<< The carpet bombing of fixed troop and weapons emplacements can be devastatingly effective.... >>
I can't think of a single historical example to support that statement. OTOH, I can think of numerous examples that are inconsistent with that notion.
Fixed troops that are susceptible to carpet bombing are sitting ducks. They know better, and so they dig in. Every army in the world, even poorly equipped and backwards armies such as the Viet Cong and Mujaheedin, know very well how to avoid "devastation" from carpet bombing. Sometimes carpet bombing can, in the midst of throwing a lot of dirt around uselessly, take out some strategic targets. And sometimes if applied truly indiscriminately to entire cities it can eventually weaken (but not destroy) the enemy's ability to produce the goods and services war requires, but that usually takes a very, very long time and necessitates that most of the casualties, by design, be civilian ones. But most of it is just strategically ineffective, or worse, counterproductive because it tends to just steel the resolve of the enemy, and they get accustomed to it and bombing frightens them less and less. And resolve, as Napoleon insightfully remarked, is 5 times as important as numbers of troops and how well they are equipped; Patton thought Napoleon underestimated.
And there are numerous historical examples of that phenomenon. In fact, it is evident in our own national anthem: "By the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air." Didn't exactly make Francis Scott Key or anybody else there cringe in terror and head for the hills, rather quite the opposite.
JMVHO.....
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