Bomber Command (68 page)
Source:
British Bombing Survey Unit report. Figures do not seek to include tonnage dropped and damage achieved by USAAF attacks.
Appendix F: Comparative Allied and German aircraft production, 1939–45
Source:
BBSU Effects of Bombing the German Aircraft Industry
.
* German twin-engine aircraft were mostly bombers pre-1943 and mostly fighters thereafter.
Bibliography and a note on sources
The principal sources of original material for this book have been the AIR files in the Public Record Office, notably those of the Chief of Air Staff, the C-in-C Bomber Command, the Directorate of Bomber Operations and the Secretary of State for Air, although sadly most of the latter’s papers have been lost or destroyed. I have also relied heavily on group and squadron Operational Record Books,
Bomber Command Quarterly Review
, and that stand-by of the wartime Target Intelligence department,
The Bomber’s Baedeker
. At the end of the war, High Wycombe’s Intelligence Section devoted great labour to compiling a remarkable two-volume file entitled ‘A Review of the Work of Int I’, which I can only describe as a handbook for the use of any future planner who might be called upon to organize a strategic bomber offensive. It gives a fascinating flavour of High Wycombe’s staff work, and I am deeply indebted to the officer who loaned me his almost unique copy.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey
is vast, uneven, often unreliable but indispensable. So is the British official history,
The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany
, especially the final volume of appendices, selected documents and statistics. A good study of the strategy of the campaign is Anthony Verrier’s
The Bomber Offensive
, to which I am indebted for many important lines of thought.
Hansard
’s reports of the parliamentary debates on the Royal Air Force both during and immediately after the war make fascinating reading. No novelist writing of the air war from 1939–45 has matched the genius of V. M. Yeates’s
Winged Victory
or Cecil Lewis’s
Sagittarius Rising
on the First World War, but I have included below several works of fiction which either paint a vivid picture of operational bomber flying, or cast interesting light on contemporary wartime attitudes to Bomber Command. I have omitted many relevant volumes on the general conduct of the Second World War, which are invaluable background reading, but deal only peripherally with Bomber Command. Asterisked titles are notable for their exceptional photographs of operational aircraft.
Air Ministry,
Bomber Command
(HMSO 1941)
Bates, H. E.,
The Stories of Flying Officer X
(Cape 1952)
Bekker, Caius,
The Luftwaffe War Diaries
(Macdonald 1964)
Bell, George,
The Church and Humanity
(Longmans 1946)
Bennett, D. C. T.,
Pathfinder
(Muller 1958)
Birkenhead, The Earl of,
The Prof in Two Worlds
(Collins 1961)
Blackett, P. M. S.,
Studies of War
(Oliver & Boyd 1962)
Bond, Brian,
Liddell Hart: A Study of His Military Thought
(Cassell 1977)
Bowyer, Chaz,
The Mosquito at War
* (Ian Allan 1976)
——,
Hampden Special
* (Ian Allan 1975)
Bowyer, Michael,
A History of 2 Group, RAF
(Faber 1974)
——,
Mosquito
(Faber 1967)
Boyle, Andrew,
Trenchard
(Collins 1962)
Braddon, Russell,
Cheshire VC
(Evans 1954)
Cheshire, Leonard,
Bomber Pilot
(Hutchinson 1943)
Churchill, Winston,
The Second World War
(Cassell 1948–54)
Clark, Ronald,
