Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, GCB, OBE, AFC (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press, and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) of RAF Bomber Command (from early 1943 holding the rank of Air Chief Marshal) during the latter half of World War II. In 1942 the Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. Harris was tasked with implementing Churchill's policy and supported the development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively. Harris assisted British Chief of the Air Staff Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal in carrying out the United Kingdom's most devastating attacks against the German infrastructure and population.

Harris emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1910 at the age of 17 and returned to England in 1915 to fight in World War I's European theatre. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, with which he remained until the formation of the Royal Air Force in 1918, and thereafter served with the RAF in India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Palestine and other places during the 1920s and 30s. He took command of No. 5 Group RAF in England at the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and was appointed head of Bomber Command in February 1942. He retained that position for the rest of the war.

Harris' preference for area bombing over precision targeting in the last year of the war remains controversial, partly because by this time many senior Allied air commanders thought it less effective and partly for the large number of civilian casualties and destruction this strategy caused in Continental Europe. While the Butt Report found that in 1940 and 1941, only one in three attacking aircraft got within five miles (eight km) of their target, many technical and training improvements such as H2S radar and the Pathfinder force were implemented later on in the war.

Childhood
Harris was born on 13 April 1892, at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, where his parents were staying while his father, George Steel Travers Harris, was on home leave from the Indian Civil Service. With his father in India most of the time, Harris grew up without a sense of solid roots and belonging; he spent much of his older childhood with the family of a Kent rector, the Reverend C E Graham-Jones, whom he later recalled fondly. Harris was educated at Allhallows School in Devon, while his two older brothers were educated at the more prestigious Sherborne and Eton, respectively; according to biographer Henry Probert, this was because Sherborne and Eton were expensive and "there was not much money left for number three".

Rhodesia
A former Allhallows student, the actor Arthur Chudleigh, often visited the school and gave the boys free tickets to his shows. Harris received such a ticket in 1909, and went to see the play during his summer holidays. The lead character in the show was a Rhodesian farmer who returned to England to wed, but ultimately fell out with his pompous fiancée and married the more practical housemaid instead. The idea of a country where one was judged on ability rather than class was very inspiring to the young, adventurous Harris, who promptly told his father (who had just retired and returned to England) that he intended to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia instead of going back to Allhallows for the new term. Harris's father was disappointed, having had in mind a military or civil service career for his son, but agreed when Harris showed no sign of changing his mind.

In early 1910, Harris senior paid his son's passage on the SS Inanda to Beira in Mozambique, from where he travelled to Umtali in Manicaland by rail. Harris earned his living over the next few years mining, coach-driving and farming. He received a more permanent position in November 1913, when he was taken on by Crofton Townsend, a man from near Cork in Ireland who had moved to Rhodesia and founded Lowdale Farm near Mazoe in Mashonaland in 1903. Harris quickly grained his employer's trust, and was made farm manager at Lowdale when Townsend went to visit England for a year in early 1914. Having acquired the skills necessary to ranch successfully in Rhodesia, Harris decided that he would start his own farm in the country as soon as Townsend returned. According to Probert, Harris by now regarded himself "primarily as a Rhodesian", a self-identification he would retain for the rest of his life.

First World War
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Harris did not learn of it for nearly a month, being out in the bush at the time. Despite his previous reluctance to follow the path his father had had in mind for him in the army, and his desire to set up his own ranch in Rhodesia, Harris felt patriotically compelled to join the war effort. He quickly attempted to join the 1st Rhodesia Regiment, which had been raised by the British South Africa Company administration to help put down the Maritz Rebellion in South Africa, but he found that only two places were available; that of a machine-gunner or that of a bugler. Having learnt to bugle at Allhallows, he successfully applied for the bugler slot and was sworn in on 20 October 1914.

The 1st Rhodesia Regiment briefly garrisoned Bloemfontein, then served alongside the South African forces in South-West Africa during the first half of 1915. The campaign made a strong impression on Harris, particularly the long desert marches—some three decades later, he wrote that "to this day I never walk a step if I can get any sort of vehicle to carry me". South-West Africa also provided Harris with his first experience of aerial bombing: the sole German aircraft in South-West Africa attempted to drop artillery shells on his unit, but failed to do any damage.

