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

by Richard Overy

Bomber Command achieved negligible results against German targets and invited German retaliation. In early September, Hitler finally responded to British attacks by permitting a campaign against London and other cities that dwarfed anything that could be done in return. Between September 1940 and June 1941 more than 57,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped, principally on British port cities, which absorbed 85 percent of the tonnage. Around 43,000 people were killed in the ten-month campaign, more than ten times as many as were killed by RAF raids on Germany in the same period. It is possible that the Blitz would have been launched anyway, as British air leaders had expected, but it is also possible that without a British bombing campaign over the summer of 1940, British cities might have been spared the full horrors of the winter of 1940–41.