Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, 23 of Germany largest urban center had, at minimum, at least 60% destruction. We killed at least 600,000 German civilians and industrial workers. And that was just the cities. Add in the rail system, the river system, road transport, airfields...ect
...and yet you casually leave out the war time efforts of the RAF and its Bomber Command - as if above mentioned doctrine of area bombing against civilian targets was led by the USAAF - which, it wasn't.
Beginning in the end of 1943 Allied bombing began a campaign to largely destroy German society and the effects of it were devastating, even if tough to qualify, and even tougher to ethically justify. But I suppose one can if you take into account Germany's own bombing of civilians and even worse sins.
...and yet the USAAF never officially recognized the Lindemann approach to the theory of offensive bombing. Although practical difficulties has forced the USAAF bomber campaigns to be more
"flexible" in the choice of targets, the official doctrine maintained was still the daylight precision raids to the purpose of directly disabling the enemy's industrial capacity - which may be considered largely a failure since the acceleration of wartime production of the Third Reich reached its peak long after the first USAAF bomber raids were carried out against Germany, instead of declining.
Only after the depletion of critical fuel and pilot resources after a long period of forced attrition - which was never the intended, primary purpose of such bombing raids - did the German warmachine came to a grinding halt, after total loss off air superiority and the Russians closing in towards Berlin.
Again, the allies bomber war forced the Germans to commit a huge amount of resources to defend against the onslaught. In June 1940 the Luftwaffe used 0% of its airplanes against Yank and Brit bombers. By June of 1944 that number was 29%. And by January of 1945 50% of Luftwaffe airplanes were committed to the western bomber war.
This is a yet another weird logic. On average more than 80% of both the air force and ground forces were always tied up in the East, which would logically imply the relative success of the bombing operations of the Western Allies were only possible through a bulk of the Geramn armed forces not being able to respond to the threat due to being tied up by the Russians. The tide of the war was already shifting towards the Red Army before June 1944, which fact even gives rise to some conspiracy theorists that D-Day was planned in haste to halt the total domination of Axis Europe by the Soviets.
Your definition of
"successful bomber raids" keeps shrinking with every new paragraph. At first you imply its scope was THE main driving force behind the defeat of Nazi Germany through means of
"annihilating countries", and then it shrinks to
"destroying societies" which as a matter of fact the RAF were more involved with rather than the USAAF, and now its merely worth
"allocation of considerable resources", which percentage never exceeds to the regular amoung of resources allocated, and constant depleted, by the efforts of the Red Army.
Yes its true Germany made remarkable gains in Industrial production but did they do so in spite of the bombers? Or did they do so due to the unprecedented transforming of an entire economy to a war footing utilizing a vast pool of slave labor and materials from conquered territories?
Irrelevant. In the end, the prime directive of the strategic bombing operations is effectively a failure if it cannot achieve its main objective of shutting down industrial capacity of the enemy nation.
And again I ask imagine the production goals they would have met if there were no daylight bomber streams aiming at the heart of their war machine?
Good question.
Now imagine if the daylight bomber operations would even survive long enough to be refined and reach tactical finesse - if ALL of the Axis aerial power was concentrated against the West.
I will also introduce the concept that the allies didn't focus their strategic weapon properly. Instead of zeroing in on one or two rings of the Nazi Industrial chain they overstretched their targeting and ended up dropping to few eggs on to many targets. later in the war as they focused on German fuel production the real capability of strategic bombing began to be realized. Remember this was an entirely new type of war and we were trying to figure out the plan as we were fighting it. And we would have been better off having a Bomber Harris running the USAAC in Europe because there were to many voices being heard regarding targeting. Harris didn't tolerate any meddling. His intent was to level German cities and only very rarely did anyone else in British command get a say so as to where the British strategic Juggernaut was aimed.
True.
So why are you giving credit the USAAF when it should be given to the RAF?
Even still, and dont forget, Yank strategic bombing was in large part responsible for the breakout from Normandy.
Would there be a Normandy without the Soviets?
Your talking what? Italy? Hey its a free country and you have as much right as I to ask for a bomber or a plane set. But I do ask you who in heck is going to fly an Italian bomber? Still there are a few Italian airplanes of interest that should be considered.
Er.. right.
Its estimated the B-29s of the 20'th air force destroyed at least 1/2 of Japanese fighter industrial production which resulted in a net loss of about 7,000 combat planes never being built. By the end of the war 4,000 B-29s had been built. In the 15 months they were operational in Asia they caused significant damage to every major city in Japan, played a very effective role in the blockade of japan with their mine laying sorties, destroyed over 600 major military and industrial targets in Japan.... I have to go to work, I'll research the exact sortie number for the bomber when i get home.
Its impact in the war was huge. There is no doubt of that
Impact against a nation which the US only allocated around 20% of its military capacity as a total, which entered a 3 year long process of defeat since Midway?