When the South-West African Campaign ended in July 1915, the 1st Rhodesia Regiment was withdrawn to Cape Town, where it was disbanded; Harris was formally discharged on 31 July. He felt initially that he had done his part for the Empire, and went back to Rhodesia to resume work at Lowdale, but he and many of his former comrades soon reconsidered when it became clear that the war in Europe was going to last much longer than they had expected. They were reluctant to join the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment, which was being raised to serve in East Africa, perceiving the "bush whacking" of the war's African theatre as inferior to the "real war" in Europe. Harris sailed for England from Beira at the Company administration's expense in August, a member of a 300-man party of white Southern Rhodesian war volunteers. He arrived in October 1915, moved in with his parents in London and, after unsuccessfully attempting to find spaces in first the cavalry, then the Royal Artillery, joined the Royal Flying Corps.

Harris served with distinction on the home front and in France during 1917 as a flight commander and ultimately CO of No. 45 Squadron, flying the Sopwith 1½ Strutter and Sopwith Camel. Before he returned to Britain to command No. 44 Squadron on Home Defence duties, Harris claimed five enemy aircraft destroyed and was awarded the Air Force Cross (AFC). Intending to return to Rhodesia one day, Harris wore a "" shoulder flash on his uniform. He finished the war a major.

Inter-war years
Harris remained in the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF) following World War I, choosing an air force career over a return to Rhodesia because he and his first wife Barbara had just had their first child, and he did not think Barbara would enjoy being a Rhodesian farmer's wife. In April 1920 Squadron Leader Harris was jointly appointed station commander of RAF Digby and commander of No. 3 Flying Training School. He later served in different functions in India, Mesopotamia and Persia. He said of his service in India that he first got involved in bombing in the usual annual North West Frontier tribesmen trouble. In Mesopotamia he commanded a Vickers Vernon squadron. "We cut a hole in the nose and rigged up our own bomb racks and I turned those machines into the heaviest and best bombers in the command". Harris also contributed at this time to the development of bombing using delay-action bombs, which were then applied to keep down uprisings of the Mesopotamian peoples fighting against British occupation. With regard to this period, Harris is recorded as having remarked "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand."

During the 1920s Harris occasionally doubted his decision to remain with the RAF rather than going back to Rhodesia; he submitted his resignation in May 1922, but was persuaded to stay. Two years later he was posted to the UK to command the first post-war heavy bomber squadron (No. 58). His commander in Iraq had been the future Chief of the Air Staff Sir John Salmond, who was also one of his commanders back in Britain. Together they developed "night training for night operations".

From 1927 to 1929, Harris attended the Army Staff College at Camberley, Surrey where he discovered that at the college the army kept 200 horses for the officers' fox hunting. At a time when all services were very short of equipment, the army high command&mdash;which was still dominated by cavalry officers&mdash;clearly had a different set of priorities from technocrats like Harris, who quipped that the army commanders would only be happy with the tank if someone developed one that "ate hay and there after made noises like a horse". He also had a low opinion of the Navy; he commented that there were three things which should never be allowed on a well-run yacht "a wheel-barrow, an umbrella and a naval officer". Bernard Montgomery was one of the few army officers he met while at the college whom he liked; possibly because they shared certain underlying personality characteristics.

His next command was of a flying-boat squadron, where he continued to develop night flying techniques. From 1934 to 1937 he was the Deputy Director of Plans in the Air Ministry. He was posted to the Middle East Command in Egypt, as a senior Air Staff Officer. In 1936 Harris commented on the Palestinian Arab revolt that "one 250 lb. or 500 lb. bomb in each village that speaks out of turn" would satisfactorily solve the problem. The same year he visited Southern Rhodesia in a professional capacity to help the Southern Rhodesian government set up its own air force.

In 1937 Harris was promoted to Air Commodore and in 1938 he was put in command of No. 4 (Bomber) Group. After a purchasing mission to the USA he was posted to Palestine and Trans-Jordan, and as an air vice-marshal in 1939 he was Officer Commanding the RAF contingent in that area.

