History Channel

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
m...
Robert Sveinson wrote:

You really haven't read the information below have you?


Yes, I have. Do you know who was on the survey?

Is this close enough?

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey was established by the Secretary
of War on November 3, 1944, pursuant to a directive from the late President
Roosevelt.

The officers of the Survey we

Franklin D'Olier, Chairman.
Henry C. Alexander, Vice-Chairman.

George W. Ball,
Harry L. Bowman,
John K. Galbraith,
Rensis Likert,
Frank A. McNamee,
Paul H. Nitze,
Robert P. Russell,
Fred Searls, Jr.,
Theodore P. Wright, Directors.

Charles C. Cabot, Secretary.
The Table of Organization provided for 300 civilians, 350 officers and 500
enlisted men. The Survey operated from headquarters in London and
established forward headquarters and regional headquarters in Germany
immediately following the advance of the Allied armies.






The United States Strategic Bombing Survey
http://www.anesi.com/ussbs02.htm#eaocar

The U. S. Army Air Forces entered the European war with the firm view
that specific industries and services were the most promising targets
in the enemy economy, and they believed that if these targets were to
be hit accurately, the attacks had to be made in daylight. A word
needs to be said on the problem of accuracy in attack. Before the
war, the U. S. Army Air Forces had advanced bombing techniques to
their highest level of development and had trained a limited number
of crews to a high degree of precision in bombing under target range
conditions, thus leading to the expressions "pin point" and "pickle
barrel" bombing. However, it was not possible to approach such
standards of accuracy under battle conditions imposed over Europe.
Many limiting factors intervened; target obscuration by clouds, fog,
smoke screens and industrial haze; enemy fighter opposition which
necessitated defensive bombing formations, thus restricting freedom
of maneuver; antiaircraft artillery defenses, demanding minimum time
exposure of the attacking force in order to keep losses down; and
finally, time limitations imposed on combat crew training after the
war began.
It was considered that enemy opposition made formation flying and
formation attack a necessary tactical and technical procedure.
**Bombing patterns resulted -- only a portion of which could fall on
small precision targets.** The rest spilled over




on adjacent plants, or built-up areas, or in open fields. Accuracy
ranged from poor to excellent.** When visual conditions were
favorable and flak defenses were not intense, bombing results were at
their best. Unfortunately, the major portion of bombing operations
over Germany had to be conducted under weather and battle conditions
that restricted bombing technique, and accuracy suffered accordingly.
Conventionally the air forces designated as "the target area" a
circle having a radius of 1000 feet around the aiming point of
attack. While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies show
that, in the over-all, only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision
targets fell within this target area. A peak accuracy of 70% was
reached for the month of February 1945. These are important facts for
the reader to keep in mind, especially when considering the tonnages
of bombs delivered by the air forces. Of necessity a far larger
tonnage was carried than hit German installations.