It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport, and lives,

the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale and the breakdown of morale both at home

and at the battlefronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended

aims of our bombing policy. They are not byproducts of attempts to hit factories.

Air Chief Marshal Arthur Bomber Harris.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 399, War in the Air, Part 1.

Back in episode 355, I described to you the RAF bombing campaign against Germany in 1942.

In a nutshell, the British began retaliatory bombing of German cities

after the Luftwaffe began targeting British cities in the latter half of 1940. Early British

bombing raids produced few results and cost many planes and lives. But over the course of 1941,

REF Bomber Command learned the same lessons the Luftwaffe had learned in 1940,

that the most effective way to use bombers was in area attacks against cities at night.

A bombing strategy like that used to be called a war crime, but the British told themselves they

were avenging the German bombing of Britain. British bombing attacks were meant to destroy

factories when possible, but mostly the worker housing around them in order to disrupt German production and lower German morale,

on the principle that nothing lowers a civilian's morale more than destroying their home and everything in it.

Naturally, when you bomb houses at night, though, it is highly probable that the families who live in those houses will be in them

at the time. But this was dismissed as an unfortunate happenstance. The RAF wasn't targeting

civilians, they just happened to be there during the bombing raid. And that made all the difference.

In 1942, Bomber Command organized huge air raids, sometimes involving more than a thousand planes.

These attacks were not always successful, but when they were, they could be quite devastating.

The RAF also benefited from a new generation of bomber, especially the Avro

...