Sir Arthur Harris took over as Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command.
He was determined to succeed with new tactics and new bombers.
(Harris) The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I put them onto the north German ports in the Baltic, because, having flown quite a bit at night myself, I realised that the easiest targets to get hold of, of course, were always the ones on the coastline.
Because if you can see anything, you can see a coastline.
If you can see a coastline with its odd shapes, you can find your way along to ports and recognise them.
(narrator) Lubeck and Rostock were the first major targets.
As ports, they were easy to find.
And they burnt well.
In March 1942, 230 bombers destroyed half Lubeck.
In April, Rostock was bombed into flames.
The style was set: night area bombing.
This was to become the pattern for the next three years.
It was terrifying, it was indiscriminate, but as far as Bomber Command was concerned, there was no alternative.
How many occasions, looking out of the window, or walking out in the garden, could you see up to 18 or 20,000 feet?
Maybe on two or three hendrixchristopher@example.com.
On how many occasions can you guarantee if you see up to it here, that you could see down to it 500 miles away, in the other end of Europe?
That was the situation.
There's no possibility of hitting the individual targets, consistently small targets,
until we got the navigational electronic aids that would show those targets up in the dark or through clouds.
(narrator) The first electronic aid to navigation now came into service.
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