Second Front In The Skies

In the interview “Airpower’s Century” (November/December 2003), Walter Boyne suggests that British air attacks over Germany were a major factor in keeping the Soviet Union fighting. This point deserves some emphasis. According to German figures, nearly one million men were occupied almost exclusively with fighting the Allied Air Forces. A similar number in the German Navy were engaged solely in the Atlantic. Add to this number a good fraction of the Luftwaffe, and one can see that even while there wasn’t any second front on land, much of Germany’s manpower was kept away from the Russian front by the Allies, and largely by the British.