Bomber Command reunion dinner

Bomber Command reunion dinner

Arthur Harris speaks about the reduction of frontline soldiers available to the Germany army, due to the redirection of men to anti-aircraft defences and repairs to the German armament industry, as a result of bombing by the RAF and the 8th USAAF. He describes the importance of the cutting of the supply lines to the German army in the Battle of the Ardennes, the mass bombing of the Channel ports in support of allied troops, minelaying operations and targeting of the Mittelland and Dortmund Ems canals, to restrict transportation of prefabricated submarine parts. In his speech he references various sources, including President Eisenhower and the German Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer.

Card giving details of the RAF Bomber Command reunion dinner at Grosvenor House Hotel, London.

1977-04-30

00:47:03 audio recording

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[Excerpt from film played]
Other: Mr Chairman, Sir Ralph, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for Marshall of The Royal Air Force, Mr Arthur T Harris, Baronet, Knight Grand Cross, the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, an officer of the Most Excellent Order the British Empire. Air Force Cross, Doctor of Laws, Commander in chief Bomber Command from 1942 to 1945. Your distinguished guest of honour.
[applause] - 145
AH: Mr Chairman, members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen and not forgetting our two m’lords [laughter] I want to thank you all for the marvellous reception you’ve given to me tonight and if I went much further on that theme I don’t think I would really be able to control my feelings. All I can say is I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. And now I’ll go on from there to tell you that as you probably know I’m old, gaga and garrulous. I’ve got a lot to say which I think you ought to hear unless you’ve heard it before. But I realise that a lot of you came a long way and have got a long way to go. Therefore, if any of you have to get up and leave I can assure you I won’t be either put off or put out. So please take that as what I really mean. I won’t be a bit worried if you have to go because I know why for one reason or another. You know the work our crews did in Bomber Command and whenever I speak of the bomber strategic offensive I couple with it fifty fifty our gallant American friends of the 8th United States Air Force.
[applause]
Whenever I think of what they achieved I realise that you have never really been given adequate recognition of what you all did. As a matter of fact you have on many occasions been the object of the type of author or the type of journalist who knows perfectly well that where he couldn’t find a market for the ordinary tripe he’s capable of they could always tell a good sneer or a good smear.
Here. Here. [applause]
But I get my facts straight from the horse’s mouth. I don’t go digging around at the other end of the animal where those people like themselves.
[applause]
And we have some very fine horses running for us. Ranging from the most senior American commander to the most senior British commanders and oddly enough the most senior German commanders in the last war. You no doubt most of you heard of Albert Speer who was not a dyed in the wool Nazi anyhow to start with. He was a brilliant young architect and he got tied up with Hitler because Hitler liked drawing pictures with his assistance of the magnificent buildings they were going to erect at the end of a victorious war in order to usher in the beginning of the thousand-year Reich which thanks largely to you fellows never materialised. Now, Albert Speer as you know was imprisoned for twenty years. A matter of opinion, I think unjustly for doing his damndest to defend his own country. But when he came out of the prison he wrote two books. He’s been kind enough to send me copies of both those books and he’s inscribed them and as well as the inscriptions he has repeated in the letterpress of the book what he said in those inscriptions. And in his own words he has said that of all the war books he has ever read and he’s read a lot of them the effect of the strategic bombing of Germany was always underestimated. He goes on to say and these are his own words written in his own hand as well as repeated in the book that the strategic bombing of Germany was the greatest lost battle for Germany of the whole of the war. Greater than all their losses in all their retreats from Russia and in the surrender of their armies at Stalingrad. He then goes on to develop the reason why he makes those statements. Starting right back in June ’42 when we had barely started getting going with about an eighth of the size of force we required and the Americans were just beginning to bring their force over here there was a meeting amongst the high ups in Germany as to whether or not they would do this, that and the other thing. And when it came