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Research operations came into play in Great Britain at the onset of the Second World War. It was quite a novelty. Civil researchers were invited into the very interior of military organizations to apply their scientific approach to the optimization of combat methods. In Royal Air Force Bomber Command, they contributed to the bombing of Germany’s major cities, which by necessity involved a large number of civilian victims. This article, based on the little used body of reports drafted by those researchers during the war, shows that science deliberately supported such an offensive against civilians.