Talk:Area bombing directive

End of the directive
In this case the word directive means orders The directive was not cancelled by Churchill in 1945 it was replaced by another directive long before that. I am not sure which one, because they were issued quite often. For example
 * On 27 March, 1944, the Combined Chiefs of Staff issued orders that control of all the Allied air forces in Europe, including the strategic bombers, would pass to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. They were ordered to help bomb tactical targets in France in the lead up to and during the Normandy landings.
 * The Directive the RAF received at the end of this campaign dated 25 September 1944, was to attack German oil, communications and certain other targets like U-boat pens.
 * Another directive was issued on 27 January 1945,
 * Yet more were issued after the Yalta Conference

The above list is far from complete, and as can be seen they were issued quite often. So I am removing the section about Churchill cancelling the directive in 1945. --PBS 23:46, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Was it a war crime?
The German Wikipedia qualifies the article to War crimes cathegory. Xx236 09:03, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * No. See Area Bombardment. --PBS 09:32, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

well it was an excessive british warcrime.--131.173.252.9 09:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Must've gotten something wrong but the article mentioned above, does indeed state that it is a war crime (bombing undefended cities). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 145.244.10.3 (talk • contribs) 11:32, 20 November 2006  (UTC)

You must "'ve gotten something wrong". First is that you seem to have read the Shimoda judgement and not the rest of the section. Shimoda is just one POV and not the generally accepted one. Second the Shimoda judgement is seriously flawed in that it seems to arbitrarily include "The Draft Hague Rules of Air Warfare, December, 1922-February, 1923" but ignores the  "Draft Convention for the Protection of Civilian Populations Against New Engines of War. Amsterdam, 1938" which being closer to World War II it could be argued was closer to international opinion on what civilised countries though indicative of international law on aerial bombardment at that time. Article 2 of that convention stated that:
 * '' Art. 2. The bombardment by whatever means of towns, ports, villages or buildings which are undefended is prohibited in all circumstances. A town, port, village or isolated building shall be considered undefended provided that not only (a) no combatant troops, but also (b) no military, naval or air establishment, or barracks, arsenal, munition stores or factories, aerodromes or aeroplane workshops or ships of war, naval dockyards, forts, or fortifications for defensive or offensive purposes, or entrenchments (in this Convention referred to as "belligerent establishments") exist within its boundaries or within a radius of "x" kilometres from such boundaries.

and defines what constitutes a defended town. It is not distance from the front line as is argued in Shimoda. However both were only indicative of opinions on international law and were not positive international law. That both treaties failed to be ratified is probably more indicative of international law on aerial bombardment than drawing conclusions from them. Further as both were drafted before the public announcements of radar, there was no way that they could reflect the concept of national air defences as developed by both the British (Battle of Britain and all that) and the German Kammhuber Line. Thanks to these integrated national air defences, all British and German cities were defended. The empirical proof of this is the number of aircrew on both sides which were casualties of their enemy's air defences. As an example of how this concept of national defence was put into action during World War II is how the British moved AAA guns from London to the coast to defend against V-1 attacks, see Operation Diver. It would be odd to say the least to argue that moving the guns out of London to better interdiction positions meant that London was less defended than before the move was made. -PBS 13:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

dont withewash the british military and the churchill goverment from the systematical massmurder of german civilians by area bombing. these guys were knowing what they are doing. in nearly every german city in the west of the country above 50.000 inhabitants you can clearly see the babaric and bloody track of these warcrimminals, especially those of the notorious british bomber goup number 5. the british area bombing directive from feb. 1942 was the order to commit heavy war crimes and crimes against the mankind and the cultural heritage of central europe. under other circumstances such massmurders of more than a half million civillians would have ended on the gallow. today they would end in the cells of the United Nations Tribunal in den hague for the prosecution of warcrimes. churchill would share a small cell with saddam hussain and slobodan milosevic. --89.166.140.29 16:34, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * This is not a forum, please keep commentary to that which will help develop the article. -- PBS (talk) 22:08, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Some other bombing directives

