“BOMBER” HARRIS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 29 August 1945, Page 4

“BOMBER” HARRIS

THE prospective retirement of Sir Arthur Harris as Chief of Bomber Command marks the end of the active career of a pioneer in the new technique of air war. When we recall the uncertainties which prevailed among the service leaders as recently as 1941 about the power of air bombing as a war-winning instrument it is possible to obtain an idea of how the strategy of bombing was crystallised between then and the period of lethal air devastation over Germany. In the face of the speculators and the critics Air Chief Marshal Harris pinned his faith on the heavy bomber as an instrument of disintegration of the opposing war machine. He did not go so far as one of the leading exponents of air war in the United States, Major de Seversky, who maintained that victory could come through air power alone if it were used remorselessly enough on a sufficiently large scale. Harris kept steadfastly to two cardinal principles: first, that bombing potential must be built up to a pitch not visualised hitherto by many authorities and not reached by the Germans at the height of their blitz; secondly, that this strength must be scientifically concentrated on strategic targets vital to the functioning of the enemy war machine and not dispersed on side-shows. Bomber Command, under his direction, extended the practice of these principles, not without some opposition, but, after the thousandbomber raid over Cologne in May, 1942. the convictions which Harris held were well on the way towards vindication' and gained much more general acceptance. The Americans joined in and it is clear now that the heavy bomber paved the way for victory over Germany as it has done even more convincingly in the vanquishing of Japan. We know now what a large part radar played in taking guess-work out of strategic bombing, leading to a triumph over weather and darkness and bringing that precision which enabled almost evprv big bomb to find its billet. As to whether the atomic bomb may have already outdated the

“heavy” as a weapon is for the future to speculate upon. World War II is even now sufficiently Jar behind us to make it clear that Air Chief Marshal Harris and his bombing men were among the chief aichitects of victory.