Area bombing is not a dirty word.

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
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"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
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"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
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OK there is scope for dropping bombs on things that are neither
production
or oil.

However, STOPPED means that NO bombs were dropped on production
facilities,
which does not fit what I have heard.



In fact there was a switch of emphasis in strategic bombing
from industrial towns to oil targets in 1944. The first bomber command
raid was that on the synthetic-oil plant at Gelsenkirchen on the
night of June 12/13 1944.

Indeed the major raids from this point on were directed at
military targets (Kiel, Le Havre etc), communications targets,
V1/V2 sites and oil targets. It was only in October that raids
were once more made on general production targets when raids
were made on Dortmund and Duisburg.

The handful of high profile raids you mention is a small part of the total
picture, and even your list includes some bombing of war production
targets,
i.e. it hadn't stopped.


In fact in 1944 it was a LARGE part of the picture and its quite
true that war production targets were still bombed, stopping
a Tiger tank being delivered is preferable to trying to kill
it with a Sherman tank

More important you need to explain why war production went up.

Thats simple. Germany didnt put its industries on a full war
footing until 1943. They had no way to go but up. Add to this
Harris switching the focus of the attacks to Berlin from
the Ruhr and the subsequent concentration on tactical and
infrastructure targets that D-Day necessitated and improvement
in German production is inevitable.



I have
already explained that my assessment is that the bombing angered the
population and caused them to give up their luxuries and free time and
worked hard to produce more weapons. In short production went up because
of
the bombing.


You are in error. The people of Germany had no choice in the matter.
Production priorities were decided by the Reichsminister for war
production. Until 1942 that was Fritz Todt. When he died in an air
crash in 1942 he was replaced by Albert Speer. Speer was shocked by
the inefficiencies and corruption he found in German war production.

If you care to review the data you'll find that Britain was outproducing
Germany in all important areas of production from 1941 onwards
even though Germany had the entire resources of Western Europe
to call on.

Consider aircraft production as an example

In 1942 Germany produced a total of 16,000 aircraft including
2200 FW-190's and 2700 Me-109's

In 1942 Britain produced 28,000 combat aircraft and the USA
turned out 48,000


When we consider tanks we find the following figures
Germany 9,300
Britain 8,600
USA 23,800

I suggest you get hold of a copy of Speer's memoirs
and read them. They are somewhat self serving but
do bear witness to the inefficient mess he found.

Speer also had no doubt about the damage done to Germany's
economy by the bombing of its industrial centres. He said
of the early 1943 raids.

"I was surprised during the war years that the Americans
and the British did not follow up on the destruction of our industry.
If they had done that, the war would have been over a year earlier."

Field Marshall Erhard Milch said after the war

"In conclusion I would like to state that the Allies would have been able to
end the war sooner had they started their attacks against the German
petroleum refineries earlier; in fact they would have shortened the war by
the exact number of months (or weeks) it would have taken (and took) to
carry out these attacks effectively."

Of course this neglects the practicalities of such an attack, until
late 1943 bomber command didnt have the accuracy to hit these
targets and the 8th AF couldnt fly the deep penetration raids
until the escort fighters became available in the same time frame.

Still while I believe the attacks on Hamburg, the Ruhr and Cologne
were succesfull the Berling campaign was an error and
we would have done better to go after the oil targets
at that time while maintaining attacks on promary production
centres in the Ruhr


Keith