T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
mately have been overwhelmed. They believed that a strong British
offensive against vital German objectives was the real answer to what-
ever renewal of the attack the Germans might plan. Only in this wav
could the enemy be placed on the defensive and forced to divert to
defensive purposes, as in the manufacture of fighters at the cost
of bombers, the resources that would otherwise be used to punish
Britain. England, driven from the continent and deprived of allies,
could reach her enemy only by the air.
For some months Bomber Command was obliged to aid Coastal
Command and to use most of its slim resources in attacking the so-
called invasion ports. But plans for a systematic and growing offensive
against German targets were at the same time carried forward. Ex-
cellent bombers had been developed with an emphasis on range and
bomb load; during the year following the Battle of Britain, the first-
line strength of the bombing force would be increased by 50 per cent
while the equivalent increase in bomb load would be 2 5 0 per
T h e scale of the bombing effort, now directed chiefly against the
industrial Ruhr, remained relatively small in the fall of 1941, but
British officials anticipated a monthly production rate of 5 0 0 heavy
bombers by 1943 and looked forward to mounting ultimately an
offensive a t least fifty times greater than the existing scale of effort.42
O n America’s entry into the war the AAF, with its own emphasis
on strategic bombardment, would find in the RAF a stout and under-
standing ally. It is true that there were differences which distinguished
the two forces: British experience had led to a preference for night
and area bombing rather than the daylight, precision bombardment
emphasized by the AAF. But these were differences of tactics rather
than of strategy, of method and not of principle. Indeed, the differing
methods favored were potentially complementary rather than irrec-
oncilable.
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