Lindemann instructed a young economist on his staff in the Statistical Section, David Bensusan-Butt, to examine 650 photographs taken from 100 raids between June 2 and July 25, 1941. The report was ready by August 18. The analysis showed that in general only one in five of all bomber aircraft sent on a mission reached within five miles of the assigned target; of those recorded as actually bombing, the proportion was one in four over Germany, one in ten over the Ruhr industrial area, and on moonless or hazy nights one in fifteen.126 Churchill was alarmed by the revelations: “It is an awful
Lindemann instructed a young economist on his staff in the Statistical Section, David Bensusan-Butt, to examine 650 photographs taken from 100 raids between June 2 and July 25, 1941. The report was ready by August 18. The analysis showed that in general only one in five of all bomber aircraft sent on a mission reached within five miles of the assigned target; of those recorded as actually bombing, the proportion was one in four over Germany, one in ten over the Ruhr industrial area, and on moonless or hazy nights one in fifteen.126 Churchill was alarmed by the revelations: “It is an awful thought,” he wrote to Portal, “that perhaps three-quarters of our bombs go astray.”127 The RAF response was, not surprisingly, defensive. Portal pointed out that weather over Germany had been very poor in June and July; that the Butt Report covered only one-tenth of Bomber Command sorties; that inexperienced navigators probably took images too long after the release of the bombs (almost certainly the case, given the difficulty of operating the camera and seeing the bomb burst below); and, above all, that German raids tracked over Britain showed only 24 percent of German bombers reaching the target area. Even Lindemann admitted that conditions had not been ideal for photographic analysis in the summer months.128 Portal was no doubt correct to argue that the Butt Report was subject to substantial methodological flaws, but the RAF’s own operational evidence gathered since 1940 had consistent...
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somehow missed at first the references to the "Butt Report"
