Area bombing is not a dirty word.

In article ,
"Kevin Brooks" writes:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

snip

You can see where I am going with this. I wonder how many airmen would
have
lived if the Allies changed their methods. I wonder how much shorther the
war
would have been if oil production and distribution alone were the sole
primary
targets early in the war. Secondary targets would be airfields and flack.

I think you'd have to toss transportation into the mix right after the
petroleum industry.

Let's not forget training, either. Yes, there was a tremendous spurt
in production numbers in 1944, but what use was it when there were no
pilots to fly the airplanes, or crew the submarines or tanks?
What new pilots, or sub crews, or soldiers that could be trained, went
to their units with no operational training whatsoever. Survival at
that point was a matter of luck - they never got the chance to develop
skill.
The German Armed Forces going into 1945 were like an M&M. (Smartie,
for you Brits) A thin, hard shell of veterans surrounding a soft
innter layer.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Kevin Brooks" writes:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

snip

You can see where I am going with this. I wonder how many airmen would
have
lived if the Allies changed their methods. I wonder how much shorther
the
war
would have been if oil production and distribution alone were the sole
primary
targets early in the war. Secondary targets would be airfields and
flack.

I think you'd have to toss transportation into the mix right after the
petroleum industry.

Let's not forget training, either. Yes, there was a tremendous spurt
in production numbers in 1944, but what use was it when there were no
pilots to fly the airplanes, or crew the submarines or tanks?
What new pilots, or sub crews, or soldiers that could be trained, went
to their units with no operational training whatsoever. Survival at
that point was a matter of luck - they never got the chance to develop
skill.
The German Armed Forces going into 1945 were like an M&M. (Smartie,
for you Brits) A thin, hard shell of veterans surrounding a soft
innter layer.

True, but the bombing campaign did not target "training", per se. Its effect
on the petroleum situation adversely impacted training, and the attrition of
Luftwaffe pilots defending against the campaign applied additional stress to
the training pipeline. But it would have been very hard to set forth a
bombing campaign during WWII with an objective of degrading the Germans'
ability to train.

Brooks


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

"BUFDRVR" wrote in message
...
IMHO the only useful thing bombers did was draw the Luftwaffe out so that
the P51s could shoot them down.

The impact the combined bomber offensive had against POL cannot be
disputed.
POL was a "Top 3" target prior to the war, but when Intelligence officials
were
replaced by American industrial "speacialists", it was dropped to #13
(IIRC).
The first Ploesti raid was undertaken not so much for the direct physical
effect, but to force Germany to defend themselves from the Baltic to the
Med.
When a serious effort was undertaken to hit German POL (and sythetic POL)
in
early 1944, the results were relatively quick and devestating. The reason
your
P-51s did so well was because the FW-190 and Me-109 pilots they were
flying
against had less than half the pre-war training time. The reduction in
training
hours was due to the loss of both lubricant and fuel.

I am inclined to think there were several factors behind the poorer
training:

The most important being the shortage of pilots, despite the bombing the
Germans had more (fuelled) combat aircraft than they had experienced pilots
to fly them.

The second was the lack of safe training areas, any flight over Germany in
44/45 was a combat mission even if it was in a trainer. Hence it made sense
to get the students into armed aircraft and with experienced combat pilots
ASAP.

In my view fuel as a poor third reason.

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

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

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
Subject: Area bombing is not a dirty word.
From: Charles Gray


One thing that is often levied agaionst the bombing campaigns is the
fact that German production increased as the war came to an end (at
least until the last few days when industry was being overrun).

The reason German production increased is because we stopped bombing
production
facilites and switched to oil knowing that they could make all they
wanted
to,but without oil could never use any of it. So let them waste their
labor and
facilites on turning out equipment that could never be used.

So 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.

Granted the Germans were short of POL at the end, however, they were short
of everything else as well. I can find few instances of missions being
cancelled solely due to lack of POL, and the few examples that do exist seem
to be local problems getting the fuel to the correct place rather than
because the fuel did not exist.

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
t...

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Kevin Brooks" writes:

"B2431" wrote in message
...

snip

You can see where I am going with this. I wonder how many airmen
would
have
lived if the Allies changed their methods. I wonder how much shorther
the
war
would have been if oil production and distribution alone were the
sole
primary
targets early in the war. Secondary targets would be airfields and
flack.

