Adaptation in the Air War

Abstract

In many ways, the British bomber offensive reflected problems of adaption similar to those raised by the rapidly changing tactical and technological arena that had faced Fighter Command and the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Yet even more than was the case in 1940, the RAF's bomber offensive involved a clash between prewar visions and attitudes, intellectual as well as conceptual, and the realities the RAF's Bomber Command and the Luftwaffe confronted in the nighttime skies over the Third Reich. As did its predecessors on the Western Front during the First World War, Bomber Command had to deal with an opponent who was simultaneously adapting his own technology and tactics to the changing conditions of the battle. This case study focuses on the adaptation, or lack of adaptation, that marked both Bomber Command's offensive and the German responses to it – particularly in the years of 1943 and 1944 – as well as the path that led to those difficult years.