Butt Report
The Butt Report, released on 18 August 1941, was a report prepared during World War II, revealing the widespread failure of RAF Bomber Command aircraft to hit their targets.
At the start of the war, Bomber Command had no real means of determining the success of its operations. Crews would return with only their word as to the amount of damage caused or even if they had bombed the target. The Air Ministry demanded that a method of verifying these claims be developed and by 1941 cameras mounted under bombers, triggered by the bomb release, were being fitted.
Contents
The report was initiated by
Any examination of night photographs taken during night bombing in June and July points to the following conclusions:
- Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within 5 mi (8.0 km).
- Over the French ports, the proportion was two in three; over Germany as a whole, the proportion was one in four; over the Ruhr it was only one in ten.
- In the full moon, the proportion was two in five; in the new moon it was only one in fifteen. ...
- All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within 5 miles is less than one-third. ...
The conclusion seems to follow that only about one-third of aircraft claiming to reach their target actually reached it.[4]
Postwar studies confirmed Butt's assessment, showing that 49% of Bomber Command bombs dropped between May 1940 and May 1941 fell in open country.[5] As Butt did not include those aircraft that did not bomb because of equipment failure, enemy action, weather or which failed to find the target, only about 5% of bombers setting out bombed within 5 mi (8.0 km) of the target.[6]
Contemporary debate, dehousing and Singleton Report
The truth about the failure of Bomber Command shook everyone. Senior RAF commanders argued that the Butt report's statistics were faulty and commissioned another report, which was delivered by the
A particularly damning speech had been delivered on 24 February 1942 in the
The total [British] casualties in air-raids – in killed – since the beginning of the war are only two-thirds of those we lost as prisoners of war at Singapore.... The loss of production in the worst month of the Blitz was about equal to that due to the Easter holidays.... The Air Ministry have been ... too optimistic.... We know most of the bombs we drop hit nothing of importance. ...[8][9]
In response to the concerns raised by the Butt report, Cherwell produced his dehousing paper (first circulated on 30 March 1942), which proposed that by
On reading the dehousing paper, Professor
If Russia can hold Germany on land I doubt whether Germany will stand 12 or 18 months' continuous, intensified and increased bombing, affecting, as it must, her war production, her power of resistance, her industries and her will to resist (by which I mean morale).[12]
In the end, thanks in part to the dehousing paper, it was this view which prevailed but
Aftermath
As the war progressed, RAF Bomber Command improved its methods. Electronic navigational instruments like
Notes
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 120.
- ^ Kirby 2003, p. 135.
- ^ Hastings 1970, [page needed].
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 121.
- ^ Davis 2006, p. 30 Citing with footnote 34: Richards, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 1, At Odds, 239.
- ^ Nelson 2003.
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 122.
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 126.
- ^ Hill 1942.
- ^ Longmate 1983, pp. 130–131.
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 132.
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 133; Copp 1996.
- ^ Longmate 1983, p. 134 citing pp. 49–51 in either Snow Science and Government (1961) or Snow A Postscript to Science and Government (1962) {Longmate simply says Snow science on page 393 but lists both books in the sources (page 387)}
- ^ Snow, Science & Government (1962), pp. 49–51, retrieved 15 May 2013 from the Internet Archive.
- ^ Davis 2006, p. 503.
- ^ Taylor 2005, p. 280.
References
- Davis, Richard D. (April 2006). "Bombing the European Axis Powers: A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive 1930-1945" (PDF). Alabama: Air University Press Maxwell Air Force Base. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2009. Retrieved 10 April 2007.
- Copp, Terry (September–October 1996). "The Bomber Command Offensive". Originally published in the Legion Magazine. Archived from the originalon 27 September 2007.
- Hastings, Max (1970). Bomber Command. Pan.
- Hill, Archibald (24 February 1942). "House of Commons debates: Ministerial Changes". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). cc27-176. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
- Kirby, M. W.; Operational Research Society (Great Britain) (2003). Operational Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the 1930s to 1970. Imperial College Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-86094-366-9.
- Longmate, Norman (1983). The Bombers: The RAF offensive against Germany 1939-1945. Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-151580-7.
- Nelson, Hank (2003). "A different war: Australians in Bomber Command". A paper presented at the 2003 History Conference - Air War Europe.
- Taylor, Frederick (2005). Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 0-7475-7078-7.
Further reading
- CABINET PAPERS: Complete classes from the CAB & PREM series in the Public Record Office Series One: PREM 3 - Papers concerning Defence & Operational Subjects, 1940-1945 Winston Churchill, Minister of Defence, Secretariat Papers
- Butt Report Summary Transcript
- Reference to the Butt Report at The National Archives
- "Issues : Singleton - World War Two". valourandhorror.com. Archived from the original on 27 December 2008.