Dr Stephen Moore explores the influence of the Butt Report and the Boulogne-Billancourt raid on the RAF's move toward the area bombing offensive.

Circumstances permitting, this lecture will be live-streamed from the RAF Museum, Cosford. The moderator will select question from in the room and from the online broadcast. To attend in-person visit:

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/cosford/whats-going-on/events/lunchtime-lecture-steps-toward-the-area-bombing-offensive-the-influence-of-the-butt-report-and-the-boulogne-billancourt-raid-on-policy-change/

This free lecture is part of the RAF Museum's Research Lecture Programme. If you'd like to support the RAF Museum, you can make a donation at: https://support.rafmuseum.org/Donate-Now

The publication of the Butt report in August 1941 was an unpleasant shock to the RAF. Positive raid evaluations and contemporary propaganda gave an optimistic picture of Bomber Command operations, so the inability of most aircraft to drop their bombs within five miles of the intended target prompted a re-evaluation of British bombing strategy.

The realisation that Bomber Command was incapable of hitting precision targets at night with the available technology marked 'the end of a chapter in the history of Bomber Command'. Over the winter of 1941 the concept of concentrating aircraft over a city as a nominal target was developed, on the grounds that the majority of bombs dropped would still hit something instead of landing in open countryside, which became official policy when the Area Bombing Directive was issued in February 1942.

The raid on the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt in the suburbs of Paris on 3 March 1942 marked the beginning of the new area bombing policy and was the largest bombing raid by the RAF up to this date. The operational restrictions — which reflected France’s status as a defeated ally rather than a belligerent enemy — limited the scale of this attack, but the RAF had finally caught up with the Luftwaffe in the provision of radio navigation blind bombing aids during the winter of 1941 which led to an indecisive series of raids against industrial targets in the Ruhr valley.

Operations against other targets escalated and Bomber Command continued their experimental tactics with an attack at Lübeck on 28/29 March using incendiaries. Although repeated attacks against the same objective had been previously explored by Bomber Command, these were unsuccessful until the four raids on Rostock between 23 and 26 April, which established RAF area bombing policy for the remainder of the offensive.

Steps Toward the Area Bombing Offensive: The Influence of the Butt Report and the Boulogne-Billancourt Raid on Policy Change