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Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press, and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the latter half of the Second World War. In 1942, the British Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. Harris was tasked with implementing Churchill's policy and supported the development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively. Harris assisted British Chief of the Air Staff Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal in carrying out the United Kingdom's most devastating attacks against the German infrastructure and population, including the Bombing of Dresden. In 1910, at the age of 17, Harris emigrated to Southern Rhodesia, but he returned to England in 1915 to fight in the European theatre of the First World War. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, with which he remained until the formation of the Royal Air Force in 1918, and he remained in the Air Force through the 1920s and 1930s, serving in India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Harris took command of No. 5 Group RAF in England, and in February 1942 was appointed head of Bomber Command. He retained that position for the rest of the war. After the War Harris moved to South Africa where he managed the South African Marine Corporation. Harris's continued preference for area bombing over precision targeting in the last year of the war remains controversial, partly because by this time many senior Allied air commanders thought it less effective and partly for the large number of civilian casualties and destruction this strategy caused in Continental Europe. ==Early life== Harris was born on 13 April 1892, at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, where his parents were staying while his father, George Steel Travers Harris,〔Probert 2006, p. 23.〕 was on home leave from the Indian Civil Service. With his father in India most of the time, Harris grew up without a sense of solid roots and belonging; he spent much of his older childhood with the family of a Kent rector, the Reverend C E Graham-Jones, whom he later recalled fondly.〔Probert 2006, pp. 26–28.〕 Harris was educated at Allhallows School in Devon, while his two older brothers were educated at the more prestigious Sherborne and Eton, respectively; according to biographer Henry Probert, this was because Sherborne and Eton were expensive and "there was not much money left for number three".〔Probert 2006, p. 24.〕 A former Allhallows student, the actor Arthur Chudleigh, often visited the school and gave the boys free tickets to his shows. Harris received such a ticket in 1909, and went to see the play during his summer holidays. The lead character in the show was a Rhodesian farmer who returned to England to wed, but ultimately fell out with his pompous fiancée and married the more practical housemaid instead. The idea of a country where one was judged on ability rather than class was very inspiring to the young, adventurous Harris, who promptly told his father (who had just retired and returned to England) that he intended to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia instead of going back to Allhallows for the new term. Harris's father was disappointed, having had in mind a military or civil service career for his son, but agreed when Harris showed no sign of changing his mind.〔 In early 1910, Harris senior paid his son's passage on the SS ''Inanda'' to Beira in Mozambique, from where he travelled to Umtali in Manicaland by rail.〔Probert 2006, pp. 27–30.〕 Harris earned his living over the next few years mining, coach-driving and farming.〔Longmate 1983, p. 138.〕 He received a more permanent position in November 1913, when he was taken on by Crofton Townsend, a man from near Cork in Ireland who had moved to Rhodesia and founded Lowdale Farm near Mazoe in Mashonaland in 1903. Harris quickly gained his employer's trust, and was made farm manager at Lowdale when Townsend went to visit England for a year in early 1914. Having acquired the skills necessary to ranch successfully in Rhodesia, Harris decided that he would start his own farm in the country as soon as Townsend returned.〔Probert 2006, p. 31.〕 According to Probert, Harris by now regarded himself "primarily as a Rhodesian", a self-identification he would retain for the rest of his life.〔Probert 2006, p. 32.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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