http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqN_Pd58MFwWell that looks like an awful lot of moving trains in 1945 and I am quite sure there were lots more.
Destroyed rail road marshalling depots do stop trains from moving. Bombing key rail road bridges and transfer stations do stop trains from moving and the supplies and soldiers they carry.
They stop them at THOSE locations only. Bombers weren't destroying miles of rail systems. They were destroying a rail yard that might be a one mile square.
Any materials they destroyed was pure luck and damage to tracks was a very temporary interruption.
Bombers didn't hit rail yards to kill trains or material, they blew up a flat piece of ground with a few sticks of steel and lumber. It is not a difficult task to repair a damaged rail line. Even a couple miles of destroyed track, which btw would have been a miraculous success for high alt bombers.
Marshaling yards are large turn around/switching networks. Losing them is an inconvenience, not a show stopper. Trains could be re-routed. All construction units have to do is repair ONE SINGLE LINE through a damaged yard, a job that could take less than a day, and the train continues on to another station or they just unload where they stopped. After all, those yards we are talking about were already trucking distance from German troops.
It can be a large time consuming task to rebuild a bridge. Fighter bombers destroyed bridges, saboteurs destroyed bridges and blew up trains. Heavy bombers probably rarely if ever destroyed a bridge.
All these reports about "bombing effects" getting tossed around in this debate ...could never in a million years, be so meticulous as to be able to precisely differentiate the results of fighter attacks on rail transportation, resistance saboteurs, and heavy bombers... no expert in the world can say with any certainty which attacks had x/amount of effect.
I can guarantee that reports by Bomber Command about the effect their attacks had on the transportation system conveniently failed consider all, if any of the disruptions by fighter bombers and resistance groups.
USAAF generals in the PTO argued against the invasion of Japan because by the summer of 1945, virtually all of Japan's strategic targets were destroyed and were virtually out of strategic targets to bomb. LeMay was opposed to the invasion for this reason and believed that Japan would surrender by November due to the US bombing of Japan and Japanese strategic targets throughout the Pacific.
I'm not sure what targets you are referring to. Japan was cut off at the end of the war because the Navy, Army and Marines had Japan surrounded. Strategic bombing of the main island was incidental and completely unnecessary considering the A bomb was almost finished. We could have ordered our troops to stand down except to blockade the Island until the A bomb was dropped. We could have starved them into submission without hitting a single target in Japan if we really had to.
Japan was beat and virtually helpless.
Maybe you are including the use of any heavy bombers in the island hopping as "strategic bombing." While it may have fit a strict definition of strategic bombing at times, use of heavy bombers in the PTO was nothing like what high command was doing in the ETO.
From what I have seen, the vast majority of heavy bomber use in the pacific was tactical in nature. They were smaller scale attacks, the populations in the PTO were occupied and generally friendly, whatever effect bombers had in the island campaigns was local in nature, their targets were not typical of ETO strategic targets like material sources, production centers or enemy populations. And if I'm not mistaken, the overwhelming majority of their targets were military or shipping. None of which fits the ideal strategic campaign of the ETO.
US Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946 concluded that Japan would have surrendered by November 1st due to the US strategic bombing without having to resort to an invasion.
Ah yes, another report by Strategic Bomber Command. And from right after the war too. That wouldn't be at all biased would it.
I've seen several historians say that neither Germany nor Japan would have surrendered because of bombing. So perhaps that survey was based on the fact that Japan now had no way to fish commercially which was their primary meat source and no safe supply route in or out of their country.
'The enemy has struck us at one of our weakest points. If they persist at it this time, we will soon no longer have any fuel production worth mentioning'." (May 19th, 1944)
After the Normandy landings, Speer sent another message to Hitler about the attacks on the synthetic fuel plants.
"... the allies staged a new series of attacks which put many fuel plants out of action. On June 22, nine-tenths of the production of airplane fuel was knocked out." (June 24th, 1944)
Look at the dates of those statements. How far into Europe were the allies at that point? Close enough to use strike fighters to hit those fields?
A month later, Speer appealed to Hitler to increase fighter defenses over the synthetic fuel plants.
"I implored Hitler ... to reserve a significantly larger part of the fighter plane production ... to protecting the home hydrogenation plants ...." (July 28th, 1944)
And in these quotes you can again see the writing on the wall.
fighters were a determining factor for both sides.
When Allied heavy bombers were finally able to reach targets deep into eastern Germany and hit the synthetic fuel production plants, Speer sent this message to Hitler after the Politz plant (70% destroyed) was bombed by US B-17s and B-24s.
I'm not saying the strikes on oil plants was a waste of time. It was the smartest part of the strategic bombing campaign. But it didn't happen soon enough, it most likely could have been done better with less loss and it didn't win the war.
The Battle of the Ruhr was a 5 month strategic bombing campaign of the Ruhr Valley, Germany's industrial heart. In Adam Tooze study of the German war economy, he found British and US bomber raids had severely disrupted German production. Steel production had fallen by 200k tons, the armaments industry was left with a steel shortfall of 400k tons. After doubling production in 1942, steel production only increased by 20% in 1943.
Adam Tooze wanted to validate strategic bombing and even he said "they often chose the wrong targets."
Historians emphatically agree that prior to 1944 the strategic bombing campaign was a complete failure. Whatever minor successes you can point to mean nothing in the overall picture. Germany won many battles, in the end you can't call them successful for it.
After doubling production in 1942, steel production only increased by 20% in 1943. This caused Speer to cut planned increases in production and the bombings also caused a critical shortage in sub-components. The increase of Luftwaffe aircraft production also came to a halt. Monthly production failed to increase between 7/43 and 3/44. According to Tooze, British and US bombers stopped "Speer's armaments miracle in its tracks". Krupps Works was so severly damaged that Krupps never restarted locomotive production after the raids in March and April of 1943.
You know as well as I do Germany produced more aircraft at the end of the war than they did in the beginning. So obviously this shortage wasn't that detrimental. If they had produced as many fighter pilots, then we would have been in trouble.
The strategic bombing campaign was born in a belief that a country could win a war with bombers alone. RAF Air Marshal Harris was called "obsessed" with his version of strategic bombing and almost lost his command over it. He wanted so bad to prove the strategic bombing could win a war, he was blinded to any rational alternatives in spite of the cost.
It was mistaken concept that was poorly thought out and executed. The tons of materials and thousands of men wasted because of it could have had better effect in an overwhelming fighter force that provided tactical air support and precision strikes against whatever targets it could reach.
A small heavy bomber force defended with an almost excessive use of fighters could have done what little fighter bombers couldn't do.
