Area bombing is not a dirty word.

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
...

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
ubject: Area bombing is not a dirty word.
From: "Bill Phillips"
Date: 1/5/04 11:44 AM Pacific Standard Time

o you are saying that ALL the bombs dropped during that period were
dropped
on oil targets! I would love to here your source for that.

I never said that, You said that.

You said "we stopped bombing production facilites and switched to oil"


Which is a LONG way from saying ALL the bombs dropped
during the period were dropped on oil targets.

Keith

They lied about the effectiveness of German
bombing at the start of WW2, to justify a counter offensive.

Wrong. The USAAF part of the CBO was born out of AWPD-1, first drafted in
1938. The only thing the USAAF can be accused of was too easily dismissing the
German failure in the Battle of Britain when they revised AWPD-1 in late 1940.
According to most air power experts of that time period, Germany failed because
their bombers were ill equipped to the task. They were correct in that regard,
but they let that explain away everything and literally learned no lessons from
the Battle of Britain.

Throughout WW2
they lied about the effectiveness of their bombing to justify throwing good
resources after bad.

Wrong again. They had a real time intelligence problem with attempting to
analyze exactly the results of their bombing. They had excellent photo recon
and excellent SIGINT due to Ultra, but a hard time correlating the 2. 60 years
later, we are still struggling with this, albeit not nearly as bad.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

The impact the CBO had
prior to 1944 was to draw manpower to defend Germany from the front.
Every
guy
manning a AAA piece or fueling a fighter would have been carrying a
Mauser-98
on either the eastern or western front if it wasn't for the CBO.

Just like all the effort being put into bombing as not available to help
the
allied armies.

Nor could it have been, at least not effectively (see below). At least
they
kept the Luftwaffe largely in check while also makiong the POL and
transportation situations within Germany a nightmare (all three of which
were very good things for the "allied armies").

Also the flack units could and did turn their guns on ground
targets in the later stages of the war.

Great. Imagine how much MORE succesful they would have been had they not
had
to concentrate all of those resources on defending the homeland and
instead
had been putting them on more mobile armored platforms.


How long would a Kar-98 carrying soldier last if the allies put all that
effort into the battlefield?'

And pray tell just HOW would you put all of that effort "onto the
battlefield"? We know that level bombing was of mixed, at best, tactical
value when applied "to the battlefield" (witness COBRA). The allied ground
forces in France in late 1944 were about as big as you could manage given
logistics constraints (and no, having all of the bombers play transport
would not have appreciably changed that picture), so you would not have
been
reorienting the bombing resources into the ground fight very easily.
Sounds
like your plan is not very workable. OTOH, having the CBO ongoing
prevented
what was left of the Luftwaffe in late 44 from being able to effectively
focus on supporting their own ground forces opposing the oncoming allied
ground juggernaut. It did indeed make the POL situation a critical one for
German forces, including those on the ground facing Ike's troops. I just
can't see how we could have substantially improved upon the situation by
reorienting the resources applied to the CBO--as Buffdrvr points out, we
could have better *focused* them to be more effective, given the benefit
of
hindsight, but in the end the combined weight of *all* of the resources
brought to bear, from the CBO to the ground soldiers and TACAIR, working
simultaneously to apply pressure to the Germans from all directions and
forcing them to try to defend *everywhere* versus concentrating solely
upon
the ground equation, was the optimal solution to be had.

It depends on when you divert the resources.

Once you have built bombers you are restricted in what you can do with them.

However change early enough and you can build almost anything instead, such
as a tank that could take on Tigers and Panthers 1 to 1. Note: resources are
a quality issue as well as a quantity one, better equipment could have
actually reduced the logistic burden by achieving a given effect with less
equipment.

Even if it was put into air power then it could have won the battle of the
Atlantic earlier and some more CAS and air transport would have been useful
for the advance across Europe. For example a little more air power would
have turned Operation Market Garden into a victory.

Much the same is true of the German efforts.

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
...

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
ubject: Area bombing is not a dirty word.
From: "Bill Phillips"
Date: 1/5/04 11:44 AM Pacific Standard Time

o you are saying that ALL the bombs dropped during that period were
dropped
on oil targets! I would love to here your source for that.

I never said that, You said that.

You said "we stopped bombing production facilites and switched to oil"


Which is a LONG way from saying ALL the bombs dropped
during the period were dropped on oil targets.

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.

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
...
The impact the CBO had
prior to 1944 was to draw manpower to defend Germany from the front.
Every
guy
manning a AAA piece or fueling a fighter would have been carrying a
Mauser-98
on either the eastern or western front if it wasn't for the CBO.

Just like all the effort being put into bombing as not available to
help
the
allied armies.

Nor could it have been, at least not effectively (see below). At least
they
kept the Luftwaffe largely in check while also makiong the POL and
transportation situations within Germany a nightmare (all three of which
were very good things for the "allied armies").

Also the flack units could and did turn their guns on ground
targets in the later stages of the war.

Great. Imagine how much MORE succesful they would have been had they not
had
to concentrate all of those resources on defending the homeland and
instead
had been putting them on more mobile armored platforms.


How long would a Kar-98 carrying soldier last if the allies put all
that
effort into the battlefield?'

