'Bomber' Harris hoped to crush Germany and win the war in Europe by bombing Berlin. But this meant a long round trip of 1800 miles for the Lancaster -bombers, heavily loaded with about 7 tonnes of bombs and 9000 litres of petrol each. More and more German night-fighters got into the bomber 'stream' and shot them down. Some British crews-called 'rabbits' by Harris-jettisoned bombs in the North Sea to gain speed and height or dropped their bombs short of the target and turned back.

It became a battle of wits on both sides. The RAF made what were called 'spoofs' all over Germany by marking towns with Mosquitoes and sometimes not bombing them. The main bomber stream made changes of direction to try to conceal its real objective. The British broadcast fake radio orders in German to misdirect the German fighters and they used a variety of highly complicated devices to trick the Germans and jam their radar. The German fighter controllers at one stage could use only regional songs on the civilian radio to signal probable areas of attack.

The German night-fighters could not see the bombers, except on clear moonlit nights, and were guided towards them by radar. They approached slowly from the rear and below, hoping to rake the bomber from end to end with cannon shells and hit the petrol tanks. If the rear gunner on the bomber was alert enough to see the fighter he would yell over the intercom 'Corkscrew-now!' for the one frantic manoeuvre that might save the bomber. The pilot tipped the huge plane on one wing and slid down sideways through the air for 300 metres, turned and climbed the other way and dived again, risking the wings breaking off. But most aircraft attacked by fighters were shot down. The crews of bombers hit by fighters or by antiaircraft shells had only one chance in five of escaping by parachute. If they did, they avoided landing near the target areas because they had heard that German civilians murdered what they called the 'terror fliers'.

The bomber crews were all volunteers, mostly very young men of twenty or under, high-spirited, straight from school; and many from the Commonwealth. They had to do a 'tour' of 30 operations, flying 7 or 8 raids a month. With an average rate of loss of 5 per cent bomber in 20 each trip the chances of 'completing a tour were slim. Over 70000 bomber crew were killed or captured.

Max Hastings has estimated that about one in seven lost their nerve out of fear and cracked. Men could ask to be relieved of flying duties, but the RAF treated this brutally, fearing it might spread, and classified them 'L.M.F.' (Lacking Moral Fibre). Some were tried by court martial for cowardice and imprisoned. Most were demoted and put onto menial duties like cleaning out lavatories or were given the choice of going into the army or the coalmines.

In the Battle of Berlin sixteen major raids were organised, with up to a thousand bombers in each. But the concentration of bombing was not enough for a repetition of Hamburg, Harris's objective. The loss rate went up to over 6 per cent. More than a thousand bombers were lost, double the number Harris expected to lose. This was too great and the battle ended as a defeat for Bomber Command.