With the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Saudi-led operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen, bombing campaigns are on our minds these days. What better time to look at one of the most important and dramatic documents in the history of airpower: the inauspiciously named “Butt Report.” This document was declassified more than fifty years ago but has only recently become readily accessible (in transcribed form) through “Ether Wave Propaganda,” a blog site devoted to the “history and historiography of science.”
The Butt Report was undertaken in the summer of 1941 by David Bensusan Butt at the order of an aide to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Issued on 18 August 1941, it investigated the effectiveness of the British night time bombing campaign against German targets in France and Germany. Its conclusions were far from encouraging and helped lead to a major change in British bombing doctrine that had profound effects.
In the early months of World War II, the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) Bomber Command launched a number of daytime bombing raids against German targets but found that their own losses were alarming, as high as 50%. Air Marshal Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, the head of Bomber Command, realized that the psychological effects of continuing such raids would be profound. Furthermore, he calculated that continuing such raids would lead to the deaths of skilled air crews who would otherwise be able to fly better bombers that would eventually be brought into the force.
Also early in the war, Bomber Command started launching night-time propaganda leaflet drops over Germany. Aircrews found it extraordinarily difficult to navigate in the dark and frequently overflew or even crash-landed in still-neutral Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium. However, they also ran across very few German fighters and discovered that German anti-aircraft defenses were largely ineffective against them.
With these data points in hand, debate ensued over how to craft a successful bombing campaign against Germany. Ultimately, the debate was won by Churchill, who remembered that World War I had been won in large part because of economic pressure on Germany. Lacking other ideas for how to defeat Germany, Churchill and his allies proposed that an air campaign against German economic targets primarily conducted at night would cripple German war making capacity and also somehow damage German civilian morale. They ignored the fact that nobody quite knew what damaging German morale meant or how it would contribute to victory. They also conveniently overlooked the fact British morale seemed to have been enhanced by the Blitz. When the new approach was tried, initial reports from debriefings of air crews seemed encouraging. Bombers were successfully carrying out their missions.
Thus the Butt Report came as a rude shock when it looked at Bomber Command sorties flown in June and July 1941 and concluded on the basis of photographic evidence that “of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target, only one in three got within five miles.” It further concluded that the best accuracy came in attacking German targets in France but targets farther away in Germany were harder to find. In fact, only one in ten bombers that attacked targets in the German industrial area of the Ruhr got within five miles of their target. The report also showed that the absence of moonlight, and the presence of haze and anti-aircraft fire all had dramatic negative effects on accuracy as well. As if that weren’t enough, Butt noted that these statistics applied only to those aircraft that conducted an attack: a substantial percentage of bombers didn’t conduct attacks at all.
Churchill was appalled and his confidence in airpower was seriously eroded. The RAF started improving navigation and bombing techniques. However, the more profound effect was to shift the conceptual emphasis of the bombing campaign from directly damaging the German economy to eroding German morale. This was done by giving up “precision” raids and instead aiming at “area” targets: German cities. When Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris took over Bomber Command this became known as “dehousing.” The idea was that German industrial workers could be rendered homeless and if not homeless then they could be kept awake all night by bombing raids and made to live in constant fear for their lives. This, it was hoped, would negatively affect German industrial capacity.
One scholar has pointed to Bomber Command’s Night Area Offensive as being “one of the clear pre-nuclear antecedents of the concept of” Mutually Assured Destruction. Bomber Harris and the scorching air campaign he led have been controversial ever since the war and a source of moral discomfit to many.
We have little data on how the air campaigns against ISIL and the Houthis are going. The British experience, however, provides both a practical lesson and a moral lesson for when things start to go wrong in a war — which they always do to a greater or lesser extent. Practically, it is important to ensure that wartime adaptations make intellectual sense and are grounded in war aims and are not just a search for a nail on which to use the existing hammer. This may be a particularly important point regarding the war in Yemen, given the comparative lack of smart munitions in the inventories of the air forces conducting the campaign against the Houthis. Morally, it is important to ensure that frustration does not lead to moral compromises. Many people today regard Bomber Harris as a war criminal.
Mark Stout is a Senior Editor at War on the Rocks. He is the Director of the MA Program in Global Security Studies and the Graduate Certificate Program in Intelligence at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Author’s note: For further reading on this subject, I highly recommend Tami Davis Biddle’s Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945.
CBCalif 
Tyrone Bomba 
Matthew Doye 
Zachary Hall 
Zachary Hall 
In its Winter 2014/21014 edition, Parameters included a rather interesting and informative article titled “China’s Concept of Military Strategy.” On page 45, its author noted, “Li warns against laying too much stress on previous experience, noting that tradition has a dual nature. It is both valuable for its historical wealth and a danger due to its tendency to exert historical inertia.”
Those American writers dwelling on the alleged results of the WWII Strategic Bombing Effort as somehow providing lessons for use of air power in the 21st Century most certainly suffer from that “historical inertia.”
