The Science of Bombing - Operational Research in RAF Bomber Command

Dropping a bomb from a moving aircraft at night, through cloud, while being shot at, onto a target hundreds of miles from home is not merely a matter of flying above Germany and releasing it with conviction. It is a problem involving navigation, weather, altitude, speed, wind, machinery, enemy defences and the awkward tendency of gravity to provide accurate results only when supplied with accurate information. In The Science of Bombing , Randall T. Wakelam examines the Operational Research Section of RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War. Staffed largely by civilian scientists?the celebrated ?boffins??the section studied what actually happened during bombing operations and compared it with what commanders believed was happening. The distinction was sometimes large enough to contain several German cities. At the beginning of the war, British strategic bombing theory rested upon considerable confidence in aircraft reaching and striking their assigned targets. Operational evidence was less obliging. Bombers became lost, crews misidentified towns, weather obscured aiming points and navigation over a blacked-out continent proved exceptionally difficult. Reports might record a target as attacked when the bombs had landed many miles away, allowing the paperwork to achieve a precision unavailable to the aircraft. The devastating Butt Report of 1941 examined bombing photographs and demonstrated how few crews were reaching the vicinity of their intended targets. The findings were deeply uncomfortable, but discomfort is one of the more useful products of accurate statistics. Bomber Command could continue trusting optimistic crew reports or begin asking scientists why a large and costly air offensive was distributing explosives across the European countryside. In September 1941, Bomber Command established its own Operational Research Section. Its scientists collected evidence from operations, analysed losses, examined bombing photographs and studied every stage between planning a raid and discovering where the bombs had gone. Their task was to replace assumption with measurement, a process rarely welcomed by any organisation that has already circulated the assumption. Wakelam follows the development of this new discipline as the ORS created reliable methods of gathering and interpreting operational data. The researchers investigated navigation, target identification, tactics, aircraft performance, bombing accuracy and vulnerability to enemy defences. They asked simple but dangerous questions: Were crews finding the target? Which routes reduced losses? Did a particular device actually help? And was senior command prepared to accept an answer containing the word ?no?? The scientists worked closely with aircrew and headquarters staff, turning combat experience into evidence that could influence future operations. They studied returning aircraft, photographs, damage reports and casualty figures, looking for patterns invisible within individual missions. A pilot might know why his particular aircraft had survived; the researchers wanted to know why forty similar aircraft had not. Their work helped Bomber Command understand and employ new navigational and target-finding systems. Electronic aids such as Gee, Oboe and H2S offered methods of locating targets beyond visual range, while specialist Pathfinder crews marked aiming points for the main force. Technology did not abolish error, naturally, but allowed error to become smaller, measurable and accompanied by a technical manual. Operational research also contributed to the development of bomber streams, countermeasures and defensive tactics. By concentrating aircraft through German airspace, Bomber Command could overwhelm parts of the enemy?s night-fighter control system, although concentration introduced its own risks. Every improvement altered the problem, and the enemy, displaying poor scientific sportsmanship, adapted in response. The relationship between scientists and commanders.…