Arthur Harris a man much maligned!

[OneHungLow]

I watched a retrospective on the Lancaster Bomber narrated by David Jason on Channel 4 tonight and the subject of Bomber Harris came up and I was apt to think of what a divisive figure he became. Personally I think he is unfairly maligned for his German city carpet bombing strategy, with its mass civilian casualties, and most specifically for the disastrous Nuremburg raid that resulted in huge RAF crew losses, and, also, the unnecessary Dresden raid as well.

All those points being taken into account it is still too easy to make post hoc accusations so many years after the war, and I think that Arthur Harris should be regarded within the context of the rigors and tribulations of total war at the time, and that he and his command should be recognised and given tribute for their sacrifices, bravery, and the impact that their travails had on the enemy that facilitated the end of the war.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

1. The Nuremberg raid you mention lost 95 aircraft out of 795. I think we need to add some context about how bad air raids could be for the attacker. Proportionately (i.e if the other raids had used 795 aircraft), the US raid on Schweinfurt lost the equivalent of 126 aircraft, the German operation Bodenplatte lost 324, and the Japanese attack during the Battle of the Philippine Sea lost at least 550. Nuremberg was undoubtedly a big error by Harris, but others did a lot worse.
2. Harris was ordered to bomb Dresden by Churchill; who, in turn, had been asked to bomb it by Stalin.

[OneHungLow]

One can't think of the the Lancaster and Arthur Harris and not think of No 617 Squadron. I discovered this interesting article while meandering through the byways of the internet and it notes how the choice of targets was made and how the Sorpe wasn't breached.

https://www.key.aero/article/why-was-so ... n-ruhr-dam

During the six years from 1937-43, plans to destroy the west German dams had focused on persuading hard-pressed decision-makers involved in the fighting of an aerial war against German manufacturing centres that projecting some sort of missile across the surface of a reservoir would be effective. In 1977, Sir Arthur Harris recalled, “I knew, and asserted from the start, that the Sorpe dam was the wrong construction to collapse from the bouncing bomb, though there was a faint chance that it might start a leak, crack the concrete ‘blade’ and then escaping water might do the rest.”

In May 1943, the operation order for No 617 Squadron’s attack contained six targets, the Henne having been dropped from the 1939 list. It highlighted Target X, the Möhne, but emphasised that regarding the Ruhr, “Target Z (Sorpe) is next in importance”. Nineteen aircraft were to be divided into three waves: nine in three sections of three under the squadron commander Wg Cdr Guy Gibson destined for the Möhne and Eder dams and, if possible, the Sorpe. A second wave of five led by Flt Lt Joe McCarthy, Royal Canadian Air Force, would fly separately to the Sorpe. A third back-up wave of five, also flying singly, would take off roughly two hours later, prepared to attack any of the six targets as ordered via wireless while airborne over the continent.

The Sorpe-bound Lancasters — “manned by specially trained crews” — would, after negotiating the North Sea, cross the enemy coast over the Frisian island of Vlieland at the same time as the leading section of the initial wave crossed the Scheldt estuary 120 miles south-south-west. AVM The Hon Ralph Cochrane, Air Officer Commanding No 5 Group and responsible for the operational plan, later explained he hoped “about half” of the combined first two waves of 14 would hit the Sorpe; the dedicated five and three of Gibson’s wave after the Möhne and Eder dams had been breached by an anticipated maximum of six aircraft. Thus, Cochrane, recognising the difficulty of breaching the Sorpe, foresaw it being attacked by more aircraft than any other dam. Bomb-aimer Sgt George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, in McCarthy’s Lancaster, recalled Wallis at the final briefing anticipating, “it would need four to six bombs to crack the Sorpe.”

During the pre-operational briefings on the day of the raid, crews learnt that the Sorpe dam comprised a “watertight cement core” 58m (190ft) high and 600m (1,965ft) long, supported on the water side by a sloping support of “stones and loam” with a stone facing to hold back the contents of the reservoir. The identical 1:2.25 incline on the air side had a non-watertight mixture of “gravel, rubble and stone waste” through which water from minor cracks in the wall would harmlessly drain. The method of attack laid down for this dam would follow neither Burge’s 1938 proposals to crater the crest nor Wallis’s 1942 right-angle approach. Operation order B 976 explained, “The special stores [bombs] are not to be spun for the attack on Target Z. Aircraft are to attack this target from NW to SE parallel to the length of the dam and are to aim [Upkeep] to hit the water just short of the centre point of the dam about 15-20 feet out from the edge of the water […] from the lowest practicable height at a speed of 180mph IAS [indicated air speed]”. Like every aircraft involved in this operation, they would turn to port after their attack or when circling to try again. There was an approximately 300m-high hill to negotiate at both ends of the dam.

