Before Arthur Harris Became Bomber Harris

Some 70 years after World War II, the name Arthur ("Bomber") Harris often evokes negative reactions to his tenure as head of the RAF Bomber Command, and his engineering of the strategic population bombing of Dresden, Germany. But few recall that prior to this role, Harris served several stints in the Middle East, during which he developed his strategy of civilian bombing, that he applied so forcefully in World War II. The first was in Iraq in the 1920s (about which a further blog post to come), the second as Air Operations Commander, Palestine, July 1938 - July 1939. He arrived in the midst of the Arab Revolt, a bloody and costly three year nationalist uprising of the Palestinians in protest against the growing number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, and British administration of the country under the League of Nations mandate. Armed bands of Arab guerrillas would scatter from surrounding villages, making it nearly impossible for British ground forces to round them up and arrest them. Harris devised a method to counter this by using RAF aircraft to drop leaflets onto the villages, warning residents not to flee or risk massive bombing destruction. With the guerrillas thus trapped in the villages, British Army troops could then encircle the villages and apprehend them. The strategy, known as the "Air-Pin", effectively tamped down the uprising. Commanding the northern ground forces at the time was another future key World War II senior commander, then Major General Bernard Law Montgomery. I plan to post much more on this in the future.