Hi Pearly Button; Re: "It's my contention that all those references miss the point. The Allies air forces chewed up the German Air force for example. Utterly."
No one disagrees with this. But what chewed up the German Air force was fighters, not strategic bombers, (or strategic bombing). If the most cost effective way to chew up the German Air force was with strategic bombers, the Allies wouldn't have sent along fighter cover, they'd have just used the guns on the strategic bombers. The purpose of the fighters was air superiority, and that means "chewing up the German Air force."
Re: "If the German Air force had been allowed to exist relatively unmolested you would have not had any Normandy."
This is true, but what destroyed the German Air force was fighter aircraft, not strategic bombers. The question is not the usefulness of control of the air or fighter aircraft, the question is the cost / effectiveness of strategic bombing. What we're talking about here is "bang for the buck".
Re: "The european bombing campaign was a crucial part of WW2."
It was a very expensive part of the Allied effort. There is no question that strategic bombing hurt the Germans. The question is whether or not it was the most effective way to hurt the Germans at the cost to the Allies. There were 55,000 fatalities in the RAF Bomber Command alone during the war.
Each bomber that went down took about 10 or so men with it, mostly fatalities, with a lot captured. To really appreciate how many young men died in those bombers you have to tool around the French countryside, where at each crash site the collection of graves marked by crosses are still maintained.
Of Canada's 35,000 combat deaths in the war, 10,000 were in the RAF Bomber Command. There was a sensational (and wrong) show made about this entitled something like "Death by Moonlight" which said it was much higher, but the 10,000 figures is correct.
The other fact is that the bomber campaign used up huge amount of war effort that might better have been spent building the tactical aircraft that would have, for instance, provided better air superiority and close air support during the Normandy landings. Think of all the dog faces that wished a P-51 would show up and give him a hand. Or the effort (money) could have gone towards more or better tanks, etc.
In other words, every time you spend a dollar on one thing there is less to go around to all the other things that are worthwhile to spend on. Here's some numbers:
A-36 cost $49,000: (dive bomber)
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P-51 cost $54,000: (fighter)
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B-17 cost $276,000: (strategic bomber)
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B-24 cost $336,000: (strategic bomber)
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So the question is this. Which was worth more, militarily speaking, one B-17, six A-36s or five P-51s?
As far as close air support, the A-36 is what you want, and for air superiority, a P-51 is far superior to a B-17. And a P-51 only needs one pilot, while a B-17 takes a Pilot, Copilot, Bombardier, Radio man, Navigator, Flight engineer, Ball turret gunner, Tail gunner, and Waist gunner.
So the question was this. Is one B-17 worth five P-51s? But it goes deeper than that. Are the 9 combat deaths when a B-17 goes down worth more or less than the 5 combat deaths when 5 P-51s go down, in terms of damage to the enemy?
If you want to scare the civilians (and piss them off, which seems largely to have the effect of making them work harder) then you use the B-17s, but if you want to kill enemy soldiers, you need the attack and fighter aircraft. Modern thinking is that strategic bombing was an inefficient use of the Allies war resources. Not a waste, just a less efficient use than could otherwise be had. Of course that's what the professional military is all about, efficiency.
Re: "It was the only help we were giving the Russians for some considerable time. They played a significant part in winning that war as I'm sure your aware, and they came close to getting whacked."
The Allies had campaigns going constantly in North Africa and Southern Europe. In addition, we were supplying munitions to the Soviets. If we hadn't put so much resources into bombers, we could have shipped them more fighter aircraft. Maybe even with the pilots. I'm pretty sure they would have an easier time against the Germans if they'd had air superiority against them.
Re: "A few more planes could have made a difference."
The question is what type of planes would have made the most difference. As far as supporting an invasion of Europe, it's pretty clear that what you want is close air support and air superiority aircraft, not strategic bombers.
I think this is about as good a defense of the modern military thinking on strategic bombing in WW2 as I can put together. If I didn't convince you, I'm not going to try again.
-- Carl
P.S. A Spitfire supposedly cost under 10,000 pounds, which was, I think, considerably cheaper than the P-51, but I don't have the conversion figure to dollars:
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