Sir Arthur Harris: War Hero

Arthur Harris was the British officer in charge of the Royal Air Force Bombing commander during the second world war. He commanded multiple bombing raids on German cities that killed tens of thousands of German civilians in order to destroy German industrial factories and Nazi supply lines in order to support the efforts of the RAF. These acts were then essential to the success of the British Army and the Allied effort as a whole, enabling their success at the end of World War II. Furthermore, Sir Arthur Harris’ efforts during his period of service showcase his heroic position within society.

Arthur Harris was a war hero who was the Commander of the RAF bomber command. He was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire on the 13th of April 1892.

Arthur Harris’s judgement and leadership disrupted German military equipment production and took money and goods away from the Nazi front lines. This helped to stop the Nazi war effort. Being the RAF bomber commander is also an extremely stressful job and he remained the commander without any struggles, he had a good tactical and strategic thought process which we can see through the success of his many bombing campaigns.

Arthur Harris also helped the war effort with radar and target marking which made tracking and marking targets much more efficient and effective. This helped the RAF to keep dominance over the Nazis and it made bombing runs very precise and very accurate for them to hit their targets. It also had more effects after the war because his use of radar for target marking helped to make radar tracking and target marking much more effective because it is now

One specific tactic he implemented was the ‘bomber stream' which was a coordinated attack by a significant number of bombers. The bomber stream was a saturation attack tactic developed by Arthur Harris and the Royal Air Force. An example of saturation bombing through the ‘bomber stream’ is the bombings of hamburg which lasted over 8 days, over that time they dropped over 9,000 tons of bombs which caused over 100 fires. The assault killed over 42,000 Germans. The bombs destroyed an operational dynamite factory in hamburg which weakened and halted the manufacturing of weapons and explosives in hamburg. The attack also destroyed a oil refinery, Oil was used alot in world war 2 so this was also a very important target to hit and Arthur Harris’s ‘Bomber stream’ strategy made it much easier to hit the target due to the accuracy of his method.

Arthur Harris also made his crews take extra survival training and improved the survival equipment to insure his crews were always safer. This decreased the death rate of the pilots in the RAF and made it so the pilots and crew of Arthur Harris’s planes were all experienced in combat and made sure all the equipment in the aircraft were working and that the crew knew how to use them. This shows Arthur Harris always had good intentions and that Arthur Harris always wanted to make sure his crew was as safe as could be while on