Henry Tizard
was born in 1885. Educated at Westminster
School and Magdalen College, Oxford,
he served in the Royal Air Force
in the First World War and in 1918 became assistant
comptroller of aeronautical research.
In 1933
Tizard was appointed as chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee
and served in this post for most of the Second World
War.
After the
war Tizard served as chairman of the Defence Research Policy Committee
and president of the British Association. Henry Tizard died in 1959.
(1)
Robert
Boothby, Boothby: Recollections of a Rebel (1978)
I soon came to the conclusion that the policy of area
bombing of Germany, then being pursued mainly by Wellington bombers,
was not paying off, because the expenditure of our resources and,
still more, of our skilled manpower, was far greater than the results
achieved. Too many of our bombs were dropped in fields. German arms
production was not being seriously interfered with. The best that
could be said for it was that a considerable number of Goering's fighter
aircraft, which might have been sent to other fronts, had to be kept
in Germany. The truth is that in those days the instruments for accurate
navigation did not exist. There were high hopes of one gadget, which
I did not begin to understand; and which was brought to us one day
in a brand-new Wellington bomber. All the navigators in the squadron
went up to see how it worked. Five minutes after take-off, a wing
fell off the plane, and they were all killed.
Early in
1942, Lindemann, by then a member of the Cabinet, circulated his famous
paper on strategic bombing. This said that if it was concentrated
entirely on German working class houses, and 'military objectives'
as such were forgotten, it would be possible to destroy fifty per
cent of all the houses in the larger towns of Germany quite soon.
Charming! The paper was strongly opposed by the scientists, headed
by Sir Henry Tizard and Professor Blackett. Tizard calculated that
Lindemann's estimate was five times too high, and Blackett that it
was six times too high. But Lindemann was Churchill's man; and Lindemann
prevailed. After the war the bombing survey revealed that his estimate
was ten times too high.
The story
of the Lindemann-Tizard controversy has been well told by C. P. Snow
in his book Science and Government; and I have not seen it
seriously contradicted. But one thing remains to be said. I think
the scientists underestimated the psychological effect of our bombing
policy not upon the German but upon the British people. They themselves
were under heavy bombardment; and between 1941 and 1944 bombing was
the only method by which we could directly hit back. I am sure that
it gave a tremendous boost to British morale; and that, to this extent
at least, the thousands of brave and skilled young men in Bomber Command
did not give their lives in vain.
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