Harris had married Therese Hearne: their daughter Jacqueline Jill, who married the Hon. Nicholas Assheton, was born in 1939.

Second World War
Harris returned to Britain in September 1939 to take command of No. 5 Group. In November 1940 he was made Deputy Chief of the Air Staff and then in 1941 he was promoted to Air Marshal before being appointed Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of Bomber Command in February 1942. At the time, Bomber Command was making a negligible contribution to the war effort because the British had simply not explored the concept of offensive bombing, and had in no way prepared for it. Consequently its aircraft&mdash;principally the Fairey Battle light bomber, Handley Page Hampden, Vickers Wellington, and Armstrong Whitworth Whitley medium bombers&mdash;were deficient, and crews lacked sufficient skill and experience to navigate long distances, drop bombs accurately, and return to home airfields.

Harris immediately set about rectifying deficiencies with great energy; he had studied new theories of offensive bombing developed by Germany in Spain and in the early years of World War II, and was convinced of the effectiveness of a concentrated aggressive approach. He then re-evaluated Bomber Command's tactics and set about improving standards of instruction and training. His enterprise incorporated the efficient deployment of the Short Stirling, the introduction of the next powerful four-engined heavy bombers including the Handley Page Halifax and Avro Lancaster, and later the twin-engined de Havilland Mosquito light bomber. Also during this period, the roles of less-modern bombers such as the Wellington, Bristol Blenheim and Beaufort were reappraised.

Professor Frederick Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell), appointed the British government's leading scientific adviser with a seat in the Cabinet by his friend Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in 1942 presented a seminal paper to Cabinet advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign. It was accepted by Cabinet and Harris was directed to carry out the task (Area bombing directive). It became an important part of the total war waged against Germany.

Lord Cherwell's paper advocated attacking major industrial centres in order to destroy as many homes and houses as possible (dehousing). Working class housing areas were to be targeted because they had a higher density and firestorms were more likely. This would displace the German workforce and disrupt and reduce their ability to work. Lindemann's calculations showed that Bomber Command would be able to destroy the majority of German houses located in cities quite quickly; these calculations were based on the Luftwaffe's bombing campaign over Britain, but Lindemann had skewed the calculations to hugely overstate the effects. The plan was highly controversial even before it started, but the Cabinet thought bombing was the only option available to attack Germany directly (a major invasion of the continent was years away) and the Soviets were demanding that the Western Allies do something to relieve the pressure on the Eastern Front.

Harris said at the start of the bombing campaign that he was unleashing a whirlwind on Germany.

At first the effects were limited because of the small numbers of aircraft used and the lack of navigational aids, resulting in scattered, inaccurate bombing. As production of better aircraft and electronic aids increased, Harris pressed for raids on a much larger scale, each to use 1,000 aeroplanes. In Operation Millennium Harris launched the first RAF "thousand bomber raid" against Cologne (Köln) on the night of 30 May/31 May 1942. This operation included the first use of a bomber stream, which was a tactical innovation designed to overwhelm the German night-fighters of the Kammhuber Line.

Harris was just one of an influential group of high-ranking Allied air commanders who continued to believe that massive and sustained area bombing alone would force Germany to surrender. On a number of occasions he wrote to his superiors claiming the war would be over in a matter of months, first in August 1943 following the tremendous success of the Battle of Hamburg (codenamed Operation Gomorrah), and then again in January 1944. Winston Churchill continued to regard the area bombing strategy with distaste, and official public statements still maintained that Bomber Command was attacking only specific industrial and economic targets, with any civilian casualties or property damage being unintentional but unavoidable. In October 1943, emboldened by his success in Hamburg and increasingly irritated with Churchill's hesitance to endorse his tactics wholeheartedly, Harris urged the government to be honest with the public regarding the purpose of the bombing campaign:

In November 1943 Bomber Command began what became known as the Battle of Berlin: a series of massive raids on Berlin that lasted until March 1944. Harris sought to duplicate the victory at Hamburg, but Berlin proved to be a far more difficult nut to crack. Although severe general damage was inflicted, the city was much better prepared than Hamburg, and no firestorm was ever ignited. Anti-aircraft defences were also extremely effective and bomber losses were high; during this time the British lost 1,047 bombers, with a further 1,682 damaged, culminating in the disastrous raid on Nuremberg on 30 March 1944, when 94 bombers were shot down and 71 damaged, out of 795 aircraft.

