Britain’s bombers didn’t always get through

The British had long believed that the “Bomber always gets through” but when they tried getting through to Wilhelmshaven they had to change their thinking.

World War II (Two) Royal Air Force (RAF) Vickers Wellington III (Three) aircraft. British Armed Forces / Air Force Historical Picture: Supplied

War had been ­declared in September of 1939 but despite the carving up of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union, things were relatively quiet in the airways above Europe. There were ­occasional skirmishes but no major air raids.

This lull was dubbed the “phoney war”, but things began to heat up when Britain started targeting German bases with bombing raids.

The first major clash in the skies came in the Battle of Heligoland Bight, 75 years ago today. The encounter was something of a wake-up call to both sides, forcing them to make changes to their planes and tactics.

The British military went into the war with an overblown ­belief in the power of the bomber. They placed great faith in their Wellington bombers, a medium bomber that first took to the air in 1936. This heavily armoured aircraft, with two machine guns in a front turret and four guns at the rear, as well as a gun turret on the back halfway between front and back and a retractable turret underneath, was far less vulnerable to attack than previous bombers.

But it had blind spots and lacked self-sealing fuel tanks, so it was vulnerable to catching fire if the tanks were ruptured. Problems that would become apparent in battle.

Bomber Command was convinced a war could be won ­entirely from the air, without the need to commit ground troops. It was a belief widely shared.

In 1932, Conservative MP (later prime minister) Stanley Baldwin gave a speech on disarmament in which he talked about how formidable bombers were. He said: “I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through”.

His phrase the “bomber will always get through” was unofficially adopted by Bomber Command which believed that if sufficient bombers were dispatched, even though some would be shot down, enough would get through to ­accomplish the job. In the first months of WWII, the British struggled to even get their bombers over Germany. The Netherlands and Belgium refused the RAF permission to use or build air bases in their countries for fear of endangering their neutrality. France was also reluctant to allow British bombers to use its airfields, believing its security was assured by the Maginot line fortifications.

This meant targets had to be selected that were within range of British airfields, limiting raids to military targets or German ships at sea or close to, but not in, harbours. The ban on harbour bombing was to prevent civilian casualties.

Another limitation of the bombers was that they were not terribly accurate, so missions to hit anything smaller than a city had to be conducted in daylight hours to give the crew a better chance of a direct hit.

By December 1939, the British had already made several raids on shipping in the Heligoland Bight, the busy bay where the important German ports of Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven operated. On December 3, a raid by 24 Wellingtons sank a mine-layer with no loss of bombers. On ­December 14, a force of 12 Wellingtons attacked ships but six bombers were lost, mostly due to anti-­aircraft fire from the ground.

The RAF dispatched 24 Wellingtons on December 18. Two turned back because of engine problems, but the rest were soon over Heligoland Bight. They spotted their targets but since they were inside the harbour, turned back without dropping their bombs.

As the British planes turned to leave. they were met by a force of Messerschmitt BF110s and BF109s. The German aircraft were able ­exploit blind spots in the Wellingtons’ defences, hitting the fuel tanks and making them catch fire.

The German response had been slow but they still managed to scramble hundreds of planes, about 40 of which directly engaged the bombers. In less than an hour the British had lost 12 bombers and 57 men, while the Germans lost two BF109s and two men.

The British were forced to admit their daylight bombing raids were too dangerous and the bomber was not always guaranteed to get through. The Wellingtons were redesigned with self-sealing tanks and would later prove their worth on nocturnal bombing raids.

The raid had also brought the Germans to the realisation that the administration of their air defences were a shambles and needed to be reorganised and their response time improved.

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