The Rise of the Boffins
(Phoenix 1962
——,
Tizard
(Methuen 1965)
Collier, Basil,
A History of Air Power
(Weidenfeld 1974)
Deighton, Len,
Bomber
(Cape 1970)
——,
Fighter
(Cape 1977)
Divine, David,
The Broken Wing
(Hutchinson 1966)
Frankland, Dr Noble,
The Bombing Offensive against Germany
(Faber 1965)
Galland, Adolf,
The First and the Last
(Methuen 1955)
Garbett and Goulding,
The Lancaster at War
* (Ian Allan 1971)
Gibson, Guy,
Enemy Coast Ahead
(Michael Joseph 1946)
Goebbels, Josef,
The Goebbels Diaries
(Hamish Hamilton 1948)
——,
The Goebbels Diaries: The Last Days
(Secker & Warburg 1978)
Groves, Brigadier P. R. C,
Our Future in the Air
(Harrap 1935)
Hansell, Major-General H. S.,
The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler
(Atlanta 1972)
Harris, Marshal of the RAF Sir Arthur,
Bomber Offensive
(Collins 1947)
Hornsey, Denis,
The Pilot Walked Home
(Collins Blue Circle 1946)
Hyde, Montgomery,
British Air Policy between the Wars
(Heinemann 1976)
Irving, David,
The Destruction of Dresden
(Kimber 1963)
——,
Nicht und Deutschlands Städte Starben
(Schweitzer, Zurich 1963)
——,
The Mare’s Nest
(Kimber 1964)
——,
The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe
(Weidenfeld 1973)
——,
Hitler’s War
(Hodder & Stoughton 1977)
Jones, Geoffrey,
Raider: The Halifax and its Fliers
(Kimber 1978)
Jones, H. A.,
The War in the Air
(Oxford 1937)
Jones, Nevill,
Origins of Strategic Bombing
(Kimber 1973)
Jones, R. V.
Most Secret War
(Hamish Hamilton 1978)
Lawrence, W. J.,
No. 5 Bomber Group RAF
(Faber 1951)
Lee, General Raymond,
The London Observer
(Hutchinson 1972)
Lewin, Ronald,
Ultra at War
(Hutchinson 1978)
Liddell Hart, B. H.,
Paris, or The Future of War
(Kegan Paul 1925)
——,
When Britain Goes to War
(Kegan Paul 1935)
——,
(and see
Bond, Brian)
Lumsden, Alex,
Wellington Special
* (Ian Allan 1974)
Middlebrook, Martin,
The Nuremberg Raid
(Allen Lane 1973)
Milward, Alan,
The German Economy at War
(London University 1965)
——,
War, Economy and Society
(Allen Lane 1975)
Mosley, Leonard,
The Reichsmarschal
(Weidenfeld 1973)
Muirhead, J. T.,
Air Attack on Cities
(Allen & Unwin 1938)
Musgrove, Gordon,
Pathfinder Force
(Macdonald and Janes 1976)
Price, Alfred,
Instruments of Darkness
(Kimber 1967)
Revie, Alasdair,
The Lost Command
(David Bruce & Watson 1971)
Richards, Denis,
Portal of Hungerford
(Heinemann 1978)
Richardson, Frank,
Fighting Spirit
(Leo Cooper 1978)
Roskill, Captain S. W.,
Churchill and the Admirals
(Collins 1977)
Rumpf, Hans,
The Bombing of Germany
(Muller 1963)
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de,
Airman’s Odyssey
(Reynal & Hitchcock, New York 1942
Saundby, Air Marshal Sir Robert,
Air Bombardment
(Chatto and Windus 1961)
Saward, Group-Captain Dudley,
The Bomber’s Eye
(Cassell 1959)
Schmidt, Klaus,
Die Brandnacht
(Reba Verlag, Darmstadt 1964)
Seversky, Major Alexander,
Victory through Air Power
(Hutchinson 1942)
Slessor, Marshal of the RAF Sir John,
The Central Blue
(Cassell 1956
——,
Air Power and Armies
(London 1936)
Snow, Lord,
Science and Government
(Oxford 1961)
Spaight, J. M.,
Air Power and Cities
(Longmans 1930)
——,
Air Power and the Next War
(Bles 1938)
——,
The Sky’s the Limit
(Hodder & Stoughton 1940)
——,
Bombing Vindicated
(Hodder & Stoughton 1944)
Speer, Albert,
Inside the Third Reich
(Weidenfeld 1970)
——,
Spandau: The Secret Diaries
(Collins 1976)
Tedder, Lord,
Air Power in War
(Hodder & Stoughton 1948)