wrote:

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:28:07 +0100, "Paul Sengupta"
wrote:

Inhuman? Yes. Ineffective? No.

If it was effective, why did Germany manage to produce the greatest
amount of war related materials late in the war when the Allied
bombing was at it's greatest effectiveness? Shouldn't things have
been the other way around?

Well, for one thing, the bombing didn't reach it's peak until '44 either. Most
British bombing prior to the adoption of the area bombing strategy in early 1942 was
woefully ineffective. In addition, Bomber Command had only a little over 300 bombers
by early '42, most of which were twins. 1942 saw a gradual buildup of squadrons in
Bomber Command, the introduction of navaids such as "Gee", and the gradual shift to
heavies such as the Lancaster and Stirling. The U.S. wasn't even in the picture in
'42 - we were still building bases and running training missions. Early '43 saw
Bomber Command really beginning to work seriously on the area bombing campaign. The
USAAF started bombing targets in France. By second quarter '43, the USAAF was
seriously working on the problem of fighter escort, starting out with Spitfires
borrowed from the RAF, but the worst losses ever suffered were taken in October of
that year going after targets which were outside fighter range. The P-51 was brought
into the theater in November, but it was not until 1944 that enough squadrons were
available to be effective.

One can almost say that German production fell just as soon as we were able to
regularly put several hundred to a thousand plus bombers over their cities, but, of
course, both the buildup of force and the damage increases were gradual.

George Patterson
None of us is as dumb as all of us.