During World War II the Lancaster was the most successful bomber used by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force. At an Air Staff meeting held on 18 January 1938 the CAS pointed out that the changes recommended in Scheme K meant that the RAF would have only nine weeks’ reserves, and if war came the full potential of the aircraft industry would not have time to develop. Until June, 1943, VIII Bomber Command could not mount missions of more than 100 aircraft and consequently limited targets to those in Occupied France and the Low Countries, and to shallow penetrations of Germany. ( Log Out /  If a bomber crew was assigned a particular aircraft, they were sometimes able to choose the name and artwork and this enabled a powerful bond to develop between the men and the machine. As well as aircraft and artifacts, the museum displays an aviation art collection related to Bomber Command and the BCATP. Although it was known that modern German fighters and bombers were operating on the Nationalist side in Spain, the full extent of their commitment to this conflict was not realized; nor was the fact that regular Luftwaffe air and ground crews were being rotated for Spanish duty under conditions of great secrecy. By August the following year eight squadrons of Wellingtons were operational with No. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! The Hampden’s main disadvantage, in fact, appeared to be that the crew’s positions in the three-foot-wide fuselage were far too cramped to permit any degree of comfort, and this resulted in excessive crew fatigue. A far more promising aircraft was the twin-engined Bristol Blenheim medium bomber, which had its origin in the Bristol 142 ‘Britain First’, ordered as a transport by Lord Rothermere and later presented to the Air Ministry. There remained, therefore, only one Air Plan which Bomber Command might put into action with any hope of success: W.A.5, an attack on Germany’s war industry. Scheme F was of particular importance because it laid considerable emphasis on the provision of reserves; front-line squadrons were to have a minimum of seventy-five per cent reserves available for immediate use, and there was to be a further reserve of 150 per cent available to maintain the RAF at full combat strength in the event of war. Fully illustrated with some 300 photographs, the RAF Bomber Command Operations Manual gives a compelling insight into the workings of one of the most powerful instruments of 20th century warfare. Even then, the Air Staff and the French General Staff could not reach a firm agreement on how best to use the British bombers in the effort to stem a German drive westwards. The Air Staff, for their part, now realized that Expansion Scheme A was inadequate in the light of what was known of Germany’s plans; they were, however, not in favour of a crash expansion programme, as the equipment available to implement such a scheme at that time was for the most part obsolescent. For information about how to add references, see Template:Citation. Meanwhile, considerable disruption of the enemy’s war effort could be achieved by attacks on the canal system which connected the Ruhr with northern Germany. The aircraft could carry up to 3500 pounds of bombs and was armed with three Lewis machine-guns. The means by which this information was acquired had been extensively reviewed in 1936, when an Industrial Intelligence Centre had been set up under the direction of Major D. F. Morton. RAF Bomber Command was merged into RAF Strike Command in 1968. This would gain vital time and allow a war of attrition to develop, in which the Royal Navy could exploit its command of the sea to the full by imposing a blockade on the enemy. To carry out a full investigation into the growth of German air power, the Cabinet appointed a special committee under the initial chairmanship of Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister. The increase was to be made possible by drastically cutting down the number of machines in reserve and channelling them into first-line units. It is also a matter of history that if France – whose army was still numerically superior and in some respects better equipped than the Wehrmacht – had taken the initiative and invaded Germany in 1938, her chances of success would have been more than favourable. The first production machines were completed at Bristol’s Filton factory towards the end of that year and went into service with No. Production of the Blenheim Mk. No. New tactics involving precise timing calculated to swamp defences plus the creation of a marker force, the Pathfinders, were formulated. In June 1937, No. Six years earlier, Britain’s failure to maintain strong offensive forces had helped to weaken her power to negotiate at the Geneva Conference, and now history repeated itself – with infinitely more serious consequences for Europe and the world – as Britain, France and Germany haggled over the Sudetenland. In March 1935 the Luftwaffe possessed twenty-two squadrons and about 500 aircraft, 200 of which were operational first-line types. 38 Squadron detached one of its Hendon flights to Marham; this formed the nucleus of No. After six weeks of further attempts at precision bombing, LeMay acceded to command pressures for area bombing and switched in March to mass firebombing attacks by night from low level. An order for 150 Blenheim Is was placed in August 1935 and the prototype flew ten months later, on 25 June 1936. It was the main instrument of destruction used against Japan. Two aircraft, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and the B-24 Liberator, were the mainstays of this command. To reconsider the whole area of defence, a Defence Plans (Policy) sub-committee was set up and Sir Thomas Inskip appointed to the new post of Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. This type of structure resulted in a weight saving of about forty per cent, giving the aircraft a satisfactory performance on the power of a single Bristol Pegasus engine – an unusual layout for a machine designed as a long-range medium bomber. Accordingly, Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt was ordered to take no action to execute W.A.5 in the event of war; instead, Bomber Command was to confine its initial activities to carrying out W.A.1 and W.A.4 – both of which had already been assessed as unsatisfactory, as we have seen. 114 Squadron at Wyton early in 1937. The Command's raids had tied up huge amounts of Germany's defensive resources - which might have been diverted to the Eastern and Western Fronts and elsewhere - and the physical destruction of war material was considerable. As far as the RAF was concerned, only one hundred Hurricanes and a mere six Spitfires had as yet reached Fighter Command’s first-line squadrons, and although forty-two Bomber Command squadrons were mobilized thirty of them were equipped with light and medium bombers of insufficient range to reach German targets from British bases. The information collated by the Industrial Intelligence Centre, and that from other intelligence sources, was turned over to the Air Ministry; there it was co-ordinated by the Deputy Director of Plans, Group Captain John Slessor, whose staff was responsible for arranging selected targets in order of priority for Bomber Command. This was to be made up of twenty heavy-bomber squadrons, forty-eight medium bomber, two torpedo-bomber, thirty fighter and twenty-four reconnaissance, with an additional thirty-seven squadrons based overseas. This fact, however, and the fact that – if war had come in 1938 – the Luftwaffe would have been incapable of taking reprisals for any strategic RAF raids on Germany, were totally eclipsed by the Allies’ frantic desire to buy time almost at any cost.

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