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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 (4634)	10/27/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: Henry Volquardsen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6418

Merritt, 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. Yes it is of strategic importance in the sense of the way you use the word. But I'm using the term in the technical sense used by the military. Military operations are broken into categories; tactical, grand tactical and strategic. The tactical is what happens in direct context of the battlefield; how you get that machine gun off that ridge. Grand tactical is operations in the immediate vicinty of the battlefield that will directly effect the battle. Manuevering your divisions and bringing up reinforcements are part of the grand tactical. Strategic covers those actions which will not effect the immediate conduct of the battle but will have long term consequences; such as disrupting industrial production. Tactics today, grand tactics the next couple of days, strategic next week and beyond. 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. It was the goals Allied command claimed for the strategic air campaign. And yes I agree that after the bombing of London and other British cities it was unrealistic to envision bombing causing the civilians to surrender but there were those in the west who thought it would. But the prime goal was to destroy industrial production. ANd as the numbers point out it is very clear that German production of war materials increased throughout the war. So the strategic air campaign very clearly failed to reduce the production of war materials. The Russians may have been severely delayed in their oil field occupation had it not been for Allied bombing of Ploesti. I disagree but it is a hypothetical and beside the point. The point was that German oil production was increasing until the fields were captured. If the Russians had been delayed oil production would most likely continued to increase. Yes the A-bomb was part of the strategic effort. My point is that it is not something we are going to do all the time. And that is in important in the context of the lessons learned. The US fell in love with the notion that airpower can win on its own. We have consistently overestimated the impact of strategic airpower ever since. Even in the Gulf War we tried to bomb the Iraqis into submission. I believe we could have bombed them into the stone age and they still would have not surrendered. Air power was very important in the Gulf but it was important because it cut off and isolated the immediate battlefield and destroyed Iraqi assets piecemeal. It was not important because it blew up power plants and ministries in Baghdad. I also believe the jury is still out on Bosnia. I'm aware of all the second guessing regarding the use of the bomb against Japan. FWIW I believe it was entirely justified for just the reasons you state. Henry