I started years ago with a thread to defend the French in their 1940 defeat.
In my research about the French aviation and their role in the defeat, I came for the first time in my life on the Italian Giulio Douhet, who seems to be a defender of the "strategic bombing", but when one read all the texts there seems to be a lot of controversy about what Douhet really meant by it. In the interwar period this theory of "strategic bombing" led in the interwar period even to struggle between Pierre Cot (strategic bombing) and Guy La Chambre (close air assault) and was together with the struggle between the new "armée de l'air" , the government and the rest of the army, disastrous for the working of the aviation from 10 Mai 1940 on.
Due to a documentary about WWII strategic bombing of Germany, I did again some further research on internet and found a rather "general" approach of the "bombing of the people for strategic reasons": "Bombing the people" from Thomas Hippler here And a critique: Overhere
From what I have read up to now on strategic bombing of the population, especially as nowadays in for instance Syria the "so-called soldiers" are mixed within the population, has not had any serious effect on the morale of the population and on the ennemy resourches and industry. That strategic bombing was only efficient, when one had the full mastery of the ennemies airspace, as in 1944-45 in Germany. And even then, was the German ennemy still capable of doing something.
For instance this example of WWII strategic bombing by Britain and the US in Germany... Bomber Command in British memories since 1945 Bomber Command And the about us: About us From the article: "The nature of the offensive can be summarised in two sets of figures. First, approximately 125,000 men served as Bomber Command aircrew, 69.2 per cent of them British, the rest from Commonwealth or occupied European countries. Of these, 47,305 were killed in action or died while prisoners of war; a further 8,195 were killed in accidents; 8,403 returned home wounded; and 9,838, many of them also wounded, became prisoners of war. Thus 59 per cent of all who served became casualties, including 47 per cent killed5. As some of the most highly-trained men in the armed services, aircrew were well placed to know their chances; but all were volunteers."
Sources both human and material, that could much more efficently used in other areas, as I read elsewhere, to win the war. Interesting is also the controversy among historians, the public, the government evoluting during time...
And no, up to now; I don't see where strategic bombing had an efficiency. Even in nowadays Isis Syria or Irak, bombing entire villages as solved nearly nothing... The bombing
Oh and I forgot the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was perhaps the only exception in my narration?
Kind regards, Paul.
Last edited by PaulRyckier on Tue 07 Apr 2020, 13:47; edited 3 times in total
Meles meles Censura
Posts : 5081 Join date : 2011-12-30 Location : Pyrénées-Orientales, France
Paul, can you please reformat your post ... some of the addresses you give are very, very long, and you always post them in full, which completely skews the whole message thread. When you do it like that everyone else has to scroll across the screen to the right to see the full message (if they can be bothered), and it's then not just your own message but every other message in the same thread that's affected because your text 'sentences' (ie http links) are too long and have completely upset the whole visual format.
Otherwise your posts are a nightmare to read and, sorry, but I for one don't even bother trying.
But, since I know you have experienced at first hand some of what you are describing, then I would actually much rather read your own experiences, than those reported by wiki. We can all access wiki and do google searches if we so want, so why do you keep directing us to what is commonly available (for all its failing). Frankly I'm far more interested in what you have to say, than wiki.
Please, I hope you take this as from one friend to another - van een vriend naar een andere.
Green George Censura
Posts : 805 Join date : 2018-10-19 Location : Kingdom of Mercia
Not sure where I read it, but I'm sure I've seen calculations that for much of the war, the cost to Britain of the bomber offensive was actually higher than the value of the damage it was doing.
In purely monetary terms this must be even more true these days than in the 1940s. The cost, for example, of constructing, deploying and detonating just one GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided "smart bomb" to take out a hovel in the Gulf War would probably have matched the GDP worth of a medium sized Iraqi village over an entire decade. Scale that up based on the number of these and similar ordinance used during that conflict alone, then imagine the money instead used to finance alternative investment in sustainable growth and education in a region compared to what any "enemy" is capable of achieving, and it does make one wonder why warfare, let alone strategic bombing, is still considered the preferred option of any so-called "civilised" power.
PS: Paul, I agree with Meles meles - can you please cut back on superfluous links in your posts, and especially posting them without formatting them to fit into the frame? As MM said it simply presents the potential reader with a mess of words and discourages others from actually reading what you have to say, which would indeed would be of much more interest anyway if you cited less from internet sources that we can all easily find anyway and instead shared your own obviously well considered opinions based on your own experience.
Green George Censura
Posts : 805 Join date : 2018-10-19 Location : Kingdom of Mercia
yes, my "utterings" aren't not that easy to read, and to be honest, as I don't expect mostly that our ten members aren't that much interested in details or some subjects, I post them nevertheless, because for me personally, they are a great help to find them back when I start or reply to a discussion in the big fora as Historum and Passion Histoire... Sorry, nordmann to use your excellent forum as "store"
I had till last year the excellent shortener from Google to use overhere, as on the big fora they shorten it directly and automatically in your message...
MM, my own experiences, although I studied the event afterwards with some witnesses of my former city, are not that many and I didn't even recall it, while I was still a baby in 1944...but I survived a bomb attack of an American P38 Lightning on some 30-40 meter distance (I was on the first floor of our house...
But back to subject:
As I, for the moment, don't want to discuss the morality of the strategic bombing, I will, if I have time this afternoon, start a discussion about the efficiency of the bombing of Japan with plutonium bombs.
