Henry:
<<The mission was twofold; 1. destroy Axis industrial capacity 2. demoralize the civilian population. The combination of the two would lead to enemy surrender.>>
I don't understand how maintaining air superiority over battle fields, and interfering with an enemy's ability to move troops and material isn't of strategic importance. Perhaps that's because I don't agree with your view of the Allies objectives for the air war. With the results of the bombing of London, I don't see how they could envision the bombing of Germany to cause it's surrender.
I don't have any production figures...but how many tactical successes must one have to gain a strategic success?<g>
The Russians may have been severely delayed in their oil field occupation had it not been for Allied bombing of Ploesti.
I agree that the German population wasn't sufficiently demoralized to surrender...I doubt that conventional bombing can ever be effective to that extent when it involves someone's homeland.
Whether you choose to include the a-bomb as a part of the aerial bombardment of Japan or not, it was delivered by air, and can rightly, IMHO, be credited with ending the war. Was conventional bombing going to get the same result? Not IMHO - or probably that of the people in charge, or they wouldn't have dropped the Bomb(s).
To digress a bit...a year or two ago, it was popular in the press to second guess our dropping the Bomb on Japan. IMHO, having seen the newsreels of the carnage wrought on Iwo Jima and the other islands, having walked down my block and seen window after window in which medals and flags were displayed that indicated men in the service, many having been killed or wounded...and knowing how determined, if not fanatical, the Japanese soldiers were...IMHO it (the Bomb) was a blessing, in that it spared the lives of millions of Americans and Japanese that would have almost certainly been lost if we were forced to invade "Fortress Japan." Some in the press seemed to be of the opinion that Japan was ready to surrender before the Bomb was dropped...I guess that's why Hiroshima wasn't enough, and it took the destruction of Nagasaki to convince the Emperor. |