The reference to “specially trained crews” to bomb the Sorpe is puzzling: the final allocation of crews was not made until three days before the operation. Two of the Lancasters in the Sorpe-bound five had been destined for the gravity dams in the draft order and reassigned in a reorganisation after two other crews became unavailable through illness.

Crew members of aircraft which attacked the Sorpe on the night were adamant that before briefing on Sunday 16 May they had no inkling of the different method of attack required. In training, all had carried out a right-angled approach to release a weapon to ricochet over water towards a target. Hence the battleship Tirpitz or U-boat pens featured prominently in pre-operational speculation.

‘Johnny’ Johnson, the American McCarthy’s bomb-aimer, expressed utter surprise, “as we had practised like the others with the special bomb sight at Wainfleet and Joe [McCarthy] had flown as second pilot in one of the Lancasters at Reculver”, where practice Upkeep weapons had been released at right-angles to a shore-based mock target. He added that his crew “mainly practised at Uppingham and Colchester”, representing respectively the Möhne and Eder gravity dams. Studying the scale model of the target after the final briefing, Johnson experienced “deep disappointment to realise that all our practices had been worthless… We hadn’t practised this type of attack at all… We had to do it all from scratch.”

Another of the pilots, New Zealander Flt Lt Les Munro agreed: “I don’t remember flying along the crest of the Derwent or any other practice dams… It was not until briefing that we were directed to attack the Sorpe by flying along the crest of the dam”. Plt Off Geoffrey Rice, confirming Munro’s recollection, had been particularly concerned about the need to put the flaps down to “wriggle round the church steeple” and to drop Upkeep “at a relatively low speed without spinning” after diving over a steep hill. A totally unrehearsed procedure, he emphasised.

In the event, only one Lancaster — McCarthy’s — from the detailed second wave would reach the Sorpe. Munro turned back over the IJsselmeer (Zuider Zee) following severe flak damage, Rice aborted the operation after hitting the water short of the IJsselmeer and losing Upkeep, and the Lancasters of Flt Lt Norman Barlow DFC RAAF and Plt Off Vernon Byers RCAF were shot down short of the target. Nor did McCarthy’s sortie go smoothly from the outset. The allocated machine, ED915/AJ-Q, developed an engine fault during pre-flight checks on the hardstand and the crew had rapidly to transfer to the spare. ED825/AJ-T had only reached Scampton that afternoon, was not fitted with the Aldis lamps set for release of Upkeep at 60ft and its compass had to be swung before take-off. So, instead of leading the Sorpe wave, McCarthy became airborne at 22.01, precisely 30 minutes after Rice and 34 minutes from his scheduled take-off.

rew members of aircraft which attacked the Sorpe on the night were adamant that before briefing on Sunday 16 May they had no inkling of the different method of attack required. In training, all had carried out a right-angled approach to release a weapon to ricochet over water towards a target. Hence the battleship Tirpitz or U-boat pens featured prominently in pre-operational speculation.

‘Johnny’ Johnson, the American McCarthy’s bomb-aimer, expressed utter surprise, “as we had practised like the others with the special bomb sight at Wainfleet and Joe [McCarthy] had flown as second pilot in one of the Lancasters at Reculver”, where practice Upkeep weapons had been released at right-angles to a shore-based mock target. He added that his crew “mainly practised at Uppingham and Colchester”, representing respectively the Möhne and Eder gravity dams. Studying the scale model of the target after the final briefing, Johnson experienced “deep disappointment to realise that all our practices had been worthless… We hadn’t practised this type of attack at all… We had to do it all from scratch.”

Another of the pilots, New Zealander Flt Lt Les Munro agreed: “I don’t remember flying along the crest of the Derwent or any other practice dams… It was not until briefing that we were directed to attack the Sorpe by flying along the crest of the dam”. Plt Off Geoffrey Rice, confirming Munro’s recollection, had been particularly concerned about the need to put the flaps down to “wriggle round the church steeple” and to drop Upkeep “at a relatively low speed without spinning” after diving over a steep hill. A totally unrehearsed procedure, he emphasised.