After the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, visited Harris in May 1944, Southern Rhodesia asked the UK government to appoint Harris as Governor at the end of the year, Huggins being keen to install a self-identifying Rhodesian in that office rather than a high-ranking British figure. Though keen to take the position, Harris felt he could not leave the war at this key stage, an opinion shared by Churchill, who turned down the Southern Rhodesian request.

With the leadup to the D-Day invasions in 1944, Harris was ordered to switch targets for the French railway network, a switch he protested because he felt it compromised the continuing pressure on German industry and it was using Bomber Command for a purpose it was not designed or suited for. By September the Allied forces were well inland; at the Quebec Conference it was agreed that the Chief of the Air Staff, Royal Air Force (Portal), and the Commanding General, U.S. Army Air Forces (Arnold), should exercise control of all strategic bomber forces in Europe. Harris received a new directive to ensure continuation of a broad strategic bombing programme as well as adequate bomber support for General Eisenhower's ground operations. The over-all mission of the strategic air forces remained "the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the direct support of Land and Naval forces". The several months of rest and refit had been useful to Bomber Command, and they were now able to put up well over 1,000 aircraft per raid.

After D-Day (6 June 1944), with the resumption of the strategic bomber campaign over Germany, Harris remained wedded to area bombardment. Historian Frederick Taylor argues that, because Harris lacked the necessary security clearance to know about Ultra, he had been given some information gleaned from Enigma, but not informed where it had come from. According to Taylor, this directly affected Harris's attitude concerning the effectiveness of the post-D-Day 1944 directives (orders) to target oil installations, as Harris did not know the Allied High Command was using high-level German sources to assess exactly how much Allied operations were impairing the German war effort. As a consequence Harris tended to see the directives to bomb specific oil and munitions targets as a high level command "panacea" (his word), and a distraction from the real task of making the rubble bounce in every large German city.

Historian Alfred C. Mierzejewski argues that both area bombing and attacks against fuel plants were ineffective against Germany's coal- and rail-based economy and that the bombing campaign only took a decisive turn in late 1944 when the allies switched to targeting railway-marshalling yards for the coal gateways of the Ruhr. His summation is rejected by Sebastian Cox head of the Air Historical Branch (AHB). Cox notes that half of the oil was produced by Benzol plants located in the Ruhr. These areas were the primary target of Bomber Command in 1943 and the autumn of 1944. Cox concludes the targets were highly vulnerable to area attacks and suffered accordingly. The American official history notes that Harris was ordered to cease attacks on oil in November 1944, as the bombing had been so effective none of the synthetic plants were operating effectively. The American history also includes information from Albert Speer, in which he points out Bomber Command's night attacks were the most effective.

Adolf Galland argued that Germany would have fallen earlier if fuel production had been targeted earlier. Not only were frontline Luftwaffe squadrons directly affected by fuel shortages but the quality of training of new pilots was affected by the restriction in flying hours caused by the lack of fuel.

In February 1945, Harris wrote "I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier". In his memoirs he writes, "In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method".

The most controversial raid of the war took place in the late evening of 13 February 1945. The bombing of Dresden by the RAF and USAAF resulting in a lethal firestorm which killed several tens of thousands of civilians. Raids such as that on Pforzheim late in the war as Germany was falling have been criticised for causing high civilian casualties for little apparent military value. The culmination of Bomber Command's offensive occurred in March 1945 when the RAF dropped the highest monthly weight of ordnance in the entire war. The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21/22 April, just before the Soviets entered the city centre. After that, most of the rest of the attacks made by the RAF were tactical missions. The last major strategic raid was the destruction of the oil refinery in Tønsberg in southern Norway by 107 Lancasters on the night of 25/26 April.