to the question of whether they would develop the atom bomb and don’t forget that before the war the Germans were ahead of everybody in that particular nefarious pursuit. When it came to that question, luckily for us and the world at large Hitler dismissed it. He said he’d have nothing to do with it because it was all Jew science. Well, that was a very lucky decision. But Albert Speer comments in his book apropos of that decision at that very early date. Now, he was glad because he couldn’t possibly have spared the enormous amount of skilled and semi-skilled and unskilled labour for any such ambitious project as the manufacture of the atom bomb from the necessity of using those people to repair the bomb damage to the German armament industry. Well, that was in June ’42 and of course that damage went on crescendo after that. His next statement might be of interest to you was that he reckons as Minister of Armament which he’d then became that by the end of 1943 when we were really getting going with about a quarter of the force we’d asked for and the Americans had really got going with their Mustang escort fighters that we had already deprived the German Armies on the Russian front, by bomb damage to industry of ten thousand of their bigger calibre of guns and six thousand of their heaviest and medium heavy tanks. Well, that was by the subscription towards the war. All done by the strategic bombing. But he goes much further than that and I tell you he made that remark about the bomber strategic offensive being the greatest lost battle of all for Germany and he goes on to explain why. The eight point eight centimetre dual purpose anti-aircraft and anti-tank gun was probably the most useful gun that the Germans possessed and as the armament for instance of the Tiger and Panther tanks it was the only gun, mobile gun capable of competing with the very heavy frontal armament of the Russian tanks. No less than twenty thousand of those guns had to be taken away from the German Army on all their fronts, kept away from them and scattered all over Germany because of the unpredictability of where the strategic bombers were going to strike next. Speer said that that reduced the anti-tank ability of the German forces on all their fronts by half. Well, when you realise that no Army on either side ever advanced a yard without their armoured spearheads first busting a way through the defence you can realise what it meant when the bombers, the strategic bombers cut their anti-tank defences by half. He goes on to say that that requirement of being prepared to defend every German city and every German vital factory against the possibility and unpredicted probability of bombing of any one of those particular places meant the stationing all over Germany of hundreds of thousands of men who should have been in the forces. Field marshal Erhard Milch who commanded the German anti-aircraft defences said he had nine hundred thousand fit, he stressed the word fit men in his anti-aircraft command alone. When he said fit he means they were fit to be up in the front line of the German Armies on the various fronts and not kicking their heels around Germany waiting for the strategic bombers and wondering where they were going to strike next. Well, if you know of any individual Army on the Allied side which throughout the war deprived the German Armies of well over a million men and half their anti-tank abilities I would personally be very obliged for the information.
[applause]
Now, when Erhard Milch said he had nine hundred thousand men you can certainly add to that another two or three hundred thousand fit men who because they were skilled tradesmen had to be retained in Germany and not called up for Army service because their skills were required to keep the Nazi machine ticking over in the repair of bomb damage. I mean men like electricians, plumbers, railway workers, people who ran the oil manufacturing plants and so on and so forth. So there you get that enormous subtraction from German strength both in artillery and in manpower which was caused by the strategic bombers and by nobody else. Now, as I’ve said you don’t seem to have got adequate credit for that anyhow in this country but you certainly get it from the people who were immediately concerned such as Eisenhower, Monty, and the German leaders that I have mentioned. Albert Speer, General Sepp Dietrich etcetera etcetera. What Eisenhower had to say about you was this. Twenty five years after the war the Americans released a lot of stuff from their top secret archives. Amongst them letters exchanged between General Marshall the head of the American Army and General Eisenhower. And in this one particular letter Marshall refers to the fact that the joint chiefs of staff in America had decided that our invasion of Europe was going so well that the time had arrived to take away the direct command of the British bombers and the American bombers from Eisenhower and return it to the heads of their own respective