The bomber aircraft employed in World War II, their targeting technology, their bomb loads, their weapons capabilities, etc bear absolutely no resemblance to those bomber and fighter (attack) aircraft employed today by the USAF, USN, and USMC and their targeting capabilities and bomb loads.
And, in fact, if during World War II in Europe the German Military had possessed the capability to withstand Soviet and American assaults for another year (or so), their nation’s cities and industrial power would have been literally obliterated by B-29 carried atomic weapons. That weapon and aircraft, along with the P-51 Mustang’s range, had totally changed the calculus for determining the effectiveness of Strategic Air power – which fact those bound by their anti-Air Power “historical inertia” repeatedly fail to recognize and admit.
If one wants to use historical examples to determine how the Air Power calculus has changed, one only needs to compare the results of the French failed stand at Dien Bien Phu and the successful stand of the Marines at Khe Sanh. The ground forces in both instances by plan depended on air power to secure and sustain their fortified positions – which were both surrounded by substantially larger North Vietnamese Military forces. The French relied on their B-26’s (at best) 4,000 pound bomb loads and eyeball targeting and their F4U’s among other aircraft – and they met with disaster. The U.S. in Vietnam relied on B-52’s(42,000+ pound bomb loads), F-4’s, A-4’s, etc. Non-stop bombing from those aircraft broke the back of the attacking NVA forces, destroyed their combat effectiveness, and forced them to depart from the battlefield — a “tactically” defeated force. The same types of U.S. aircraft defeated the North Vietnamese Army which had invaded South Vietnam during their Eastern Offensive, once again proving that Air Power will defeat ground power everyday of every year, when properly applied. As another Chinese General noted, as stated in the above Parameters paper, “The outcome of a war depends not only on the objective material strength of the belligerents, but also on their subjective ability to employ it.”
There are many other examples, but that is not the point. The question instead remains, what strategic objective was assigned to U.S. air power recently (again) employed in Iraq. Their objective is not to destroy the ISIS Forces. That is the mission for the Iraqi armed forces.
Could the U.S. employ air power (explosive power from planes and missiles) sufficient to obliterate the cities and towns (and their populations) in the ISIS controlled areas of Iraq – most certainly! However, for obvious reason that is not the American strategic objective in Iraq, nor is it the current Administration’s intent to have U.S. ground forces re-enter that country, recognizing that our recent 7+ year occupation of that country produced a costly strategic failure.
Absent being willing and allowed to apply massive brutality, resulting in the destruction of many of its towns and the killing or imprisonment of large numbers of its male population, an invading and occupying Western Ground Force can not successfully subdue a resisting occupied population (i.e. its resisting anti-occupation guerrilla forces now absurdly called insurgents in today’s politically appropriate and self serving parlance) willing to conduct a protracted anti-occupation struggle. A struggle whose objective are aimed not at tactically defeating the better armed occupying force, but instead at running up the political and economic costs of the occupation such that the occupier will eventually depart – as occurred recently in Iraq, even if some in the U.S. elect to fool themselves otherwise by declaring a self deceiving victory in Iraq allowed the U.S. forces to leave that country.
Instead the U.S. provided Air power in this round of fighting in Iraq is being provided in support of the Kurdish and Iraqi Shiite forces sufficient first to blunt (halt) the advance of the ISIS forces into or towards their geographical and population areas. Those efforts were completely successful. Second, air power was / is being applied in Iraq to support the advances of Kurdish and Iraqi forces into ISIS controlled territory, but on a limited basis only.
In fact, for the obviously inept Iraqi ground forces (be they the Shiite Militias or Iraqi Army), U.S. Air Power is the key component allowing them their few tactical success, as exemplified by the recent (absurdly) successful defense of Tikrit by about 300 ISIS troops against 30,000 attacking Iraqi forces led by the supposedly brilliant Iranian General – successful until U.S. Air power easily ended the stand of the 300.
U.S. Air Power can successfully destroy any opponent’s country and / or destroy the fighting capability of their military. It is strategically fallacious to believe that one needs to occupy an enemy country to defeat it in a war – or to obtain one’s strategic / political goals underlying a conflict. Sun Tzu put it best when he noted that the best result of a war is to leave your enemy intact – in other words to settle matters diplomatically, possibly after you have demonstrated to them that they can be obliterated.
The lesson of America’s Wars post-World War II conflicts is not that air power cannot complete its mission, but instead is that use of ground forces to invade and occupy an enemy country always results in a costly strategic failure for this country. We love to expound on our ground forces’ tactical victories, but ignore the strategic failure those tactical efforts produced. As the German General Von Moltke the Elder (and others) have noted, tactical victories which do not lead to strategic success are wasted efforts, therefore, in fact defeats.
