Bilow
re:
But the author agrees with my assessment of military thinking on the effectiveness of strategic bombing.
I'm glad we have a common document to discuss this subject. It's now just a simple matter of understanding what the document says. -g-
That is, that strategic bombing in and of itself had almost nothing to do with the outcome of the war.
This is where our thinking diverges. You are considering a single factor "in and of itself". My argument is looking at the situation in it's entirety. Lets have a quick recap of the WW2 Europe situation at the beginning of operation Barbarossa (German invasion of Russia) 1941. Sorry I don't have links, I have work to do to access this type of data from the net, many of my links don't work for some reason, a problem with my browser set up I expect. None of the data is controversial though.
Theater.............No of German Division deployed
West.........................38
Norway.......................12
Denmark.......................1
Balkens.......................7
Libia............... .........2
Eastern Front...............145
So, although the North African campaign was only just warming up, the Allies were up against just TWO German divisions. If the Russians got beat, a good portion of those 145 German divisions could be freed up for a Western campaign.
The central piece to my argument is that the Luftwaffe was the "weak link", the achillies heel, the fly in the ointment to the otherwise formidable German fighting machine.
Until Stalingrad the Russian defences lost ground and armies at a frightening rate. It was just one immense slaughter. The Allies helped by sending supplies. What else could they do? The strategic bombing campaign was the only "other front" available unless they were willing to accept casualty rates of a similar magnitude to the Russians.
Then Stalingrad happened (and on a much smaller scale El Amain). Then the firestorm of Hamburg occurred. The scale of devastation at Hamburg was seen by the Germans on a similar level as the defeat at Stalingrad, just it was in their own back yard.
historyplace.com
the war for the German Luftwaffe had essentially been lost before the advent of the American long range fighter into the war and before it ever became a factor in winning the air war for the Allies. Simply stated, the Germans lost in a war of attrition, the same war of attrition General Eaker had envisioned the strategic bomber force would win.3 This war of attrition, however, started long before America's entry into the war in 1941. By the time the long-range fighter arrived in theatre, it had basically been lost by the Germans, not won by the Western Allies. There were several factors that led Hauptmann Hermann to write in 1943, "The Luftwaffe is doomed."4 The decisions to curtail production of aircraft early on and not develop advanced aircraft to conduct critical missions throughout the war; the significant loss of aircraft while fighting a three-front war; and the critical loss of experienced pilots, to include the lack of pilot training, were all key to the demise of the Luftwaffe
So what type of aircraft were meant by "develop advanced aircraft to conduct critical missions throughout the war"?? If you read Chapter 111 "Aircraft development" you will see that the Luftwaffe failed to develop large four engined strategic bombers. They failed because Goering had a bee in his bonnet that said all bombers must be capable of dive bombing. If you read the chapter it states... "When the German Air Staff realised the importance of the heavy, four engine bomber for the strategy that was now required to prosecute the war, it was unable to devote the resources or the manpower in sufficient numbers to have any effect on the outcome of the war."
that link once again.
au.af.mil
If they wanted to attrit the German air force surely they would have been intelligent enough to arrange for the fight to occur over allied territory. As it was, Allied crews that parachuted out were captured by the Germans, and Allied aircraft that were severely damaged had to limp the long ways home. No, if the Allied objective had been to attrit the German airforce, they'd have obtained this objective through the obvious technique of using fighter aircraft to obtain control over the air.
This is not a question about whether it was militarily useful to bomb Germany. There is no question that dropping bombs on factories reduces the factory's output. But the fact is that German aircraft production continued to ramp steeply in the face of the bombing raids. This is something that the Allies were unable to realise until after the war, so they continued with their overuse of strategic bombing for the duration.
Are you suggesting that if the Allies built a massive number of fighters, stationed them in the UK, the Luftwaffe would kindly oblige them by coming over to the UK to be shot down? While they had a very important war in the East with 145 divisions fighting the Russians?? I think not.
The Allies had to call the German tune and force the Luftwaffe to attack them. The strategic bombing campaign did curtail the manufacturing industries in many ways. The fact that super human efforts were used to disperse the industry, and make ever increasing numbers of fighter aircraft actually prove the point beyond question imho.
I have no argument that the fighter/bomber ratio should have been higher, and that the 30's "bombing only" argument does not remotely guarantee success in a war. In the scale of things it was a "fine tuning" problem though, even with 55k UK Air combat casualties!!
skalman.nu
In the context to assisting the Russians though, the Strategic Bombing offensive the quickest acceptable way to bring military assistance of the direct kind. |
