Bomber Harris was said to have liked destruction for its own sake. In his opinion, Germany entered the war with delusions they could bomb everyone, and no one would bomb them. They sowed the wind, now they would reap the whirlwind. The RAF gave them a heavy dose of their own medicine.
Bomber Command flew thirty-five missions from November 1943 to March 1944. 1,047 bombers failed to return from 35 raids. Harris felt the destruction of Berlin would cost Germany the war, but it didn’t quite work out like that.
The book covers far more than those four months. Much is devoted to the Lancaster bombers. Toward the end, there’s a lot about the Mosquitoes. I read an advance copy as an eBook; maybe that’s why the punctuation was atrocious. Without new paragraphs or headings, I’d suddenly be reading something else. “Wait a minute. What? Who?” Mostly this is about the RAF crewmen, but there’s the occasional German. It gets tedious as you read lists: On such a raid, seven bombers crashed. T for Tommy was skippered by Ralph Smith. All seven crewmen were killed. Smith left a widow Mary Smith of Oxford.
Skimming helped, but you have to read carefully to catch the little nuggets of personal glimpses or humorous anecdotes. A senior visiting officer ordered his driver to turn around so he could berate a group of airmen for not saluting him. He opened his door and heard, “Thank you very much for the lift, sir,” as they all piled in with him.
Overall, lots of interesting details for Americans who know little about the RAF’s activities.
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2020
Top reviews from other countries
- Danny BoyReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 30, 2023
Aircrew Accounts of Berlin
This has been a hard book to read. It’s made up almost entirely of aircrew recollections of their experiences during the Battle of Berlin but let down by poor editing and a lack of explanation to give context.Danny BoyAircrew Accounts of Berlin
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 30, 2023
To give an example of poor editing (in my opinion). As the recollections have been gathered and put into order of the raids the footnotes haven’t kept up with the narrative. You read an account from a crew flying a specific aircraft and the footnote tells you that that same aircraft is now on display in the RAF Museum. Then over a few more paragraphs you read the memories of a different crew flying a different aircraft on the same raid and the footnote, following on from the previous states “Ibid”! Later in the book I found pages mistyped making it harder to read still.
Much of the research has been taken from other books so there isn’t much new, original, content. That being said I must own up to be a nerd and have read some of the books mentioned. If I read this when I was younger and didn’t have an understanding of the bigger picture however I don’t think I would have carried on reading into this area of history.
In the plus side. There were the occasional memories from people other than aircrew. These were too few and far between but when they were there they offered a fascinating change of perspective. If nothing else I’ve taken a note of a couple of different books to read at a later date.
There are cheaper, more readable books available on the bombing campaign during World War 2.
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