The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

It was unfortunate for the French people that heavy bombers were seen as the necessary weapon for a number of very different strategic purposes for which they were far from ideal.38 From 1942 onward, bombers were used to try to destroy the German submarine presence on the French west coast by bombing the almost indestructible submarine pens and the surrounding port areas; in 1943–44 bombers were directed at small V-weapons sites that were difficult to find and to damage; in the months running up to the invasion of Normandy, the Transportation Plan similarly directed all Allied bomber forces (including the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy) against small rail targets, many of them embedded in urban areas; finally, the months of campaigning across France in the summer of 1944 led to regular calls from the ground forces for heavy bomber support, producing some of the most devastating raids of the war against French towns defended by German troops. The result was to strain popular French support for the bombing of the enemy in their midst.39 Although anti-German sentiment was not reversed by the air campaign, there was a widespread belief that a less damaging strategy could have been found to achieve the same end.