. When 8 Group was formed, Sir Arthur Harris resisted Air Ministry pressure to take in a senior regular R.A.F. officer, preferring to retain the junior Group Captain Donald Bennett, who was promoted to air commodore at once and who would be an air vice-marshal before 1943 was out, having risen from wing commander to air vice-marshal in a year!
The overall result of this recent expansion and reorganization was that Bomber Command had suddenly become a more powerful and more effective force. If one ignores the 1,000-bomber raids, which were carried out by temporarily assembled forces artificially boosted in number, 250 bombers had, until now, been considered a major effort for a night raid. During the coming period, in the middle of February, the figure suddenly leapt to 450 bombers for a raid to Lorient. Nor was that all. The average bomb load per aircraft so far in the war had rarely exceeded one ton, but the growing proportion of four-engined types, particularly the Lancaster, would produce an average bomb load of two and a quarter tons for that Lorient raid. The hitting power of Bomber Command at least doubled within a few weeks.
None of these comments apply to the ever languishing 2 Group. The group received yet another new day bomber, the North American Mitchell, and a new commander when Air Vice-Marshall J. H. D'Albiac took over from Air Vice-Marshal Lees at the end of December. This was the fifth commander for 2 Group so far in the war. But the group had now little part to play in Bomber Command's main plans. Not many knew it, but the units which flew by day with 2 Group had only a few months remaining in Bomber Command.
Sir Arthur Harris, in his post-war dispatch, described 1942 as 'the preliminary phase' during which he developed his bombing techniques and awaited the arrival of the new devices and the necessary increase in strength required for his main offensive. In theory, all was now ready for this to start and Harris had developed his ideas on how it should be conducted. But Bomber Command was to suffer yet again the frustration of being pulled away from the campaign against Germany by the needs of another theatre of war. It was the U-boat danger again. On
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ESSEN
3 Pathfinder Mosquitoes and 19 Lancasters of 5 Group. No aircraft lost.
This raid was not as effective as earlier Oboe trials. Only incendiary bombs were recorded in Essen but 9 buildings were destroyed, 34 seriously damaged and 10 people were killed.
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DUISBURG
3 Mosquitoes of the Pathfinders, now officially designated as 8 Group, and 38 Lancasters of 5 Group. (It can be assumed that all Mosquitoes on night-bombing operations were from 8 Group until otherwise stated and, in other operations, the terms '8 Group' and 'Pathfinders' will both be used; they are quite interchangeable.) 3 Lancasters were lost. No report is available from Duisburg.
Minor Operations: 73 aircraft minelaying off the Danish and German coasts, 2 O.T.U. sorties. 2 minelaying Lancasters were lost.
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; five other members of this crew are also buried here.
54. The Berlin War Cemetery, in which more than 80 percent of the graves are those of Bomber Command men, many lost in the costly Battle of Berlin.
The graves in the foreground belong to Sergeant George Jeffrey, Sergeant Harry Coffey (Canadian) and Flight Sergeant Alan Drake, killed when their Lancaster of 630 Squadron was shot down on the Nuremberg raid of