services Sir Charles Portal and General Arnold because those two heads of services had other theatres of war to compete with as well as Europe. In Eisenhower’s reply and I have a copy of his reply he said, ‘Although Marshal expressed his apprehensions that that would result in Eisenhower getting less support from Bomber Command than he’d been used to Eisenhower said he had no such fears. And his actual words were that he had come to regard the British Bomber Command as one of the most effective parts of his entire organisation always seeking and finding and using new ways for their particular type of aircraft to be of assistance in forwarding the progress of the armies on the ground. But that was a pretty good recommendation from that source but we have others. You know Monty. You’ve probably heard of was not by any means given to praising idly. But I have heard Monty say on two occasions, both were vast public banquets given to him once in this city and once in Cape Town. I’ve heard him say that he regarded the British bombers as having been the greatest of all in the destruction of the German, the German Armies as a whole. Now, that was pretty good coming from a soldier and not given to praising others lightly. On the other hand I have seen articles written by one, in particular by a man described as a very well-known military correspondent in which he made two remarks. He said all that Bomber Command ever did was to raise better obstacles in front of the progress of our Armies than the Germans could have done themselves. That was one remark. The other remark he made was that we took no part whatsoever in the Battle of the Ardennes where the Germans as you know nearly broke through the Allied lines. Well, whether you like to believe that or not is a matter for your personal tastes but I would say this that although that fellow said that we had raised these appalling obstacles in front of our own Army I would agree to this extent. That our grade one prized boffin, dear old Barnes Wallis who I’m so sorry is not able to be here tonight but I hope you will send him your best wishes.
[applause]
If he had have come here I would have recommended that after this dinner you would have, should have debagged him for grave dereliction of duty in not designing the one urgent requirement of the Army which I’m sure he could have done with half an hour and the back of an envelope. And that was a bomb that made a self-filling crater but yawned, but yawned deep and wide to embarrass and trap the enemy but automatically filled it up as soon as it sensed the approaching footfall of an Allied soldier.
[laughter – applause]
Now, let’s take the statement that you fellows took no part in the battle of the Ardennes whereas you recall in its last frantic effort by the Germans to break through our lines was just held up on the verge of a breakthrough by what? By the Allied general on the spot. This is history as it’s made firing off at a hitherto unheard of or unexpected secret weapon. Thinking that his position was hopeless the Germans demanded his surrender and he fired off this weapon which was a rather mild four letter word. And that is history as she is wrote. But when you come down to brass tacks and find out what really happened to stop that offensive you’ll find that Hitler as soon as that offensive began to be held up he told Albert Speer to get up to the front and tell the general on the spot, Sepp Dietrick that he was to go on at all costs. At any costs. He was not to stop. Speer relates in great detail his tremendous difficulties in getting up to the front at all. The Ardennes country, a terribly difficult country, almost most impossible even for tracked vehicles to cross country. Only two very comparatively poor and precipitous road routes through it and everybody, especially the French were saying oh the Germans would never come through there. So it was quite lightly defended. And they said that in spite of the fact that this was the third occasion that the Germans had come through since 1870. Well, Speer relates his tremendous difficulties in getting up there at all. He said that sometimes he only made good a mile in an hour struggle and you can bet as Hitler’s representative that he would have been pushed, pulled and carried fire and all around and over and above any obstacles that existed finally arrives at the headquarters of the advanced armoured force on which the whole offensive depended. Their job was to break through the join between the American and the British Canadian Armies, turn sharp to the right northwards and drive the 21st British Canadian Army Group into the sea again for another Dunkirk. And there they were held up solid by that rude American general who made that remark which apparently forced those tough Germans who had fought through all that way regardless of shot and shell rock back on their heels, turnabout, burst into tears and go home to complain to mother about that rude man. That is how history is written.
