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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Merritt who wrote (4611)	10/26/1999 5:44:00 PM
From: Henry Volquardsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

Merritt, I thought I would get someone with that -g-. Let me make one thing clear to start. I am making a sharp distinction between strategic air and tactical air. US tactical efforts were extremely successful. My thoughts on US strategic air is as follows. What was the mission of US strategic air power in WWII? The mission was twofold; 1. destroy Axis industrial capacity 2. demoralize the civilian population. The combination of the two would lead to enemy surrender. It is my contention that the effort failed in both regards. Lets start with Germany. You say The Axis was most certainly weakened, and their mobility reduced, by the bombing of the oil fields in what's now considered Eastern Europe. Disagreed. There was no discernable drop in German oil supplies due to bombing. German oil production was 6.7 million tons in '40, 7.3 in '41, 7.7 in '42, 8.9 in '43 and 6.3 in '44. Production increased throughout the war. The decrease in '44 was not a result of bombing but due to the Ploesti oil fields in Romania being over run by the Red Army. You say Their factories were badly damaged and war materials manufacture slowed. Disagreed. Their factories were damaged but production did not slow. Armored vehicle production double in '43 and increased 50% in '44. Aircraft production increased 50% in '43 and almost doubled in '44. Stats for '45 are incomplete but monthly numbers were rising. The Germans had no problem with material. Their problem was they were badly outnumbered and they couldn't train new troops quickly enough. Regarding the second goal, the German population was demoralized but not sufficiently to cause surrender. The entire country was occupied before the German military finally surrendered. The air war did nothing to hasten this surrender. Where US air power was successful was in hampering the movement of front line troops and preventing the Germans from rapidly deploying reserves. But this is an issue of tactical air. I have less data on Japan. But empirical evidence shows the Japanese were having no trouble keeping their armed forces supplied despite the extensive fire bombing of their cities. They had plenty of equipment in hand. Their biggest shortage was in trained pilots to fly their planes. They had plenty of planes on hand. And civilian morale was far from broken by the fire bombing. The civilian populace showed every indication of being willing to continue the fight. It was only when the A-bombs were dropped that the Emperor decided to end it. But I do not include the dropping of the air bombs because it was not part of the ordinary arsenal of the air campaign. Henry