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9 - Bombing Civilians Scientifically: Operational Research in Bomber Command, 1941–1945*

from Part II - A Moving Target: Strategic Bombing and Civilians, 1916–2014

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2018

By
Victor Bissonnette
Edited by
Andrew Barros  and
Martin Thomas
Andrew Barros
Affiliation:
Université du Québec, Montréal
Martin Thomas
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

In the course of the Second World War, objectives of the Allied Air Force's strategic bombing of Germany shifted from warfare related targets to the morale of the enemy civilians. This article shows how important this orientation became through the examination of the reports produced during the conflict by the Operational Research section of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command. These seldom used sources demonstrate that the results of the bombing of German cities were systematically analyzed in order to improve its effectiveness, regardless of civilian loss of lives. The goal was clearly to maximize destruction. The chapter demonstrates this through several examples of Bomber Command’s Operational Research civilian scientists knowingly being involved in this pursuit.
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Chapter
Information
The Civilianization of War
The Changing Civil–Military Divide, 1914–2014
 , pp. 181 - 195
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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