Postwar
Within the postwar British government there was some disquiet about the level of destruction that had been created by the area-bombing of German cities towards the end of the war. However, Harris was made Marshal of the Royal Air Force in 1946, and was also made GCB until he retired on 15 September 1946 and wrote his story of Bomber Command's achievements in Bomber Offensive. In this book he wrote, concerning Dresden, "I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself." Bomber Command's crews were denied a separate campaign medal (despite being eligible for the Air Crew Europe Star and France and Germany Star) and, in protest at this establishment snub to his men, Harris refused a peerage in 1946; he was the sole commander-in-chief not to subsequently become a peer.

Disappointed to have missed the opportunity to return to Southern Rhodesia as Governor because of the war, Harris wrote to Huggins in June 1945 that he would like to be considered if the office were ever open again, and that he would be interested in other Southern Rhodesian government appointments relating to aviation or perhaps entering politics there. "If I have deserved anything of my country—Rhodesia—it would delight me to have opportunity to serve her further," he wrote. Huggins replied that he was sympathetic, but that none of these ideas was practical: Harris would be too old by the time a new Governor was needed; it might take years for Harris to enter Southern Rhodesian politics as he would first need to meet residency requirements, then cultivate support in a constituency; and Huggins felt he could not make promises about aviation posts with a general election coming up the following year. Harris finally dropped his dream of a return to Rhodesia, deeming it unworkable, and in 1948 moved instead to South Africa, where he managed the South African Marine Corporation (Safmarine) from 1946 to 1953.

In 1953 Churchill, now Prime Minister again, insisted that Harris accept a baronetcy and he became Baronet. In the same year he returned to the UK, and lived his remaining years in the Ferry House in Goring-on-Thames, located directly adjacent to the River Thames.

In 1974 Harris appeared in the acclaimed documentary series The World At War produced by Thames Television and shown on ITV. In the 12th episode entitled "Whirlwind: Bombing Germany (September 1939–April 1944)", narrated by Laurence Olivier, Harris discusses at length the area-bombing strategy that he had developed while AOC-in-C of Bomber Command.

Legacy
Harris died on 5 April 1984, eight days before his 92nd birthday, at his home in Goring. His only son died without an heir in 1996, at which date the Baronetcy of Harris, of Chipping Wycombe became extinct.

In 1989, five years after Harris's death, a one-off feature-length drama about Harris's tenure as AOC-in-C of Bomber Command was broadcast under the title "Bomber Harris" on BBC Television, with John Thaw in the title role.

Despite protests from Germany as well as some in Britain, the Bomber Harris Trust (an RAF veterans' organisation formed to defend the good name of their commander) erected a statue of him outside the RAF Church of St. Clement Danes, London in 1992. It was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother who looked surprised when she was jeered by protesters, one of whom shouted "Harris was a war criminal". The line on the statue reads "The Nation owes them all an immense debt." The statue had to be kept under 24-hour guard for a period of months as it was often vandalised by protesters and iconoclasts.

Phrases like "Bomber-Harris, do it again!" and "Bomber-Harris Superstar - Thanks from the red Antifa" are popular slogans among the so-called "Anti-Germans" which is a radical left-wing political movement in Germany and Austria. The use of these slogans regularly causes outrage in German mainstream media.

Awards and decorations

 * Baronet - 1 January 1953 (Conferred 13 February 1953)
 * Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath - 14 June 1945 (KCB - 11 June 1942, CB - 11 July 1940)
 * Officer of the Order of the British Empire - 3 June 1927
 * Air Force Cross - 2 November 1918
 * Mentioned in Despatches - 15 September 1939, 1 January 1941
 * LL.D
 * Order of Suvorov 1st Class (USSR) - 29 February 1944
 * Legion of Merit, Chief Commander (United States) - 30 January 1945
 * Polonia Restituta 1st Class (Poland) - 12 June 1945
 * Grand Cross of the National Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil) - 13 November 1945
 * Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour (France) - 1945
 * Croix de Guerre with Palms (France) - 1945
 * Distinguished Service Medal