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The employment of the strategic bombers in the weeks preceding D-Day, and afterwards in support of the armies in Normandy, may today seem cautious and unimaginative. But it was vital insurance, and reflected a perfectly logical view of strategic priorities by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Overlord had to succeed. Bomber Command and the USAAF were directed to do all in their power to see that it did so, and worked to that end with courage, dedication and professionalism. If their leaders were heard with insufficient respect in the councils of war, they had only their own vast errors of judgement of the past to blame. It is an indulgence of historians and armchair critics to pretend that, in the spring of 1944, there was a better way.
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