I Fortress to Emden was forced to turn back. This was the last attempt by the R.A.F. to operate Fortress bombers by day. The raids flown since 8 July by the handful of aircraft available to 90 Squadron had met with little success.
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, quoted in the Official History, Vol. 1, p. 182.
Official History, Vol. IV, p. 144.
Official History, Vol. I, p. 324.
Public Record Office AIR 22/31-49.
The British Bombing Survey and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey are quoted in the British Official History, Vol. IV, p. 485, and Vol. I, pp. 483-4; Hans Brunswig's Feuersturm ber Hamburg - Brunswig's fire unit was sent to help at Lbeck - op. cit., pp. 117-23, and Hans Rumpfs The Bombing of Germany, Muller, 1963, pp. 49-51. have also been consulted.
After the war Renaut wrote a book about his experiences, Terror by Night, Kimber, 1982.
The Official History's description of the Rostock raids is in Vol. I, pp. 393-5.
The Goebbels Diaries, Hamish Hamilton, 1948, p. 146.
Sir Arthur Harris was determined to capitalize on the undoubted successes against Lbeck and Rostock. He knew that the future of Bomber Command was still in doubt and he approached both Winston Churchill and Sir Charles Portal with the bold idea of assembling a force of 1,000 bombers and sending them out in one massive raid on a German city. Churchill and Portal were both impressed and they agreed. Although Harris had only a little over 400 aircraft with trained crews which were regularly used for front-line operational work, he did have a considerable number of further aircraft in the 'conversion units' attached to groups with four-engined aircraft and in Bomber Command's own operational training units 91 and 92 Groups. This secondary Bomber Command strength could be crewed by a combination of instructors, many of them ex-operational, and by men in the later stages of their training. To complete the 1,000 aircraft required, Harris asked for the help of his fellow commanders-in-chief in Coastal Command and Flying Training Command. Both officers were willing to help. Sir Philip Joubert of Coastal Command immediately offered to provide 250 bombers, many of them being from squadrons which had once served in Bomber Command. Flying Training Command offered fifty aircraft but many of these were later found to be insufficiently equipped for night bombing and only four Wellingtons were eventually provided from this source.
All now looked well. The target figure of 1,000 bombers was easily covered and detailed planning for the operation commenced. The tactics to be employed were of major concern, not only for the success of this unprecedented raid but as an experiment upon which future operations could be based. The tactics eventually adopted would form the basis for standard Bomber Command operations for the next two years and some elements would remain in use until the end of the war.
The major innovation was the introduction of a 'bomber stream' in which all aircraft would fly by a common route and at the same speed to and from the target, each aircraft being allotted a height band and a time slot in the stream to minimize the risk of collision. The recent introduction of Gee made it much easier for crews to navigate within the precise limits required for such flying, although there would always be wayward crews who would drift away from the stream. The hoped-for advantage from the bomber stream was that the bomber force could pass through the minimum number of German radar night-fighter boxes. The controller in each box could only direct a maximum of six potential interceptions per hour. The passage of the stream through the smallest number of boxes would, therefore, reduce the number of possible interceptions, particularly if the bomber stream could be kept as short as possible and pass through the belt of boxes quickly. This led on to the next decision, to reduce still further the time allowed for the actual bombing at the target. Where four hours had been allowed earlier in the war for a raid by 100 aircraft and two hours had been deemed a revolutionary concentration for 234 aircraft at Lbeck, only 90 minutes were allowed for 1,000 aircraft in this coming operation. The big fear in these matters was always that of collisions but, on this occasion, this was accepted in return for the opportunity to allow the bomber stream to pass through the night-fighter boxes quickly, to swamp the Flak defences at the target and, above all, to put down such a concentration of incendiary bombs in a short period that the fire services would be overwhelmed and large areas of the city would be consumed by conflagrations. As in previous raids, the coming operation would be led by experienced crews whose aircraft were equipped with Gee; 1 and 3 Groups were selected to provide these 'raid leaders' in the Thousand Plan.
But, as the planning period came to an end, potential disaster struck. The Admiralty refused to allow the Coastal Command aircraft to take part in the raid. This was obviously a step in the long-running battle between the R.A.F. and the Royal Navy over the control of maritime air power and the Admiralty realized that a success for this grandiose Bomber Command plan was not likely to help their prospects for building up a force of long-range aircraft for the war against the U-boat. They were quite correct in that belief. Harris now appeared to be falling well short of the dramatic figure of 1,000 aircraft with which he intended to carry out what was evidently a massive public-relations exercise; the word 'demonstration' is frequently used in histories of the air war.
