Hi Pearly_Button; Thanks for the link. But the author agrees with my assessment of military thinking on the effectiveness of strategic bombing. That is, that strategic bombing in and of itself had almost nothing to do with the outcome of the war. This is standard military thinking nowadays, and the article reflects this.
THE LUFTWAFFE AND ITS WAR OF ATTRITION
Patricia L. C. Priest, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF, April 1995
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The Luftwaffe had to be neutralized before the invasion of Normandy could take place. Granted this was a necessary step. However, the Luftwaffe had already lost its fighting ability and the war through poor strategy and judgment long before the strategic bomber and the long range fighter could become factors in the war.
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"Allied air power was decisive in the war in Western Europe. . . . In the air, its victory was complete."1 Throughout my military career, I had always been under the impression that strategic bombing during World War II was the critical factor in winning the war and that air superiority was won over the skies of Europe because of America's superior aircraft and better trained airmen. I had always given credit to those great American pilots for winning the air war over Germany. Recently, however, I have altered my thinking. I will concede that the strategic bombing campaign's objective of obtaining air superiority over Germany was finally achieved during the period between December 1943 and the invasion of Normandy with the arrival of the P-51 long-range fighter. Had it not been for gaining air superiority over Germany, the invasion of Normandy would have been a failure, if not impossible. [Bilow: Note that Taiwan's immunity to invasion from China has been due to the inability of China to obtain air superiority sufficient to make the crossing.]
So, why has my thinking changed? With German aircraft production at its peak in 1943 and 1944, I now ask myself where were the bombers and fighters and why were they of no consequence during the invasion?2 The answer I discovered was that even with a mass number of aircraft available, if in fact production numbers were not inflated by the Germans, 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 theater, 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.
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The real question is whether the war of attrition was most efficiently waged through the use of fighter or bomber aircraft. The above article repeatedly states that the strategic bombing campaigns were ineffective, while the tactical close air support was essential. So one wonders why it would be more effective to attrit using bombers (which were so horribly expensive) than by fighters, (which were much cheaper, and in addition designed for the job of destroying enemy aircraft).
Here's the figures for US aircraft losses by type and by cause in the ETO: (Yeah, "site:.mil" gives you great hits, don't it!)
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Sorties flown in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO), by plane type. Note that there are more fighter aircraft sorties flown then heavy bomber:
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In other words, the casualty rate for heavy bombers was probably higher than for fighters.
Here's flying time of airplanes in the ETO by type of airplane from Aug 1942 to May 1945. This indicates that the heavy bombers spent less time in the air, per plane lost, than the fighters did. This could be due to maintenance, bombers being flown in more hazardous conditions, or the fact that heavy bombers are not very maneuverable and so make easier targets:
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Gasoline consumption in the ETO by aircraft type shows that heavy bombers used up the vast majority of our (very precious and expensive) fuel:
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Combat sorties by fighters shows that nearly half their sorties were escort duties. In other words, if the purpose of the bombing raids was to shoot down the Germany air force, then why not assign fighter aircraft to that task rather than to the task of supporting fragile strategic bombers, who bombs don't reduce the enemies ability to produce aircraft?
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The above links are from the very useful page:
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You'll note that our grand total losses in heavy bombers (5,548 aircraft) is larger than our grand total losses in fighter aircraft (5,324) and dwarfs our losses in medium and light bombers (815). When you take into account the fact that each bomber typically carried around 10x as many men as a fighter, and that the heavy bombers cost 5x as much as the fighters, you can see that our concentration in air power (or at least in our air power that was destroyed) was tilted heavily towards heavy bombers. (Something like 70% in dollars, and more in casualties.)
Why did we do this? The reason is stated in the article you linked to. Before the war, all the military analysts thought that strategic bombing would be what won the war. Both sides made this mistake. When the allies bombed German aircraft factories they were attempting to destroy German aircraft production. They were not trying to force Germany to defend their airspace with fighters so that they could attrit the German air force. 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 realize until after the war, so they continued with their overuse of strategic bombing for the duration.
If the US had converted just a third of their heavy bomber production into fighters they'd have almost tripled their fighter aircraft production. In addition, since fighters require so much fewer airmen, and are able to make more sorties per day and are less fragile, they'd have saved lives and freed up man power for other things. The resulting plethora of fighter aircraft would have given us complete control of the air long before we actually achieved it. Perhaps Normandy could have been launched a year earlier. Now that would have helped the Russians. If the French had done the same thing in 1937 perhaps the resulting close air support would have saved them in June 1940.
Heck, the author of the paper says that the Germans were basically lucky to have begun the war with more tactical bombers than their own theory suggested. That we instead concentrated on strategic bombing was due to an error in military judgement dating from before the war. It's funny that the Germans got lucky this way (and so their blitzkrieg was initially so effective). We got lucky in a similar way with aircraft carriers. Before the war the naval theory was that capital ships were most important. Due to a naval arms reduction treaty the US had to convert some of its ships under construction into aircraft carriers, which were thought to be not so important. The actual war quickly made it obvious that air craft carriers were the essence of the Pacific war. But the inadequacy of strategic bombing did not become evident until after the end of the war.
Now that you've seen the actual numbers from the USAF, you should at least have your viewpoint on this shaken.
-- Carl |