Sorpe.JPG (72.79 KiB) Viewed 1595 times

[OneHungLow]

In the event, only one Lancaster — McCarthy’s — from the detailed second wave would reach the Sorpe. Munro turned back over the IJsselmeer (Zuider Zee) following severe flak damage, Rice aborted the operation after hitting the water short of the IJsselmeer and losing Upkeep, and the Lancasters of Flt Lt Norman Barlow DFC RAAF and Plt Off Vernon Byers RCAF were shot down short of the target. Nor did McCarthy’s sortie go smoothly from the outset. The allocated machine, ED915/AJ-Q, developed an engine fault during pre-flight checks on the hardstand and the crew had rapidly to transfer to the spare. ED825/AJ-T had only reached Scampton that afternoon, was not fitted with the Aldis lamps set for release of Upkeep at 60ft and its compass had to be swung before take-off. So, instead of leading the Sorpe wave, McCarthy became airborne at 22.01, precisely 30 minutes after Rice and 34 minutes from his scheduled take-off.

McCarthy’s aircraft had suffered radio failure shortly after take-off and No 5 Group did not receive Eaton’s signal until the set was fixed on the return leg. So, almost two hours after AJ-T’s strike, there was no indication the Sorpe had been attacked. Four Lancasters of the mobile reserve third wave were therefore directed to it, of which only one — ED918/AJ-F, piloted by Flt Sgt Ken Brown RCAF — arrived. ED865/AJ-S, in the hands of Plt Off Lewis Burpee DFM RCAF, and ED910/AJ-C, with Plt Off Warner ‘Bill’ Ottley DFC in command, were shot down, while ED924/AJ-Y, flown by Flt Sgt Cyril Anderson, returned to base early after a malfunction of the rear turret.

Brown, therefore, became the second aircraft to attack the Sorpe. All third wave captains had been briefed on the afternoon of the raid to attack any of the six targets, not especially the Sorpe. Like them, Brown flew AJ-F via the Scheldt in the wake of Gibson’s nine. Short of the Möhne dam at 02.24, the Lancaster was directed by No 5 Group to the Sorpe. As it neared the target beyond the Möhne, Canadian bomb-aimer Sgt Stefan ‘Steve’ Oancia recalled, “all low-lying areas were covered with a fog or mist leaving only the tops of the hills exposed”. Like McCarthy, Brown had to circle the reservoir until, as the navigator Sgt Dudley Heal recollected, the dam became clearly visible nestling between its two hills. Once more lining up on the crest proved difficult, and this time six circuits were necessary before Oancia released Upkeep unspun from 60ft. He did so “in bright moonlight” at 03.14, aided by the Aldis lamps.

Brown too had cleared the far hill, when his bomb-aimer saw “a large waterspout rise silhouetted against the moon and slowly fall back into the lake”. While the aircraft circled, the crew watched “crumbling” along the top of the dam. Similar to McCarthy’s wireless operator, Sgt Herbert ‘Harry’ Hewstone signalled contact with the dam, but “no obvious breach”. As the flight engineer, Sgt Basil Feneron, observed, also fearing night fighters, “we didn’t hang around too long.”

On 30 September 1943, in Germany the Superintendent of Works of the Ruhr Valley Dams Association (Ruhrtalsperrenverein, or RTV), Dr Max Prüß, produced a ‘secret’ summary of the attacks, which included those on the Sorpe. He confirmed that both McCarthy and Brown had bombed accurately as directed, two craters being located 30m apart and 3m below the water level. He claimed they were “small”, though another German estimate made them “12m deep” and a third “8m in diameter by 4-5m deep”. Prüß maintained that the core of the structure “remained undamaged”, but the wall had been stripped “to a depth of several metres” with 70m of the crown torn away. Walking through the inspection tunnel within the wall, RTV staff could detect no seepage.

Writing in 1970, Speer admitted that “they [the Lancasters] did achieve a direct hit on the centre of the dam. I inspected it [the Sorpe] that same day. Just a few inches lower and a small brook would have transformed into a raging river, which would have swept away the stone and earthen dam”. He contended that, without output from the Möhne and Sorpe dams, other sources in the Ruhr would have provided only “16% of the necessary amount of water”. In a 1949 article, Professor Dr-Ing Otto Kirschmer agreed that, “it was very fortunate for Germany that this earth dam did not collapse at the same time as the breach of the Möhne gravity dam […] as the resulting damage to the Ruhr Valley would have been very grave indeed.”

Astonishingly, speaking in 1979, Speer went even further. If the Sorpe had been breached, he said, “the war would have been finished earlier”. The dams raid had been “spectacular” and had “concerned” the German government, but without destruction of the Sorpe Dam it could not be termed “a very great success.”