[applause]
Well, when Speer eventually got to Sepp Dietrich’s headquarters he encountered the one German general who dared even mildly half answer back Hitler. The reason being that he’d started his career as Hitler’s private chauffeur in the early days of Nazidom and he had once very unfortunately for us and everybody saved Hitler from being assassinated. So he could mildly answer back and Speer relates how he said to Sepp Dietrich, ‘The fuehrer’s orders are that you’re to go on at once at all costs. You’re not to stop.’ And the answer he got was not a four letter word even like the one the American general used. But just a statement to the effect, ‘Go on? How can we go on. We have no ammunition left and all our supply lines have been cut by air attack.’ Well, that of course was a fairly potent reason for not going on with an offensive. And who cut his supply lines? You fellows cut it and nobody else. And the reason it was you and nobody else was that in the atrocious weather that existed over those critical days and nights all our bases on the continent were almost permanently shut down. The American bases in East Anglia were shut down to an extent where they couldn’t use their ordinary formation escorted daylight tactics but you fellows, you crews would get off in any muck and murk even if they couldn’t see as one cockney gunner once remarked to me, ‘You couldn’t see your hand in front of your bloody face.’
[laughter – applause]
He said they’d get off under those conditions provided there was somewhere to get down in the morning and luckily where one base went out the other came in and so on and so forth. At the end of the Operations Room in Bomber Command I don’t know if any of you have seen it. Some of you have. But there was a map of the British Isles, a big one. Every base was marked with one little red bulb and one little green bulb showing whether the base was out or in. That map over those critical days and nights was behaving like a Christmas tree in a hurricane but you fellows did that job. And Speer gives a very informative account of what he called his nocturnal discussion with Sepp Dietrich that night. He said, as they sat there listening to the unending roar of heavy four engine bombers overhead in the fog and the crash of bombs behind them and Sepp Dietrich remarked to him, ‘You know, people don’t understand that not even the best troops,’ meaning his own troops of course and they were picked troops, ‘Can stand this mass bombing. One experience of it and they lose all their fighting spirit.’ And Speer’s concluding remarks to that conversation was, ‘What a scene of German military impotence. We’d no defences anywhere.’ Well, you know what happened after that? Monty attacking in the north with the 21st Army Group and some borrowed Americans and Georgie Patton the famous cavalry leader with the American armoured force attacking in the south sent those weeping Bosch back to where they came from and a lot further on as well. Well, now that remark of Sepp Dietrich was not patent to him by a long way. Shortly after our invasion got established in France Romel remarked to his superiors, ‘If you can’t stop the bombing we cannot win and it’s no good going on because all we get by going on is to lose another city every night. It’s make peace or drop the atom bomb if you’ve got it.’ Well, of course, I’ve told you why they hadn’t got it. He was not the only fellow who had made that remark by a long way. As our Armies advanced along the north coast of France they urgently required the use of the Channel Ports such as Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais etcetera. Those ports were manned by twenty thousand German soldiers not only sworn to do or die but under a master who they knew very well would see that they died if they didn’t do. What happened to them? We were asked to mass bomb the defences so as we could get our fellows into those ports. They all surrendered. Twenty thousand troops with a total loss of a hundred and fifty casualties to our Army thanks entirely to the massed bombing. And in the pocket diary of a senior German commander who surrendered at Boulogne were written the words, “Can anybody survive this carpet bombing? Sometimes one is driven to despair when at the mercy of the Royal Air Force without any protection. It seems that all fighting is in vain and all losses are in vain.’ Well, there you are. One after another the German generals said the same thing. Now, when it comes to our side and the American side what Eisenhower I told you thought of us but after the bombing that did so much in the battle of the Ardennes he sent me a thank you message. And I replied thanking him for his message and I said that message had been passed to the crews responsible and I finished my signal by saying, ‘You know by now you can always depend on my lads for anything short of the impossible.’
