I wasn't kidding when I said that I loved John Terraine's
Smoke and the Fire, a book about the "myths and anti-myths" of the First World War. He asked us to understand the historical actor within his context and understand his difficulties. The fact that he was defending Lord Haig only made it more poignant.
It's always easy to criticise, but there's something about a uniform....
And then there's the bomber barons. I'm only vaguely arguing against straw men when I suggest that our picture is of H. G. Wells published
War in the Air in 1907, and producing
advance lineups at the
CND next day. The government, as usual sensing the public will and steering a (secret) opposite course, immediately appointed a few generals to be in charge of bombing foreigners into extinction (including Germans, provided they could be forcefed melatonin pills). Said generals promptly ran out and began publishing articles on the inevitability of strategic bombing campaigns that would level all civilisation with a single "knockout blow." Twenty-two years later, the Prime Minister scheduled a meeting with the barons:
Prime Minister: "Good Morning!"
Some Honourable
Generals Air Marshals: "Welcome to Ad Astral House!"
Prime Minister: "Ah, thank you, my good men."
Air Marshals: "What can we do for you, sir?"
Prime Minister: "Well, I was giving a speech in the Commons just now, declaring war on Germany, and I suddenly came all over bloodthirsty."
Air Marshals: "Bloodthirsty?"
Visiting Admiral: "Desirous of some effusion of human life."
Prime Minister: "In a nutshell! And I thought to myself, "a little knockout blow will hit the spot," so, I curtailed my activities, sallied forth, and infiltrated your establishment, seeking some block busting!"
Air Marshals: "Come again?"
Prime Minister: "I want to order some bombing."
Air Marshals: (lustily): "Certainly, sir. What would you like?"
Prime Minister: "Well, eh, how about a little precision day bombing."
Air Marshals: "I'm a-fraid we don't do precision, sir. Waiting on calculating bomb sights."
Prime Minister: "Oh, never mind, how are you on daylight area bombing?"
Air Marshals: "Just as soon as we get fighter escorts. We never have that at the end of the week, sir,
we get them fresh on Monday."
Prime Minister: "No matter. Well, stout yeomen, some targetted night bombing, if you please."
Air Marshals: "Ah! It's been on order, sir, for twenty years. Was expecting it this morning."
Prime Minister: "'T's Not my lucky day, is it? Aah, night area bombing?"
Air Marshals: "Sorry, sir."
Prime Minister: "Bombs lobbed in their general direction?"
Air Marshals: "Normally, sir, yes. Today the planes broke down."
Prime Minister: "Leaflet dropping?"
Air Marshals: "Ah! We have leaflet dropping planes, yes."
Prime Minister: "You do! Excellent."
Air Ministers: "Yessir. It's..ah,.....they're a bit lost....
Prime Minister: "Oh, I like my leaflets a bit misplaced."
Air Marshals: "Well,.. they'd be very misplaced, actually, sir."
Prime Minister: "No matter. Fetch hither the bewildered bombers! Mmmwah!"
Air Marshals: I...think they're a bit more bewildered than you'll like, sir."
Prime Minister: "I don't care how bewildered they are. Hand them over with all speed."
Air Marshals: "Oooooooooohhh........!"
Prime Minister: "What now?"
Air Marshals: "The Colonial and India Offices have taken them all."
Prime Minister: "Demonstration flights?"
Air Marshals: "No."
Prime Minister: "You do some operational flying, don't you?"
Air Marshals (brightly): "Of course, sir. It's an air force, sir. We have....
Prime Minister: "No, let me guess. Night flying training?"
Air Marshals: "No, sir."
Prime Minister: "Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me."
Air Marshals: "Yessir?"
Prime Minister: "Have you in fact got any flying here at all?"
Air Marshals: "Yes,sir."
Prime Minister: "Really?"
(pause) Air Marshals: "No. Not really, sir."
Prime Minister: "You haven't."
Air Marshals: "Nosir. Not a plane. We were deliberately wasting your time, sir."
Prime Minister: "Well I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to fire you."
Air Ministers; "Right-o, sir."
The Prime Minister hires a staff of editorial assistants and publishes a history of the Second World War in which it is all the air marshals' fault.
Visiting Admiral: "What a *senseless* waste of human life."
In less Pythonesque terms, the argument is usually put that what with all the dreaming of a bright future, the Air Staff failed to make any actual provision for the future. For Max Hastings, it's an air force that spends all of its money on buildings, neglecting research and development. In John Terraine's
Right of the Line, it's a rather careless comment from Sir Maurice Dean to the effect that the RAF had moved backward from 1919 to 1929. That Dean was a 23 year-old new hire in 1929 might have been more explicitly shared.
But here's something that has already exercised me on this blog: we know what a ten year gap in research and development looks like, because we can compare the RAF of 1949 to that of 1939. When we do so, we appreciate that the planes have changed remarkably. When we drill down for an explanation for that, we find ourselves compiling lists of technological changes with profound implications in every aspect of human life. To say that the RAF should have been as ready for war in 1939 as it was in 1949 is to say that
vinyl couches, hi fis, colour televisions and computers "should" have been on sale in 1939. It's a picture of the world in which technological progress is exogenous to historical development, in which a single tinkerer could have brought steam engines to the Roman Empire. So the stakes are rather higher for historical praxis than the narrow argument suggests.
And then there's
this, which may or may not be accessible right now (I'm having trouble): in the 1938 Air Exercises, a pervasive fog set in on Sunday night, closing airfields widely in the south of England. As a result, a Harrow of 37 Squadron crashed into a tree when it came below the clouds to fix its location. A Battle was lost after spending 5 hours wandering. It crashed while landing in a field, and the air gunner was killed. 3 Demons sent up for night interception work were abandoned by their crews who parachuted to safety. The Exercises were cancelled the next day in driving rain on London. Terraine quotes Air Marshal Ludlow-Hewit's Inspector-General's report, notes 478 RAF forced landings in 1937--8, and goes on to observe that no civil airline would tolerate such statistics, because apparently he'd never heard of the
1938 Christmas Air Mail fiasco. (By the way,
a book I found doing a Google search for a good source on the last.) The Air Marshals had apparently not seriously considered this whole "navigation" thing.
But, following Terraine's advice all those many years ago, one might ask whether it was actually all that easy.