And pray tell just HOW would you put all of that effort "onto the
battlefield"? We know that level bombing was of mixed, at best, tactical
value when applied "to the battlefield" (witness COBRA). The allied
ground
forces in France in late 1944 were about as big as you could manage
given
logistics constraints (and no, having all of the bombers play transport
would not have appreciably changed that picture), so you would not have
been
reorienting the bombing resources into the ground fight very easily.
Sounds
like your plan is not very workable. OTOH, having the CBO ongoing
prevented
what was left of the Luftwaffe in late 44 from being able to effectively
focus on supporting their own ground forces opposing the oncoming allied
ground juggernaut. It did indeed make the POL situation a critical one
for
German forces, including those on the ground facing Ike's troops. I just
can't see how we could have substantially improved upon the situation by
reorienting the resources applied to the CBO--as Buffdrvr points out, we
could have better *focused* them to be more effective, given the benefit
of
hindsight, but in the end the combined weight of *all* of the resources
brought to bear, from the CBO to the ground soldiers and TACAIR, working
simultaneously to apply pressure to the Germans from all directions and
forcing them to try to defend *everywhere* versus concentrating solely
upon
the ground equation, was the optimal solution to be had.

It depends on when you divert the resources.

Once you have built bombers you are restricted in what you can do with
them.

However change early enough and you can build almost anything instead,
such
as a tank that could take on Tigers and Panthers 1 to 1. Note: resources
are
a quality issue as well as a quantity one, better equipment could have
actually reduced the logistic burden by achieving a given effect with less
equipment.

Then you would have had to scrap the entire US military production strategy,
which was based upon getting a LOT of "good enough" stuff produced as
opposed to the German approach of building a few really good items--we know
which side lost, so I would side with the winning strategy.


Even if it was put into air power then it could have won the battle of the
Atlantic earlier

That is not assured. merely tossing a few hundred more aircraft over the
ocean was not going to stop the German subs; it took a combination of
aircraft and emerging technology (i.e., small radars capable of seeing the
surfaced little buggers). Then you would have had to factor in that the
germans, not being subjected to any kind of CBO, would have produced even *m
ore* boats ata faster pace, and trained them more effectively since there
was not the additional effect on their POL supplies, not to mention the fact
that all of those flak crews and resources would have been reprogrammed to
face your other threats, and their Luftwaffe would have been better able to
support operations on *both* fronts, etc, ad nauseum.

and some more CAS and air transport would have been useful
for the advance across Europe. For example a little more air power would
have turned Operation Market Garden into a victory.

No freakin' way. The weather shut out air support almost altogether during a
critical window of that operation, and a few more C-47's would NOT have
affected the outcome at Arnhem.

Brooks


Much the same is true of the German efforts.

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
...


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.

Keith

On 01 Jan 2004 20:33:57 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:


Every guy manning a AAA piece or fueling a fighter would have been carrying a Mauser-98
on either the eastern or western front if it wasn't for the CBO.

As the war progressed, the AA personnel was largely comprised of
people unfit for the front: high school teenagers, girls, WW1
veterans, Soviet POWs etc.

Against this bottom of the barrel opponents, Allies used the flower of
their manhood.

The only reason CBO could have been sustained is that Soviet Union
provided the Red Army to take the main burden of the war.


Drax
remove NOSPAM for reply

On 05 Jan 2004 22:59:12 GMT, (BUFDRVR) wrote:


According to interviews with Albert Kesselring, fuel shortages severely limited
training and was, according to him, the leading cause of eventually losing air
superiority over their own country.

Even if Germany had all the oil it ever needed there was no way for
Germany to deploy enough pilots to take on the combined air forces of
US, UK and USSR.


Drax
remove NOSPAM for reply

Subject: Area bombing is not a dirty word.
From: (Drazen Kramaric)
Date: 1/9/04 4:08 AM Pacific

As the war progressed, the AA personnel was largely comprised of
people unfit for the front: high school teenagers, girls, WW1
veterans, Soviet POWs etc.

They were called the FLAK KINDER and were mostly young men of high school age.


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

It depends on when you divert the resources.

Once you have built bombers you are restricted in what you can do with
them.

However change early enough and you can build almost anything instead,
such
as a tank that could take on Tigers and Panthers 1 to 1. Note: resources
are
a quality issue as well as a quantity one, better equipment could have
actually reduced the logistic burden by achieving a given effect with
less
equipment.

Then you would have had to scrap the entire US military production
strategy,
which was based upon getting a LOT of "good enough" stuff produced as
opposed to the German approach of building a few really good items--we
know
which side lost, so I would side with the winning strategy.

I can't find any evidence that the USAAF were pursuing this strategy; on
average its aircraft were as good or better than the enemy's.

Much the same can be said of rifles, artillery, ships, etc.

So it appears that this "entire" strategy was only applied to tanks.


Even if it was put into air power then it could have won the battle of
the
Atlantic earlier

That is not assured. merely tossing a few hundred more aircraft over the
ocean was not going to stop the German subs; it took a combination of
aircraft and emerging technology (i.e., small radars capable of seeing the
surfaced little buggers).

I am well aware of the need for technology, I am also aware that the first
airborne radars went to the bombers, so that they could bomb through cloud.

Then you would have had to factor in that the
germans, not being subjected to any kind of CBO, would have produced even
*m
ore* boats ata faster pace, and trained them more effectively since there
was not the additional effect on their POL supplies, not to mention the
fact
that all of those flak crews and resources would have been reprogrammed to
face your other threats, and their Luftwaffe would have been better able
to
support operations on *both* fronts, etc, ad nauseum.

Given that German war production went up under bombing, I doubt that the
extra effort going to the front line would be anything like as large as the
effort freed from our bombing offensive.

and some more CAS and air transport would have been useful
for the advance across Europe. For example a little more air power
would
have turned Operation Market Garden into a victory.

No freakin' way. The weather shut out air support almost altogether during
a
critical window of that operation, and a few more C-47's would NOT have
affected the outcome at Arnhem.

The biggest single problem at Arnhem was that the RAF took 3 lifts to drop
the British airborne div and the Polish Bde.

If they had all been dropped on the first lift then they would have quickly
seized the bridges, and established a strong defensive position around them.
Add a supply drop on D+1 and some CAS to weaken the Germans and they could
have easily held during the bad weather, and weeks after.