And that Britain started bombing Germany on the very day that Churchill came to power on top of that.
I decided to take a closer look at my reference books since I suspected what our intrepid 9/11-investigator was saying, at the very least, was lacking in proper context, if not flat-out wrong.
It turns out to be wrong.
The restrictions in place were against attacking the interior of Germany—its ports and the areas around them were subject to attack, as were its naval vessels. The first major daylight raid against German naval ships was mounted on Dec. 3, 1939, when two cruisers, eight merchant ships, and a number of smaller vessels were attacked. A second raid was launched on Dec. 14 against a battleship and cruiser in the mouth of the Elbe. Four days a patrol found a number of warships at Wilhelmshaven, but as the ships were close to shore and there was the risk of civilian casualties, no bombs were dropped.
The damage caused by such early bombing raids were minimal and often suffered serious casualties, so a change in strategy was considered. On Feb. 22, 1940, it was made official: Bomber Command was to switch to nighttime attacks and would focus primarily on attacking oil refineries. In early April the War Cabinet took up the issue of loosening the restrictions on attacking the interior of Germany, but they were left in place.
When Churchill became Prime Minister he gave his support to removing the restrictions: "We should not allow our heavy bomber force to be frittered away and thus deprive ourselves of its principal deterrent effect, and of the ability to deliver its heavy blow."
Approval finally came on May 15, and Bomber Command was authorized to strike at oil refineries and railway centres east of the Rhine river. The first raid was carried out that same night—nearly a hundred bombers went sent to sixteen different targets in the Ruhr area. Damage and casualties, however, were minimal: one person killed in Cologne and two injured in Münster. Two nights later 78 bombers made for Hamburg, Bremen, and Cologne; a total of 47 people were killed. German records indicate that in attacks on targets in the Ruhr some 70% of British bombs fell on open countryside.
Between June 19 and Oct. 13 six different directives were issued to Bomber Command setting out the force's objectives and methods of attack. The directive issued on July 13, for example, set out that the main effort was to be directed against ten aircraft factories and five oil plants.
The move to general, or area, bombing only happened after German bombers (mistakenly) dropped bombs on central London on the night of Aug. 24/25, 1940. A retaliatory raid on Berlin was conducted the next night by the RAF. Damage, however, occurred mostly in the farmland south of the city. In Berlin itself damage consisted of one summer home destroyed and two people injured. The day after that the Luftwaffe bombed London, deliberately this time. Bomber Command, instead of targetting Berlin, put its emphasis on attacking industrial targets in Leipzig—the reluctance to engage in wholesale area bombing still persisted. With the German raids on Coventry, Bristol, and Southampton in November of 1940, the resistance to deliberate area bombing was at last removed.
The first true area bombing raid by the RAF, intended as a deliberate reprisal for the German raids, was conducted on the night of Dec. 16/17, 1940, against the city of Mannheim. 134 aircraft were dispatched to bomb the city centre, using incendiaries to open the assault with follow-up aircraft to aim at the fires started.
And yet, even after this, bombing objectives switched back to specific targets. On Jan. 15, 1941, a directive was issued that oil production was to be the primary target of Bomber Command. Raids against industrial facilities, ports, and naval targets also occurred. (This despite the fact that the ability to actually hit and damage such targets was very limited. Of the RAF bombs dropped in raids in May of 1941, for example, over half fell in the countryside, well away from any cities, towns, and villages.)
It was the realization that little damage was being done to specific targets which pushed the emphasis back to area bombing. As the Butt Report of August of 1941 made abundantly clear, the bombing specific installations had been a dismal failure. The way had been cleared for area bombing to become the primary focus of Bomber Command's efforts. The rationale was simple: if bombs are to be dropped, then one should drop them in a manner which at least does some damage to the enemy. And that means attacking the built-up areas of a city, which is the only thing that at night could be found and hit with any prospect of success.
