, after only a little over a year in command. He became Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, the second deputy to Portal. His place at 5 Group was taken by Air Vice-Marshal N. H. Bottomley.) Three weeks after Peirse's appointment, he received a long directive from the Air Ministry. Oil was to be his continuing priority target - to be attacked by his best crews in the best weather conditions which were presented. But there was also a long list of other important targets: the bombing of named industries and railways in German cities, targets in Berlin, in Italy, a continuation of minelaying, more attacks on Channel ports in case the Germans should think again of an invasion in 1941, attacks on airfields where German bombers were based. There was nothing fresh in the list but the new commander-in-chief protested that he could not attack all these targets and still carry out a sizeable offensive against oil. A clarification of the directive was thus issued which, in simple terms, said, 'concentrate on the oil and attack the other targets if the opportunities arise'.
There are two aspects of these orders on which particular comment can be made. The first is the utter unreality of some of the forecasts being made about the effectiveness of the attacks by the available strength of aircraft against the oil targets. A typical raid of this coming period was on a synthetic-oil plant near Cologne whose name would become familiar to bomber crews in another oil campaign four years later - Wesseling. On
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24 Blenheims on widespread cloud-cover raids. 1 aircraft bombed a factory at Solingen in the Ruhr and 6 aircraft bombed targets in Holland and France. No losses.
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THE RUHR, BORDEAUX
95 aircraft to Dortmund, Duisburg and Wanne-Eickel and to an aircraft factory at Bordeaux. 2 O.T.U. aircraft and 1 Blenheim carried out leaflet raids over France and Holland and 3 Hampdens were minelaying off Lorient. 1 minelaying Hampden lost.
