Bomber Harris is already provoking interest by the media and, to help promote this brilliant biography, Greenhill will be sending out 65,000 colour publicity leaflets. These will be distributed by the RAF Club, the Journal of the RAF Historical Society, the Bomber Command Association, the Aircrew Association, Wingspan magazine, Despatches, Plane Talk and Greenhill. Henry Probert’s research for Bomber Harris included the first full access to Harris’s demi-official files and other records, as well as many private papers, and gives a complete and rounded picture of a man who was a natural leader throughout his life. The new book shows how Harris learnt to rely on his own judgment and initiative in making the best of any situation. Here he describes Harris’s experience on the receiving end of the first strategic bombing campaign in history, trying to intercept German Zeppelins attempting to mount their night-bombing offensive against south-east England: “To start with, as one of his unit’s two Anti-Zeppelin Night Pilots (each of whom was on duty on alternate nights), Harris had to learn to fly and navigate his BE2 at night. Without prior training he - and others - were simply sent up to try to find their way around, their only aids being the lights of London (there was no black-out) and the occasional searchlight. Then, if there were reports of an airship, it was a matter of pure chance whether one spotted it. Inevitably much depended on the weather (not to mention, as always, luck) and here Harris was given an immediate object lesson. On a wet and foggy night all duty pilots were ordered into the air, and as he later wrote to his engine fitter, John Kenchington, ‘I was waiting in 4112 at the end of the flare path to take off after Captain Penn-Gaskell when he crashed and was killed. Colonel Mitchell, the CO, came and stopped me on the grounds that the weather was unfit for flying, which was indeed true!’ Here was the challenge that brought out one of Harris’s great qualities. He knew that if he was to do his job properly he would have to learn from his experience and train himself methodically, and when on 12 April he was sent to command a flight at Sutton’s Farm his first move was to institute night flying practice based on the training pattern he had worked out for himself.” Harris was realistic about the achievements that could be expected with finite resources. In World War II, as Commander-in-Chief Bomber Command, he was eminently capable of weighing up what could be done: “It was his ability to assess the operational practicalities that led Harris to resist the early pressures to go for the one target which he might have been expected to prefer above all others: Berlin. True, the German capital had been targeted several times by his predecessors, Portal and Peirse, but at heavy cost and never with much success other than in terms of injuring German pride. So when Portal told Harris on 28 August 1942 that Churchill was keen to have it attacked Harris spelt out the facts. Berlin was well defended, only a force of at least 500 bombers would be able to inflict serious and impressive damage on a city of such size, and the attacks would need to be sustained - one isolated attack would merely play into the hands of enemy propaganda. With the present size of his force it would be hard to put together more than 300 suitable aircraft and on recent raids of this size losses had been about 10%. Keen as he was to bomb Berlin, he was not prepared to do so unless he could make a good job of it.” A reception will be held at the RAF Club in Piccadilly, London, to launch Bomber Harris: His Life and Times. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 108 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com