Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15.

The title of our post is Air Superiority, Part 3.

First Section Air Superiority in World War II.

Arthur Travers Harris, known as Bomber Harris, became commander of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command in

early 1942. Until then, Bomber Command hadn't done much, but the energetic and controversial

Harris soon changed all that. He became the architect and chief proponent of nighttime area bombing of major German cities.

In March of 42, he struck Lubick.

In April, he bombed Rostock.

Then on the night of May 30th and 31st and 1442, he launched a devastating, 1,000 bomber attack on Cologne.

A few days later, Harris went before RAF film cameras and delivered a chilling, two-minute

message saying,

the Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion

that they were gonna bomb everybody else.

Nobody was gonna bomb them.

At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places,

they put that rather naive theory into operation.

They sowed the wind. Now they're going to reap the whirlwind.

Cologne, Lubick, Rostock, these are only just the beginning. We can't send a thousand bombers at a time over Germany every time, as yet,

but the time will come when we can do so.

Let the Nazis take good note of the Western horizon.

There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man's hand,

but behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America.

...