. The initial emphasis was on the U-boat and long-range aircraft threats. The directive repeated Churchill's own words: 'We must take the offensive against the U-boat and the Focke-Wulf wherever we can and whenever we can. The U-boat at sea must be hunted, the U-boat in the building yard or in dock must be bombed. The Focke-Wulf, and other bombers employed against our shipping, must be attacked in the air and in their nests.' There was a list of targets: Kiel, with three U-boat shipbuilding yards. Hamburg, with two yards, Bremen and Vegesack, each with one yard; the cities of Mannheim and Augsburg with their marine diesel-engine factories (Augsburg was soon removed from the list because of its extreme range for the approaching shorter nights); Dessau and Bremen again with aircraft factories; Lorient, St-Nazaire and Bordeaux with their U-boat bases; the Focke-Wulf Kondor airfields at Stavanger in Norway and at Mrignac near Bordeaux. The Air Ministry did secure one concession; Sir Richard Peirse was allowed to devote a proportion of the operational effort on the old oil targets. The written directive was later amended by verbal order when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau came into Brest from their successful Atlantic sweep. A great tonnage of bombs was due to be thrown at those two ships.
Sir Richard Peirse was not happy to be taken off the strategic bombing of Germany just when he felt that his force was on the verge of potential success in the improving weather of spring. But Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, was probably less unhappy and did not oppose the order from Churchill. Portal, sometimes known as 'the big thinker', was coming to realize that Bomber Command's claims of accurate results in the bombing of the comparatively small oil targets were not justified. The Official History makes this comment:
Whether Sir Charles Portal really believed that this directive would get the Admiralty out of its 'mess' or not, it was in effect the Admiralty which had got the Air Ministry out of a 'mess', for if Bomber Command had, at this stage, been left free to carry out the oil plan it would probably have done a great deal more damage to its prestige than to its targets.
There were a few further words in the directive which were of the utmost significance to the unfolding story of the bombing war. In that 9 March directive, signed by Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman, Vice-Chief of the Air Staff, were these words referring to the list of German cities connected with the U-boat and long-range aircraft threat: 'Priority of selection should be given to those [targets] in Germany which lie in congested areas where the greatest moral [sic] effect is likely to result.' In a small amending directive, written on 18 March and signed by the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff Air Vice-Marshal Harris, Harris writes of Mannheim and the newly added target of Stuttgart, with its U-boat engine and accessory factories, 'Both are suitable as area objectives and their attack should have high morale value.' In other words, the general bombing of city areas in an effort to break the morale of German civilians was progressively being introduced as a Bomber Command weapon. Freeman and Harris did not originate these ideas; they were merely putting the wishes of Portal and the Air Staff on paper. There were senior officers, however, besides Portal who were moving at various speeds to the conclusion that, until Bomber Command received some of the sophisticated aids to bombing accuracy being prepared, 'area bombing' against German cities with a view to breaking civilian morale was the most useful means of employing the bomber force. A pattern in the operations of Bomber Command thus developed during the coming period. One part of a force dispatched to a city might be given a specific industrial or port installation as its target while other parts of the force were directed to aim at the city centre in order to create general destruction, dislocation and disorder. It was now reckoned that really accurate bombing of small targets was possible on only the nine most moonlit nights in the month, even by experienced crews. During the remainder of the month, most bombing would become area bombing even though the aiming points were nominally industrial. These methods would inevitably produce heavier civilian death tolls. For example, during the coming four months during which the bombing was directed in support of the maritime campaign, Hamburg would suffer 331 deaths in eighteen raids compared with 125 deaths in its first seventy-two raids of the war, and Kiel would have 254 deaths in seventeen raids compared with only twenty-five deaths in its first sixteen raids.
So, the bomber squadrons were sent to attempt the destruction of the ports of Germany and France and the inland towns connected with the manufacture of U-boats and long-range bombers. 2 Group would join in the shipping offensive, being pressed more vigorously than in recent months in a variety of operations along the German-controlled coastline of Europe. There was still no basic increase in bomber strength; the transfers of squadrons to Middle East and to Coastal Command cancelled out the increase in new squadrons formed. The new types of aircraft being introduced made their first flights to Germany, but not in any strength during the coming period. It was the old Wellington which was emerging as the undisputed backbone of Bomber Command's strength. The original Wellington group, 3 Group, was now the most powerful in Bomber Command; the Wellington was also in service with 1 Group and some of the 4 Group squadrons would start operating this reliable aircraft in May. Wellingtons sometimes comprised more than half of a force of bombers dispatched. The first of many Canadian squadrons, 405 (Vancouver) Squadron, started to operate in June, flying Wellingtons in 4 Group, and the first 4,000-pound bombs would be dropped during the next few weeks. The only change of command in the coming period was the departure of Air-Vice-Marshal Bottomley from 5 Group on 12 May; Bottomley moved to the Air Ministry to replace as Deputy Chief of the Air Staff Air Vice-Marshal Harris, who was sent to lead an R.A.F. delegation to the United States. The new commander of 5 Group was Air Vice-Marshal J. C. Slessor.
The maritime campaign ran its full four-month course, uninterrupted by bad weather or diversion to any other priority. It is difficult to assess the overall benefits produced by the bombing. Much damage was caused in the German ports where U-boats were made and this must have affected new construction, although production figures do not reveal any dramatic setback. The bombing of the U-boat bases in France certainly moved the Germans to action and they commenced the construction of huge, bomb-proof shelters for the U-boats which operated from the French ports. A major effort was directed on to the warships sheltering in Brest, not in the expectation that accurate bombing would pound these ships to destruction but in the hope that an odd hit now and then would prevent their sailing out into the Atlantic again. This was achieved. Not much is known about the bombing of the long-range aircraft factories and bases. As for the secondary aim of lowering morale in the German cities selected for attack, the optimists who felt that the German spirit would crack were as much in error on this subject as they would continue to be throughout the rest of the war. It can be said, however, that this coming period of bombing had a greater effect upon the German war effort than the continuation of the oil campaign would have done; there had never been the slightest chance that the strength of bombers available and the methods being employed in 1941 could have stopped Germany's supply of synthetic oil.
Elsewhere, the war unfolded dramatically. On 30 March, a German offensive in North Africa drove back the British forces which had made such good earlier progress against the Italians. On 6 April, the Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia and, on 22 June, came that great watershed, the German invasion of Russia.