I think you'd have to toss transportation into the mix right after the
petroleum industry.

Let's not forget training, either. Yes, there was a tremendous spurt
in production numbers in 1944, but what use was it when there were no
pilots to fly the airplanes, or crew the submarines or tanks?
What new pilots, or sub crews, or soldiers that could be trained, went
to their units with no operational training whatsoever. Survival at
that point was a matter of luck - they never got the chance to develop
skill.
The German Armed Forces going into 1945 were like an M&M. (Smartie,
for you Brits) A thin, hard shell of veterans surrounding a soft
innter layer.

True, but the bombing campaign did not target "training", per se. Its
effect
on the petroleum situation adversely impacted training, and the attrition
of
Luftwaffe pilots defending against the campaign applied additional stress
to
the training pipeline. But it would have been very hard to set forth a
bombing campaign during WWII with an objective of degrading the Germans'
ability to train.

This is rather the basis of my objection to bombing.

Several others have commented on the need to identify the weakest link in
the German military and then concentrate on it.

Well, the weakest link was trained combatants, anything that does not target
them:
(a) wastes valuable resources.
(b) causes unnecessary suffering.
(c) increases the amount of aid needed to rebuild Germany afterwards.

I have already given the USAAF bombers credit for being bait for the German
combat pilots, which is more than I give the RAF.

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.

can find few instances of missions being
cancelled solely due to lack of POL, and the

You didn't look hard enough.


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

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
Subject: Area bombing is not a dirty word.
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 1/2/04 2:51 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

Before talking about all we did wrong, just consider all
that we did right.

However, it is useful today to study what you did wrong to ensure we do
it
right the next time. Unlike infantry and artilliary tactics that are
thousands
of years old, aerial warfare is a mere infant at less than a hundred and
the
historical examples to study are much fewer. Don't take it personal Art,
we
are
in the process of sifting through what we did wrong over Iraq less than a
year
ago. Sometimes it seems us air minded people are pretty self deprecating.


BUFDRVR

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


I think it is a question of who's ox is gored. We should always study the
past
to correct errors. But it is a case of who is doing the studying. When
those
who never flew a mission or even served in the military start telling us
everything we did wrong, I resent the hubris. When skilled experienced
military
airman do the studying, I perk up and listen. I think it is a matter of
perspective. But from where I sat in WW II, it sure looked as though we
did a
lot more right than wrong. And we left a burning defeated Germany as
proof.

Unfortunately airman are a prone to spinning findings as anyone else.
Airman lied about the effectiveness of WW1 bombing to justify building up
airpower between the wars. They lied about the effectiveness of German
bombing at the start of WW2, to justify a counter offensive. Throughout WW2
they lied about the effectiveness of their bombing to justify throwing good
resources after bad.

I say it is better to ask someone who does not have an ox in the ring.

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
...

"BUFDRVR" wrote in message
...
IMHO the only useful thing bombers did was draw the Luftwaffe out so
that
the P51s could shoot them down.

The impact the combined bomber offensive had against POL cannot be
disputed.
POL was a "Top 3" target prior to the war, but when Intelligence
officials
were
replaced by American industrial "speacialists", it was dropped to #13
(IIRC).
The first Ploesti raid was undertaken not so much for the direct
physical
effect, but to force Germany to defend themselves from the Baltic to the
Med.
When a serious effort was undertaken to hit German POL (and sythetic
POL)
in
early 1944, the results were relatively quick and devestating. The
reason
your
P-51s did so well was because the FW-190 and Me-109 pilots they were
flying
against had less than half the pre-war training time. The reduction in
training
hours was due to the loss of both lubricant and fuel.

I am inclined to think there were several factors behind the poorer
training:

The most important being the shortage of pilots, despite the bombing the
Germans had more (fuelled) combat aircraft than they had experienced
pilots
to fly them.

The second was the lack of safe training areas, any flight over Germany in
44/45 was a combat mission even if it was in a trainer. Hence it made
sense
to get the students into armed aircraft and with experienced combat pilots
ASAP.

In my view fuel as a poor third reason.

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.

Brooks

"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"

can find few instances of missions being
cancelled solely due to lack of POL, and the

You didn't look hard enough.

Then please find some for me.

In my view fuel as a poor third reason.


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.


BUFDRVR

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