[recording interrupted]
[unclear] relates how that signal of mine was circulating around Eisenhower’s headquarters and scrolled across my signal in Eisenhower’s handwriting were the words, “God damn it.” You know in the American language that’s all one word. “God damn it. They’ve already achieved the impossible.’ Now there’s a famous military —
[applause]
There is a so-called famous military correspondent saying that Bomber Command did nothing but make infernal nuisance of themselves where our Armies were concerned on the Continent and their commander in chief saying that you fellows achieved the impossible on behalf of the Armies. Who’d you like to believe? Well, I’ve got very little more to say except that quite apart from the fact that those facts I’ve given you indicated beyond doubt agreement with Albert Speer’s statement that the strategic bombing of Germany was the greatest of all their losses in the war. I would say you also scored the biggest air victory of the war because you did what Boom said was the one thing you had to do to defeat an enemy. Drive him on the defensive. And you certainly did that. Over the last year or two of the war the Germans did nothing with their Air Force which had been the major cause of their easy sweep right across Europe, Poland, everywhere else at the beginning of the war and their easy victories. But they did nothing over the last year or two of the war but make fighters and train fighter pilots in a despairing effort which failed in its object to protect the Fatherland from the strategic bombers. And that was a fact. That effect of that was firstly that it put an entire stop to the bombing of this country. It’s quite true they started off with these comic rockets and things. Well, you know the V-2 rockets for instance. The thing that created quite a bit of alarm and despondency. The maximum possible production of those V-2 rockets was a thousand a month. A thousand a month and it took five thousand of them to carry as much explosive as one attack by the strategic American and British bombers. So they are the comparative values. Now, and I’ve told you I think you won certainly one of the major ground battles. What I’ve told you about Albert Speer certainly one of the major air battles in driving them entirely on the defensive. What you’ve never been given any credit for you certainly won the major Naval battles of the European war. Who said so? Speer again. I have written, I have read an account by a so-called expert Naval correspondent who said in the whole of the war Bomber Command only sank one submarine. What does Albert Speer say? He was responsible for the production of submarines and everything else. This simple sentence in one of his books. “We would have kept to our promised output of submarines for Admiral Dӧnitz’s U-boat war if the bombers had not destroyed a third of them in the ports.” Well, who was right? The Navy who wanted to pinch all our Lancasters to go looking for haystacks all over the Atlantic, looking for needles in the haystack or we who said the place to get the submarines was where they came from and not where they went to.
[applause]
But that was only the beginning of the Naval war. The German admiral in charge of the training of U-boat crews in the Baltic wrote a letter in which he said, “Without trained U-boat crews you cannot have a U-boat offensive and I can’t train crews if you can’t keep these damned air laid mines away from my training ground.” Well, they couldn’t keep them away although the major expensive effort by the German Navy during the war was timed to counter the thirty thousand tons of mines that you fellows laid in waters approaching every port that the Germans used from the Baltic through the whole of the North Sea coast and down to the Bay of Biscay. And it would be quite certain that apart from the other wreckage they caused those mines certainly accounted for quite a number of other submarines who disappeared. If my German pronunciation is right, I’m not very good at it, spurlos versank. Disappeared. Sunk without trace. And those mines incidentally coupled with the bombing virtually annihilated the German merchant marine on which they depended for the import of vital ores from Scandinavia for their basic industries. And the Swedes who also were forced to participate in that trade when they realised towards the concluding stages of the war that the German pistol in the back of their neck was no longer a serious threat they withdrew what was left of their merchant marine from the same trade sooner than put up with traditional losses of men and ships. So that’s what you achieved in the Naval War but that was by no means all. Few people realise that at the beginning of the war the Navy, the German Navy had a high seas fleet. They had a high seas fleet consisting of about seventeen absolutely super battle wagons ranging all the way from the big fellas, the Tirpitz and the Bismark, Willie Tait finished off the Tirpitz with his merry boys. The Tirpitz and the Bismark all the way down through the heavy armoured, heavy battle cruisers and the pocket battleships etcetera. Sixteen or seventeen of them. What happened to them? Do you ever hear? No. Well, I’ll tell you now what happened to