Eighty years ago this week, the air battle for Europe takes shape

 

The allied Chiefs of Staff signed the Pointblank directive which set objectives for their combined bomber offensive. The principal goal was the reduction of German fighter strength necessary to invade Europe. The directive asserted that it would be better to damage a small number of "really essential industries" severely than damaging many a little. The project was essentially American; RAF Bomber command was given a large get-out clause as the plan "did not attempt to prescribe [its] major effort." Bert Harris was safe to pursue his strategy of winning the war by bombing German cities alone.

The RAF did, though, make a major concession to a rational use of air power in the pending attack on mainland Europe. A "Tactical Air Force" was formed in Britain on the model of the organisation that AM Tedder had developed to support the surface operations of the other armed forces in the Mediteranean, where practical experience had demonstrated that the RAF's doctrine of assigning a war-winning role to strategic bombing was not a complete solution. The formation corresponded roughly to the Luftflotten that had been a key part of the Wehrmacht conquest of Europe in 1940, combining bombers, fighters and reconaissance aircraft to win air superiority over the battlefiled and use it to support the ground offensive. 2 Group with its light bombers was reallocated from Bomber Command to the new formation. Light bombers barely featured in Harris's vision so this move caused no controversy at the time; the true argument over the deployment of heavy bombers was yet to come.

Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist leader, arrived in Japan by submarine from Germany, where he had failed to win the Nazi leadership over to his schemes to overthrow British leadership in the sub-continent. Bose was soon received by Japanese PM Tojo whom he impressed. Tojo sponsored Bose's rebuilding of the Indian National Army, composed mainly of PoWs, and the formation of  "Free India", in theory a government in exile, to provide political leadership to his movement.