[Juha]

To a bit clarifying
Opinions in the Air Staff varied during the war, but it was naturally committed to strategic bombing campaign against Germany, just like Admiralty would have liked more a/c to support naval operations and Army would have liked more air support to land campaigns.

IMHO the Air Staff went for area bombing because,a) Politicians wanted to make Germans to pay their bombing attacks on British cities, b) they found out, well before the Butt Report revealed the truth to the other branches and to politicians, that real effects of bombing were much less than what was hoped for because of the difficulties crews had to find out ordered targets. The first area attack was against Mannheim on 16/17 Dec 40. It was a revenge attack to LW attacks on British cities, especially to those on Coventry and on Southampton.

When new navigational aids and better tactics came into use, inside Air Staff began again discussion on target priorities but Harris, with WC’s backing, opposed diversion from area bombing. What was behind Harris reasoning I don’t know, but he had participated the Air Policing in Iraq in 20s and might well be frustrated during 40-41 frequently changing priorities and decisive new techniques which should have bought the war rapidly to end but failed miserably. Also British knew from LW bombing on British targets that many targets were more resilient against bombing than had been thought and that nervously changing bombing priorities wasn’t the right way to go because knocking out targets was difficult, repairs were many times faster than anticipated, substitutes could be found, less necessary consumption curtained, use of reserves could delay impact of production shortages etc. IMHO when technical progress allowed it, BC should have returned to attacks on certain sectors of Germany’s economy. But what would have been the priority targets in addition of oil would not have been so easy to decide during the war. And Harris stubbornness at least prevented the dissipation of efforts to unsuccessful “war winning targets” even if I personally think that from late 43 onwards BC efforts could have been directed better.

Juha