[tcolvin]

Now I understand your point, Juha.
Harris was not under control in the way you think until March 1944.

Perhaps these quotes from Maj-Gen Sir John Kennedy's "The Business of War" will explain what went on bewteen 1942 and 1944. Kennedy was a participant.

Page XV (written by Bernard Fergusson) "The powers of the Chief of Staff Committee had certain curious limitations. In two respects the RAF was independent of it, and held an unwritten charter from the War Cabinet (ie Churchill). The Chiefs of Staff, as such, had little say in the bombing policy, or in deciding what types of aircraft should be built. The RAF had had a precarious youth. Although now of age, and highly robust at that, it still had a tendency to look on the Royal Navy and the Army as wicked uncles who, although ostensibly reformed, might once again revert to predatory instincts. Who could say what might happen if the two older Services should taste blood, in the shape of selecting targets, or in the form of aircraft specially designed for close support of the Army and Navy. (I remember as late as 1943 an Air Chief Marshal telling me in Cairo that he regarded every transport aircraft built at the expense of a bomber as a major tactical defeat)."

Page 247; "The Naval and General Staffs would have agreed completely, at that time (Fall of Tobruk in June 1942) on the following order of priority of tasks for the RAF;
First: Fighter Defence of the British Isles.
Second: The essential needs of the Navy.
Third: The essential needs of the Army.
Fourth. Long-range bombing with what was left.
At this particular moment, Churchill's obsession for bombing Germany resulted in the Navy being very short of long-range aircraft at sea, and in the Army not having the support of bomber aircraft in Egypt to hamper the use by the Germans of the North African seaports, which now included Tobruk".

So long as Harris had only to answer to Churchill, he did what they both (and later Spaatz) wanted - ie concentrate on area bombing of Germany. This lasted for two years from February 1942 (see an earlier post). But in 1944 pressure on Harris finally emerged with Zuckerman's Transportation Plan, which was bought by Tedder and Leigh-Mallory in the AEAF as well as by the government and Eisenhower. Harris was instructed to begin the Transportation Plan in March 1944.

Harris was placed under Eisenhower's command for Overlord on April 14, 1944, and BC was used as a battlefield weapon in support of the army. Harris always did what he was told, and did it to the best of his ability even when he disagreed, as he always did, with any non-area bombing 'panacea' targeting.

Oil became a priority on September 3, 1944.
But note that despite the RAF's and Harris' claims regarding the great importance of oil targets, Harris had opposed assigning the highest priority to oil targets but acknowledged post-war that the campaign was "a complete success" with the qualifier: "I still do not think that it was reasonable, at that time, to expect that the [oil] campaign would succeed; what the Allied strategists did was to bet on an outsider, and it happened to win the race."

In summary, there was no boss above Harris (except a complaisant Churchill) from February 1942 to February 1944. Harris had no boundaries because Churchill supported Harris' area bombing campaign. Therefore there could be no plan to attack the 'panacea' electrical generation system. In 1944 priorities changed when Eisenhower got control of Harris and Spaatz. By then Harris and BC had lost their credibility, and Churchill had lost his authority to the Americans who increasingly made all the decisions.

Tony