BOMBER COMMAND

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22203, 21 February 1942, Page 5

BOMBER COMMAND

New Head Appointed (Rec. 8.0 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 19. The Air Ministry announces that Air Marshal A. T. Harris has been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Bomber Command in succession to Sir Richard Peirse, who has been given a special appointment. Air Marshal Harris was Deputy Chief of the Air Staff from November, 1940, until May, 1941, when he was appointed for special duty with the British Air Staff in Washington. He is 52. During the last war he served in the ranks of the First Rhodesian Regiment, and joined the Royal Flying Corps as a second-lieutenant in 1915. In 1937 he was promoted Air Commodore and appointed to the command of No. 4 (Bomber) Group. Air Vice Marshal D. C. S. Evil!, who succeeds Air Marshal Harris in Washington, is also 52. He was appointed Senior Air Staff Officer at the Fighter Command in August, 1940, following his return to England from France, where he was Senior Air Staff Officer with the British Air Forces in France. Sir Richard Peirse issued a special order of the day to the Bomber Command as follows:—“I say good-bye to you all with very deep regret, but with a feeling of great pride that I should have had the privilege of commanding for 15 months so gallant a company of men and women. The unconquerable spirit of the Bomber Command I shall take with me, and your progress and deeds I shall follow always with the certain conviction that you are well set on the road to victory.”