The famous official photo of No 617 Squadron Lancaster ED285/AJ-T’s crew at Scampton on a stormy 22 July 1943. In the front row, from left to right, are Sgt George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, bomb-aimer; Flt Sgt Don Maclean, navigator; Flt Lt Joe McCarthy, pilot; and Sgt Leonard Eaton, gunner. In the rear are Sgt Ronald Batson, gunner and Sgt Bill Ratcliffe, engineer. RAF/IWM VIA GETTY

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

One book well worth reading is "Bomber" Harris: His Life and Times by Henry Probert.

[OneHungLow]

One book well worth reading is "Bomber" Harris: His Life and Times by Henry Probert.

Thanks for the suggestion Mrs Ex-Ascot. I shall purchase and read same.

[PHXPhlyer]

[/quote]

Thanks for the suggestion Mrs Ex-Ascot. I shall purchase borrow ebook from my local library and read same.
[/quote]

PP

[OneHungLow]

Thanks for the suggestion Mrs Ex-Ascot. I shall purchase borrow ebook from my local library and read same.
[/quote]

PP
[/quote]

Kudos to the Phoenix library service for such a broad and flexible, electronically, available choice. The local library here is underfunded by the local Tory council and seems to favour Barbara Cartland Bilge and Swoon type literature over anything that might interest a human with more than one neuron to spare.

Just downloaded!

[OneHungLow]

I am reading the Harris book, thanks to Mrs Ex-Ascot's good advice, and it is immediately very interesting, for me at least, particularly with respect to Harris's connection with Rhodesia and South Africa.

Now, however, circumstances beyond Harris’s control were about to take a hand in shaping his future, and before long Rhodesia would be little more than a memory. He was to return there briefly on duty in 1936, and then again in 1945, when, on revisiting Lowdale (chapter 17), he was delighted to find the rusted remains of his old maize sheller, heavily overgrown, in the far corner of a field. 17 In 1959 a letter from Mr Wrightson, an old friend from Umtali days, prompted his recollections of those distant times, when he had helped Wrightson with some mule teams as he was starting up a new farm. Yet such had been the impact of his few years in that wonderful country that for the rest of his life Harris would think of himself primarily as a Rhodesian.

Probert, Henry. Bomber Harris: His Life and Times: The Biography of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, Wartime Chief of Bomber Command (p. 39). Pen & Sword Books. Kindle Edition.

I note that he saw action with the South African Expeditionary in German South West Africa and fought at the battle of the Battle of Trekkopes in 1915 as well as being engaged in putting down the Martitz rebellion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trekkopjes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritz_rebellion

I note that Harris left the UK to head up South African Marine Corporation (Safmarine) between the 1946 to 1953. I also note that he died in 1984 and thus lived to see the end of Rhodesia as he knew it, living his days out in Goring on Thames and was far better off for that I guess than seeing the destruction of all that he had known and liked about Rhodesia.

[OneHungLow]

Interesting to see the caliber of aircraft that Harris inherited and that were still in use right up until Wolld War 2. Aircraft like the Heyford.

The Heyford was the last of the RAF’s biplane heavy bombers. It first flew in June 1930, and 124 of three main marks were delivered from June 1933 up until July 1936, serving with 11 squadrons.

They were well-liked in service, being easy to maintain, sturdy and agile and they could even be looped, as was done at the 1935 Hendon Air Pageant.

At the time of the Munich crisis in 1938, the RAF still had six squadrons of 22.9m (75ft) span, 142 mph Heyfords in Bomber Command; they were brought to readiness with full bomb-loads and armament during the crisis, but never dropped a bomb or fired a shot in anger in their entire careers.

The last front line Heyford did not leave No.166 Squadron at Leconfield in Yorkshire until 2 September 1939 (the day before Britain declared war on Germany), being replaced by Whitleys. This left 40 still serving mainly as bombing and gunnery trainers until August 1940.

The last two airworthy survivors, including K5184, flew on until April/May 1941 as glider tugs on trials with the Hotspur I assault glider. One account suggests K5184 was still airworthy on trials work in August 1944, being under armed guard at RAF Cardington! This was despite the Heyford being officially declared obsolete in July 1941.

Sadly the two derelict wingless specimens lying at Cardington in 1950, perhaps including K5184, did not survive either. Tales of dumped Heyfords buried near RAF Cosford have yet to be proved, despite some explorations.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Thanks Mrs Ex-A
The book is available for free loan worldwide via archive.org (free sign up, no annoying emails)