 * February 1941 Oil
 * March 1941 "Air Ministry directed Bomber Command to attack U-boat production factories, docks (containing the virtually indestructible U-boat pens) and airfields when long-range German patrol aircraft operated from. The shipbuilding ports of Kiel, Hamburg, Bremen and Vegesack topped the target list along with U-boat engine factories in Mannheim and Augsburg and airfields in Norway and France."
 * "It was also during [March] that some very prophetic words about the Command's operations were written. Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman, in a directive dated 9th March, he said: 'Priority of selection should be given to those [targets] in Germany which lie in congested areas where the greatest moral [sic] effect is likely to result.' Despite the unfortunate miss-spelling, it was obvious what Freeman was suggesting, and this, ironically, was taken up by the then Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Arthur Harris who, when said of Mannheim and the recently added city of Stuttgart to the U-boat production targets said: "Both are suitable as area objectives and their attack should have high morale value." These two statements would greatly influence future Bomber Command thinking."
 * "By the end of 1941 the Luftwaffe night-fighters were winning the air war because the nightly losses were outstripping the ability of Bomber Command to replace the aircraft and, more importantly, the experienced air crews. the grim reality was underlined on 8 November 1941 when thirty-seven bombers, or 9.25 percent of the force, were shot down or failed to return from air raids across Germany. The losses were unacceptably hight for a single night and on 13 November the RAF suspended operations pending a review of tactics."
 * "By the end of 1941 the Luftwaffe night-fighters were winning the air war because the nightly losses were outstripping the ability of Bomber Command to replace the aircraft and, more importantly, the experienced air crews. the grim reality was underlined on 8 November 1941 when thirty-seven bombers, or 9.25 percent of the force, were shot down or failed to return from air raids across Germany. The losses were unacceptably hight for a single night and on 13 November the RAF suspended operations pending a review of tactics."


 * 13 November 1941 "The War Cabinet have had under consideration the intensity of air operations recently undertaken in bomber and Fighter Command. The have stressed the necessity for conserving our resources in order to build a strong force to be available by the spring of next year" (Longmate 116)
 * 10 December 1941 "the highest priority for Bomber Command operations on the destruction of enemy capital ships" (Longmate 116)
 * 14 February 1942 Area Bombing Directive
 * 14 January 1943 priority to attacking U-boat pens
 * 21 Jan 1943 Casablanca directive issued by the Combined Chiefs of Staff defining the primary objects of the combined bomber offensive.
 * 10 June 1943 the Combined Chiefs of Staff issued a directive to RAF and USAAF on the POINTBLANK plan for destruction of the German aircraft industry.

"By the end of 1943, however, the British Air Staff, already inclined to the American view, was finally convinced that the area bombing offensive was not the best way to win the war. But it was not until February 1944 that, by insisting on an attack against the controversial target of Schweinfurt, they made this clear to Sir Arthur Harris. The official British policy, if not the practice, of area bombing was then discarded" ([http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-2RAF-c3.html New Zealanders with the Royal Air Force (Vol. II) CHAPTER 3 Bomber Command and the Battle of the Ruhr]


 * 16 September 1944 combined Chiefs of Staff directive "OCTAGON 29", that stated the primary objective to be
 * "the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the direct support of land and naval forces."

--PBS 21:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The Harris quote
I do not see what the recently added quote by Harris adds to the article, as Harris made it in October 1943 which was more than half a year after this directive had been superseded. As such it is misleading. --PBS (talk) 23:12, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * IMO saying that the directive was superseded is somewhat misleading. The "superseding" Casablanca directive of January 1943 also pointed out the German morale as a target, and what really matters is not the specific wording of the various "superseding" directives but the interpretation of priorities that those in charge made of the directives. Therefore IMO the Harris quote is very important since it shows that although the wording may have changed, effected bombing policy (at least the UK one) stayed the same as defined in the area bombing directive.--Stor stark7 Speak 08:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

This is an article about a specific bombing directive. There were others before and after this one which said similar things, but this is not an article about other bombing directives or British bombing policy in general. --PBS (talk) 09:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I would disagree on that, taken that the directive had long term effects, as shown by Harris, and the effects should be part of this article. Technically the paper may have been superseded by another paper, but this one was still being followed in practice, making Harris interpretation of what policy he was following important. However I'm not gonna push the issue. If you're willing to post the issue at Third opinion I'll go away quietly if he/she supports your standpoint against mine.--Stor stark7 Speak 12:11, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

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The directive is contradictory to Article 25
I have remove from the lead:

This is original research (a breach of the policy WP:OR) it states an opinon as a fact (breach of the policy WP:NPOV) and it is not a summary of the text in the body of the article (breach of the guideline WP:LEAD) — PBS (talk) 10:53, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Article title
Should the article title be in sentence case (as it currently is) or in title case (as shown in the lead in bold font)? With the lead and article title clashing, it seems worthwhile to ask that question.  Schwede 66  07:21, 30 March 2022 (UTC)