-range air attacks on the United States if, or when, they entered the war.²¹⁰ The object for Sperrle’s Air Fleet 3 was to hold the line in 1941–2 until the full weight of German air strength could once again be brought to bear against the Western powers. It was this bleak scenario that British leaders also anticipated. Churchill harried the Air Ministry to expand night defences for the renewed ‘night-bombing season’ expected that autumn. Sholto Douglas, Dowding’s replacement at Fighter Command, wanted to expand night-fighter squadrons to at least 30 (from the 16 he had) by the end of the year to deal with ‘the heavy and prolonged attacks by night’ against British cities once the German Air Force had deployed its bombers westward during the winter lull in the ground fighting in Russia.²¹¹ It took some time before it was evident that German difficulties in the Soviet campaign would make it impossible ever again to mount a sustained bombing offensive against Britain.

In the second six months of 1941, Air Fleet 3 tried to find ways in which it could get at Britain with some strategic purpose despite its limited numbers. At first German bombers continued to carry out night raids on distant urban targets. Birmingham was hit three times in July 1941, Hull twice. In August the weather was so poor that there could be no raiding on 25 days of the month. In September the force switched to mining operations. In December small raids were made on Newcastle, Plymouth and Hull. German spirits were kept up by vastly exaggerating the losses inflicted on the enemy; for the cost of 236 German aircraft between July and December, the force claimed 1,223 RAF planes destroyed.²¹² As the urgent demands of other theatres drew aircraft away, Sperrle was left by the winter of 1941–2 with just two bomber groups. The most obvious route for his shrunken force to take was to help the navy in the war against British shipping. On 7 April 1942 Air Fleet 3 also took over command of the air-sea forces of Fliegerführer Atlantik and played a more effective part in the blockade war against ships at sea and southern English ports.²¹³ Occasional raids were made by German night-fighters, flying low to attack RAF bomber stations, but these too petered out during 1942.

All this time British defences were being expanded and their level of technical performance transformed. By 1943 there was a network of 53 inland radar stations (GCI) spread across the country from the Scilly Isles to the Orkney Islands, and all night-fighters were fitted with AI Mark IV sets for radar interception of incoming German aircraft.²¹⁴ Luftflotte 3 losses averaged 10 per cent, an unacceptably high rate for a small force, short of reinforcements. By the end of 1941, RAF night-fighters, now chiefly Bristol Beaufighters converted to a night-fighter role, were inflicting loss rates of up to 18 per cent on the small and infrequent German raids.²¹⁵ By spring 1942 Anti-Aircraft Command had supplies of new searchlights with radar detection and a new system for clustering them in ‘Killer Zones’ to achieve a more effective light trap, in conjunction with radar-directed guns and night-fighters. Improved gun-laying reduced the number of shells fired for each aircraft destroyed to 1,830, the lowest of the war.²¹⁶ A German bomber group commander told an investigation team sent to evaluate Air Fleet 3 in March 1943 that any attacks overland against British targets under existing air defence conditions would produce ‘a catastrophe’.²¹⁷