Bomber Commands

Chris Ashworth, Bomber Command 1936-1968 (Yeovil Patrick Stephens, 1995), pp. 21, 205-8. 

Meanwhile, the inability of Bomber Command to do significant damage to oil targets, or transport systems, which for a time became an... 

The commitment of a large part of the British army to the Mediterranean and elsewhere meant that of the thirty-five divisions required for the cross-Channel invasion of France, only sixteen would be British, and that subsequent reinforcements would have to come from the United States. The overriding importance of the cross-Channel operation was such that from April to September 1944 the direction of Bomber Command was transferred to the American Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in North-West Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower. The appointment of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder as deputy supreme commander, with his experience of air co-operation in North Africa, ensured that optimal use was made of Allied air power. 

By October 1949 the Air Staff was more ambitious, arguing that the Allies only hope was to bring about a collapse of the Russian warmaking machine by means of a strategic air offensive, and that Britain s contribution would ensure success. As Simon Ball has noted, the Air Staff s reasoning was connected to awareness of the vulnerability of Bomber Command in the defence programme. About the same time... 

Policymaking was not made any easier by the rapidity of technical change in nuclear warfare, on the one hand, and by the slowness of the development of British delivery systems, on the other. The first examples of Blue Danube, the production model of the British atomic bomb, were delivered to Bomber Command s Armament School in November 1953 to enable RAF personnel to be trained in their storage, service and use. It would have been possible to adapt the ageing Lincoln piston-engined bombers to carry Blue Danube, but the decision was taken to... 

Connelly, Mark, Reaching for the Stars A New History of Bomber Command in World War II, London I. B. Tauris, 2001. 

Richards, Denis, The Hardest Victory RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War, London Hodder and Stoughton, 1994. 

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