the Rhine-Ruhr area (the "Armory of the Third Reich") began on March 5/6 1943 with the first raid of the Battle of the Ruhr flew RAF Bomber Command's 100,000th sortie of WWII which destroyed 160 acres and hit 53 Krupps buildings. The series of raids on Hamburg (the Battle of Hamburg) in mid 1943 was one of the most successful Command operations, although Harris' extension of the offensive into the Battle of Berlin failed to decimate the capital and cost his force over 1,000 crews through the winter of 1943-44. Operation Hydra, the mission via Bomber Command Operation Order No. 176 (9th July, 1943) that bombed Peenemünde after midnight of August 17/18 August 1943, was the opening of Operation Crossbow
By April 1944, Harris called off his strategic offensive as the bomber force was seconded (much to his annoyance) to tactical and communications targets in France prior to D-Day. The anti-transport offensive proved highly effective. By late 1944, back attacking Third Reich targets, Bomber Command did have a genuine operational capability to put 1,000 aircraft over a target without extraordinary efforts. Ironically by this time the land battle through Northern Europe was making the Bomber Offensive increasingly meaningless.
The peak of Bomber Command's operations occurred in the raids of March 1945, when its squadrons dropped their highest amount of ordnance (by weight) for any month in the entire war. The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21-22 April, when 76 Mosquitos made six separate attacks just before Soviet forces entered the city centre. Afterwards most of the rest of the bombing raids made by the RAF were tactical support attacks. The last major strategic raid was the destruction of the oil refinery at Tonsberg in southern Norway by 107 Lancasters, on the night of 25-26 of April.
Once the surrender of Germany had occurred, plans were put in place to send the Tiger Force of about 30 British Commonwealth bomber squadrons to bases on Okinawa, and there was a reorganisation of groups within Bomber Command for the proposed invasion of Japan. However, the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred before any part of the force had been transferred to the Pacific.
Regarding the legality of the campaign, an article in the International Review of the Red Cross stated:
Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. A Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I. By comparison, the US Eighth Air Force, which flew daylight raids over Europe, had 350,000 aircrew during the war, and suffered 26,000 killed and 23,000 POWs. Of the RAF Bomber Command personnel killed during the war, 72% were British, 18% were Canadian, 7% were Australian and 3% were New Zealanders. The fatalities included over 38,000 RAF aircrew (of all nationalities), 9,900 Royal Canadian Air Force personnel, and over 1,500 aircrew from countries in occupied Europe. It is illustrative that members of the Australian squadrons of Bomber Command equalled only two percent of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) personnel, but the 4,050 killed represented 23% of the total number of RAAF personnel killed in action during World War II. No. 460 Squadron RAAF, which had an aircrew establishment of about 200, experienced 1,018 combat deaths during 1942-45 and was therefore effectively wiped out five times over. Nevertheless, by the beginning of 1945, 46% of Bomber Command personnel were from the Dominions.
In total 364,514 operational sorties were flown, 1,030,500 tons of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action.
Harris was advised by an Operational Research Section (ORS) under a civilian, Basil Dickins, supported by a small team of mathematics and scientists. ORS2 (under Reuben Smeed) was concerned with analysing bomber losses. They were able to influence operations by identifying successful defensive tactics and equipment, though some of t