Given the reality of post-World War II conflict and the advances in military technology, this country needs to begin re-orienting its military objectives during any conflict in which it chooses to engage away from invasion and occupation – else continue to suffer the strategic failures that have accompanied so many of our military efforts of the past 5+ decades.
CBCalif — that was a superb commentary on the article.
For anyone looking for an excellent history and analysis of military airpower, I recommend reading Martin Van Creveld’s “The Age of Airpower,” (published in 2011).
Prior to the development of precision guided weapons non-nuclear strategic bombing was necessarily countervalue in nature and failed in its aims consistently. This can be seen from a review of conflicts from WW1 to Vietnam. Even today in Syria we see regime air and Scud attacks against populations have been of limited utility.
In contrast tactical air power, even when applied using apparently strategic tools such as B-25s North Africa and B-52s in Iraq, has been far more successful.
WW2 bombing provides another lesson for today. Even given the relative success of the tactical use of air power of strategic bombing Air Force leaders were reluctant to release assets for air support missions. We have still not solved the problem of getting air forces to prioritise the CAS role.
As regards the morality and legality of the actions Harris and other architects area bombing against civilians it is difficult to see any moral case in their favour and the legal case them would have been a good one. By today’s standards Harris would definitely be a war criminal.
CBCalif — truly remarkable commentary indeed. Thank you.
Matthew Doye – Please clarify your broad statements with some evidence.
“Prior to the development of precision guided weapons non-nuclear strategic bombing was necessarily countervalue in nature and failed in its aims consistently.” – Adam Tooze’s book, “The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy,” brings forth the point that Nazi Germany was forced to make many decisions based on Allied airpower that carried significant consequences – the opportunity costs of dealing with constant strategic bombing forced Nazis to direct precious men and materiel toward this threat and away from its use on either front. To say it “failed in its aims consistently” ignores the fact that these resources would have been used very differently, likely against ground forces, were they not consumed with fighting Allied airpower. Your broad span of strategic bombing from WWI to Vietnam also confuses vastly different military objectives. For one, there is almost no useful comparison between airpower used in WWI and in Vietnam – significant evolution occured during these periods which escapes a sweeping statement like that. One of the reasons regime air and scud attacks have limited utility in Syria is because it is not possible to bomb an ideology any more than it is possible to erase it with occupying ground forces. Additionally, the populations targeted in these areas don’t have the same choices for resistance – their opportunity costs, to use one of Tooze’s arguments, bear little resemblance to an opponent whose fielded military is the source of their resistance.
“In contrast tactical air power, even when applied using apparently strategic tools such as B-25s North Africa and B-52s in Iraq, has been far more successful.” I think one of the points CBCalif makes is more important and often missed. In these instances, ground forces were successful tactically because airpower provided the asymmetric advantage – that insuperable quantity that tilted the scales. However, to think that airpower is only successful when pursuing tactical targets is a dangerous and wholly inadequate qualification. The measure of success in a military campaign should not hinge on the land component’s ability to accomplish its tactical objectives. As we have seen in over 14 years of land war, tactical success “does not necessarily correlate with strategic victory.”
As regards the unsolved “problem of getting air forces to prioritise the CAS role” is a tacit acknowledgement to what CBCalif wrote in his last paragraph. Until we reconceptualize airpower’s unique contributions, we run the risk of our expeditionary ground forces facing strategic defeat time and time again at the loss of young lives and incredible amounts of treasure. If the CAS role were given the priority ground forces wanted, would there be aircraft available for anything else? Unfortunately, to many ground forces, airpower is subservient to land power and plays only a support role. Your statement on failing to prioritize the CAS mission also fails to acknowledge that those ground forces (in need of CAS) have enjoyed freedom from attack by enemy aircraft and incredible levels of resupply (both airdrop and conventional theater direct delivery) for over sixty years aside from the airlift operations often preceding their arrival. They have enjoyed precision navigation and satellite communications with global coverage. There are inherent difference between land, sea, and airpower. These functions are not supplied by air arms designed to support core missions of individual services, they are provided by air forces. One of the main reasons any state has an independent air force is for the unique attributes of airpower and its purveyors’ abilities to think in four dimensions.
To the author’s point on “We have little data on how the air campaigns against ISIL and the Houthis are going” – we do. We know that airpower stopped Da’ish’s spread, held them in places they neither expected to remain nor were prepared to fight from. It also gave valuable time for a coalition to form – the likes of which we have not seen in previous conflicts. The precision and lethality of air strikes has changed this conflict markedly. More importantly, it has not required young American men and women to fight on the ground as part of an occupying force thereby attracting the sort of opportunistic violence from those who would specifically travel to fight (as they are already doing in surprising numbers). Where precision and advanced targeting techniques are not used, airpower has struggled. The lesson here may be that when applied as a blunt instrument, any use of force is less successful – ground, maritime, or otherwise. Inditing airpower as a whole, without context or specifics, misses this point.