them. The Navy sank three of them. The Fleet Air Arm sank one. That’s what? Four. I have to add up on my fingers in my old age. The Norwegian shore defences sank one during the invasion of Norway. That’s five isn’t it? The Russian Navy did so much damage to one that it was out of action for nearly the whole of the war. That’s six. Bomber Command kept two out of action by repeated damage so much during the war that they would never really have been available for anything in nature of a fleet action. That’s two more gone. Where have we got to? That’s nine. Bomber Command sank six and really hardly got a thank you for it. So there you are. What happened? There were two left. The Prinz Eugen and the Nuremberg and in the closing stages of the war they were lying outside Copenhagen. Cold meat to the big bombs that Willie Tait and Co were just putting on their machines. And I happened to be out of my office for five minutes, occasionally I had to leave my office for five minutes. My deputy commander had taken a half day off. One of six half days he took off during the entire war either to attend to his own business or have his business attended to him and my Naval liaison officer was an absolutely first-class fellow and was the utmost assistance to us with the mining. When I got back to my office there he was all of a tremble and he said I had to countermand the attack on the Eugen and the Nuremberg. I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Orders from the admiralty.’ Well, of course you couldn’t blame the lad. To a Naval officer an order from the Admiralty is one above a direct command by the almighty. So he’d done it and there he was all of a tremble and by then it was too late to turn the bombers back again. But those two ships were cold meat and the fact that they escaped enabled them rather spitefully to expend most of their ammunition on bombarding around Copenhagen doing quite a lot of damage and killing a lot of our Danish friends and would-be Allies. Well, take into account what we did to the submarines and don’t forget and I’ve forgotten to tell you that when the destruction in the port came absolutely intolerable the Germans had a bright idea. They’d prefabricate their submarines inland. Send a huge section down to the port so there’d only be a few days or weeks being buttoned together rather than many months being built from the keel upwards and destroyed in the process by the bombing. But that didn’t work either because the pre-fabricated sections were too big to go by rail or road. They could only go by canal which was exactly why the strategic bombers, American and British kept on busting up the two canals concerned, the Mitteland Canal and the Dortmund Ems with the result that those prefabrication sections, the deliveries of them to the ports quickly sank from a maximum of a hundred and twenty sections in one month to a few handfuls and to zero. Well, I hope I’ve told you enough about your share in the Air War and the Naval War and in the Land War and nobody can take that away from you because as I say it’s all from the horse’s mouth. From the leading Germans to the leading Americans and the leading British. Even Lord Alanbrooke, the head of the Army who was no friend of the Air Force always making inordinate demands on what was, what we should do for them. He admitted in his private diaries which were published after the war by Sir Arthur Bryant, he referred to the brilliant skill of the bombers and the outstanding assistance they gave to the Army during the invasion. Well, when you consider that our invasion of France consisted to thirty seven divisions large, with a large contingent of green and inexperienced troops and the experience in the first war the soldiers always said, ‘Well, if you want any chance of success in the attack you must be two to one advantage in numbers and material over the enemy.’ There was thirty seven division chased sixty German divisions clean across Europe from the Atlantic to the Elbe totally destroyed the German Army of a half a million men. The 7th Army. Captured tens of thousand of prisoners, all their equipment and beat them down to unconditional surrender at Lüneburg Heath. And that was largely due to two things. The Germans lack of anti-tank defences and the complete not air superiority but absolute air supremacy of our fellows over on the continent thanks to the fact that the bombers had forced the German Air Force to expend nearly all its effort on a failed attempt to defend their own country. Thank you for listening to me. And thank you —
[applause]
I just want to add, I just want to add one word and that is my grateful thanks not only for all you people coming all this distance that you have come in your numbers to give me this marvellous party but also to the committee, especially Ray [unclear] and his merry men who started the whole business. You owe them, I think thanks for what I’m sure you will feel has been a quite jolly meeting of all the old lags once more.
[applause]
Other: My lords, ladies and gentlemen thank you so much. That concludes the speeches. Please stand and allow your distinguished guest of honour and the chairman and the guests of the top table to retire first. Thank you.
[applause]