On Flying Bombs and Trolleys

World War II and the Trolley Problem

The Trolley Problem, a staple of moral musings and internet memes, often seems divorced from reality—a perfect example of philosophers engaged in pointless navel-gazing. However, every now and then, history provides a stark reminder that this kind of life and death moral dilemma can crop up in genuinely difficult real-world circumstances. During World War II, British military strategists faced a harrowing decision that mirrored the core elements of the Trolley Problem: whether to deliberately mislead German forces about the accuracy of their V1 flying bombs.

The Case of the Flying Bomb

At 4.25am on 13th June 1944, a bomb plunged out of the sky, exploding next to a bridge spanning Grove Road in London’s East End. This event would not have been particularly noteworthy, coming as it did during World War II, were it not for the fact that it was no ordinary bomb, but rather a V1 “Flying Bomb”, or Doodlebug, the first to explode on British soil.

The flying bomb was a guided missile developed by the Luftwaffe that struck at targets in Southern England primarily during the summer months of 1944. It was apparent right from the first strike, as Time Magazine noted, that the flying bomb was never going to be something “to be shrugged off with British humour and contempt for the bloody Nazis.”

It was a weapon which struck again & again & again, 18 hours at a stretch. Even its sound-effects were potent: a throaty roar, then a sudden silence when the jet motor stopped and the bomb dived; then the blast. It kept thousands of Londoners in deep shelters. It drove thousands of others to the country. It kept thousands, at work above ground, in a state of sustained apprehension which the Great Blitz never matched. (Time Magazine, July 17, 1944)

All told, the attacks cost upwards of 6,000 lives, and such was the psychological impact of the weapon, an estimated one and a half million Londoners fled the city during this period.

However, as bad as all this was, likely the situation would have been worse were it not for a decision taken by the British to use a network of double agents to feed incorrect information back to German commanders concerning the location and timing of bomb strikes. The intention was to shift the Mean Point of Impact of the bombs to the southeast by deceiving the Germans into thinking the bombs had largely been falling to the northwest of their intended target area. If this could be achieved, then fewer bombs would fall on Central London, which was heavily populated, and the location of the apparatus of government.

This decision proved controversial. Those in favour of deception argued that flying bombs that got through were going to fall somewhere, so it was better they fell where they were going to cause fewest casualties, least damage and minimal disruption to the war effort. In other words, the justification for the plan was simply that it was likely to decrease the total number of lives lost and minimise the damage and disruption caused by the bombs.

Against this, dissenting voices objected that it wasn’t part of a government’s remit to select one group of people to die just in order to save the lives of another group of people. So, for example, Herbert Morrison, a future deputy prime minister, suggested that the plan smacked of playing God, and if approved would be “an interference with providence.”

The argument was never settled to the satisfaction of all involved, and, in the end, the plan was implemented almost by stealth—though, in a modified form, it did receive the support of Winston Churchill.

There is no doubt that the deception had the desired effect. R. V. Jones, a senior military intelligence expert, estimated that by the time the V1 launching sites were overrun by allied soldiers in the early autumn of 1944, more than 10,000 people had been spared death or serious injury. However, this doesn’t settle the moral question, of course, because what is in dispute is precisely whether saving a large number of people justifies sacrificing a smaller number.

The case of the V1 flying bomb demonstrates that the ethical quandaries posed by the Trolley Problem are not mere academic exercises but can have profound real-world analogues. The British strategy here ultimately saved lives, but it’s an uncomfortable thought that it depended upon a moral intuition, the justification of which remains a matter of significant dispute nearly 60 years after philosophers started to pay serious attention to it.