On June 10, 1943, the European air war entered a new phase. It was the official beginning of the Combined Bomber Offensive, code-named Pointblank. This was to be the fulfillment of the pledge made at Casablanca by Roosevelt and Churchill to launch a “round-the-clock” Anglo-American bombing effort to pave the way for the great invasion. In May 1943, at the Trident Conference in Washington, the Combined Chiefs of Staff—made up of the top military leaders in Britain and the United States—had provisionally scheduled the cross-Channel invasion of Hitler’s Fortress Europe for May 1, 1944, and linked
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