Bomber Command redoubled its efforts. Every spare aircrew member and aircraft was gathered in by the operational squadrons but the decisive reinforcement came from Bomber Command's own training units, which committed more crews from the bottom half of their training courses. Every effort was made to provide the training crews with at least an experienced pilot but forty-nine aircraft out of the 208 provided by 91 Group would take off with pupil pilots. When the operation was eventually mounted, 1,047 bombers would be able to take off, all but the four from Training Command being provided by Bomber Command's own resources, in spite of the fearful risk of sending so many untrained crews. When Churchill and Harris discussed the possible casualty figures, Churchill said that he would be prepared for the loss of 100 aircraft. The force about to be dispatched was more than two and a half times greater than any previous single night's effort by Bomber Command. In addition to the bombers, forty-nine Blenheims of 2 Group reinforced by thirty-nine aircraft of Fighter Command and fifteen from Army Co-operation Command would carry out Intruder raids on German night-fighter airfields near the route of the bomber stream.
Final orders were ready on 26 May with the full moon approaching. The force stood ready, waiting for the weather. Harris hoped to use the 1,000-bomber force more than once if conditions permitted, before the extra aircraft gathered together were dispersed to their normal locations. His first choice of target was Hamburg, the second largest city in Germany, a great port and, an attraction for the Admiralty, builder of about 100 U-boats each year. But the weather over Germany was unfavourable for three days running and, on 30 May, Harris had to decide to send the bombers to his second target choice - Cologne, the third largest city in Germany. Soon after noon on that day, the order to attack Cologne went out to the groups and squadrons and the raid took place that night.
The first 1,000-bomber raid was a great success but a follow-up to Essen two nights later was not. The moon phase then passed and the training aircraft returned to their normal work, but they were recalled once more for a further massive raid on Bremen during the end of the June moon period, although the figure of 1,000 aircraft was not quite reached on that raid. Harris had originally hoped to assemble 1,000 aircraft for one or two raids in every moon period but he abandoned this idea and the full 'thousand' operation using so many training aircraft was not carried out again after the Bremen raid, although smaller numbers of training aircraft were called upon from time to time later in the year.
The 1,000-bomber raids certainly made their mark on history and were another great turning-point in Bomber Command's war. The new tactics were mainly successful; there were never any serious casualties through collision and the 'time over target' would progressively be shortened until 700 or 800 aircraft regularly passed over the city they were bombing in less than twenty minutes! The morale of Bomber Command was certainly uplifted by this great demonstration of air power and by the wide publicity which followed. That same publicity also confirmed Bomber Command's future as a major force and it can be said that, although there were bad as well as good times to come, Bomber Command never looked back after the 1,000-bomber raids. These events also placed Sir Arthur Harris firmly in the public eye where, as 'Bomber' Harris, he would remain for the rest of his life.
The rest of the midsummer weeks passed with the front-line squadrons being pressed hard when the weather and moon conditions were favourable - and sometimes when they were not so favourable. The shorter nights again restricted raids to the coastal targets, the Ruhr and the Rhineland. There was another concentration of sustained effort against Essen in June, but this important target remained elusive of Bomber Command success. A similar campaign against Duisburg fared little better. There were minor operational changes. Harris started to restrict the practice whereby 'freshmen' crews were introduced to operations gradually by being sent to lightly defended, close-range targets on the French coast. New crews were still allowed their one leaflet flight to France or Belgium but after that they were expected to go to any target in Europe. Harris was forced to agree to the temporary detachment of six more squadrons - even one of Lancasters - and one of his operational training units to Coastal Command to help with the U-boat war. There was a further draining away of operational effort when that unsatisfactory new aircraft, the Manchester, disappeared from 5 Group's order of battle at the end of June - although the Lancasters being sent to this group would soon more than replace the loss. There were only minor changes in 2 Group although one feature was to be the portent of a brilliant future for a new type of aircraft. In the early morning after the first 1,000-bomber raid, five small twin-engined bombers of wooden construction flew to the smoking city of Cologne to take photographs and throw a few more bombs into that unhappy place. The De Havilland Mosquito had arrived. By the time the war ended, this aircraft would perform an undreamt-of range of tasks for Bomber Command.
