6. The British bombing had little effect on German industry and infrastructure in the first three years of the war
At the end of 1940, the British had informally adopted the policy of wide-area bombing, rather than strategic precision bombing. The lack of an accurate bombsight, and the policy of bombing at night, led to tons of bombs being dropped with little possibility of the primary target being hit. In 1942, a paper was prepared at Churchill’s request to address the issue at Bomber Command. The loss of bombers to German fighters and anti-aircraft guns strained British industrial resources which had to replace them. At issue was whether the seemingly inefficient bombing campaign justified the high percentage of resources absorbed by the bomber force.
The paper, prepared by a respected British scientist and adviser named Frederick Lindemann, came to be known as the dehousing paper. Lindemann postulated the wide-area bombing was entirely justified because it dehoused a large portion of the German population, which was detrimental to morale. Dehoused was simply a euphemism for destroying civilian homes. According to Lindemann, the destruction of 30% or more of the housing in over 50 of Germany’s largest cities was the best use of the RAF’s Bomber Command. “Investigation seems to show that having one’s home demolished is most damaging to morale. People seem to mind it more than having their friends or even relatives killed”, wrote Lindemann.