Kind regards, Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
About the efficiency of the American atomic bombing of Japan.
I took already part in the "evergreen" discussion: Was the atomic bombing of Japan necessary for the surrender?
I then already mentioned that I read that the bombing was not influencing the decision making of the Japanese Supreme War Council, while they wanted no surrender. There were two factions in the Supreme War Council, one pro and one contra...I thought that ultimately the Emperor supported the surrender faction. I read also that there was a kind of Palace revolution and that the pro faction said that two bombs were not enough to surrender, because they thought that the Americans would rapidly run out of their stock and the Japanese population was already used to the much greater devastation of cities by the conventional method. They even tried to steal or destroy the record on which the Emperor had spoken his surrender speech.
Trying to find this back, I came on the following from Historum: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan-surrenders The authors seems to be the History team. Here I find some confirmation of what I told in the third and fourth paragraph.
This morning I already wanted to launch an up to now seemingly conspiracy theory of the Americans launching the atomic bombs for fear of the Soviet intervention in Japan, as the postwar Cold War was already looming. And if they did it the conventional way it would give a lot of time to the Soviets to invade Japan and do the same as in Germany... And by that I came on some at first sight logical narration, where it were not the Americans, but the Japanese Supreme War Council, which saw the danger of the two front war and preferred to surrender to the Americans from whom they expected better conditions than from the Soviets. https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/ https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/152086 https://foreignpolicy.com/author/jonathan-tepperman/
And then you will ask, what had the Japanese civil population to do in this equation? In my humble opinion, the civil population is always screwed in any conflict and of no importance for the warring "leaders" and their politics. Nowadays they have invented the term "collateral damage"
As for the efficiency of the two atomic bombs...they seem to be less efficient than the "normal" area tactical bombing, but perhaps they costed, when made in series, less than a conventional area bombing campaign... but I read today about a cost developement of I don't remember 2 billion (milliard) dollars? Of course once in series production...but as all "new medicaments" one has in the early phase to pay in the price the cost of development...
Kind regards, Paul.
Green George Censura
Posts : 805 Join date : 2018-10-19 Location : Kingdom of Mercia
Paul : You need to remember that this cost was to develop two different types of bomb. "Little Boy" was a uranium 235 bomb, which yielded c. 13 kilotons, "Fat Man", used at Nagasaki, was a plutonium 239 bomb developing c.22 kilotons.Until Alamogordo, no-one could be sure that the bomb would actually work.
Paul : You need to remember that this cost was to develop two different types of bomb. "Little Boy" was a uranium 235 bomb, which yielded c. 13 kilotons, "Fat Man", used at Nagasaki, was a plutonium 239 bomb developing c.22 kilotons.Until Alamogordo, no-one could be sure that the bomb would actually work.
Gil, yes you are right. I forgot, although during my life I saw that many detailed documentaries about the bombs.
And I forgot yesterday to add. Although in the article that I mentioned the Japanese army was not on its knees, still some 4 million under the arms and 1.2 million to defend the homeland, I supported the no-drop side in the "Bomb debate" of the time, because the other side said along the official version that 1 million American soldiers had to die to invade and conquer Japan. But in my opinion they didn't have to invade Japan, as they were master in the air and on the seas, so they could start a blockade...but therefore they needed time...and they had no time...while those damned Soviets were already lurking with hundred thousands of soldiers at the Hokkaido island...?
Kind regards, Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
The USAAF raid on 1 August 1943, Operation Tidal Wave, an attempt to destroy the oil wells at Ploesti, Rumania, and cut of Germany's main fuel supply.
Yes, Triceratops, this was the most efficient part of "strategic bombing" as one can see that the "area bombing had no impact on the war industry nor on the morale of the population.
But that wouldn't say that strategic bombing capitals, couldn't have some unexpected effect. As the bombing of London in 1940 perhaps by accident, while until then the German bombing was focused on the RAF and its airfields and by Churchill's retaliation on Berlin, Hitler ordered Goering, to change the policy of bombing to city bombing...which ligntened the pressure on the RAF and so perhaps avoided the invasion of England...
And by looking to that I found an unbelievable story of the first bombing of Berlin by the French plane Jules Verne... That's trivia that reads as a novel... https://www.historynet.com/target-berlin-the-first-air-raid-on-the-german-capital.htm And even better told overhere: http://talesanecdotesandtrivia.blogspot.com/2015/05/jules-verne-bombed-berlin.html And yes here is the French "strategic bombing" PM: Pierre Cot, that I already hinted to, also mentioned From the link: On Monday, June 3, a German force of some 300 bombers attacked Paris causing several hundred casualties. The French decided to retaliate, and although they didn't have a comparable number of bombers, a psychological blow to the enemy was deemed necessary. Daillière was given the mission to be the first aviator to attack Berlin with ordnance. He planned to take advantage of the Farman's considerable range and fly around the Western Front to attack Berlin. The Jules Verne took off from the Merignac airfield near Bordeaux on June 7, 1940. The crew proceeded over Normandy, the English Channel, where they were promptly targeted by the anti-aircraft defenses of friendly ships, the North Sea, and over Denmark, where they encountered more Flak over the island of Sylt. The aircraft was not hit, and it flew in over the Baltic Sea before turning south and heading straight for Berlin at high altitude.
On board the Jules Verne, the crew became increasingly tense. The pilot, Yonnet, wrote that "like former corsairs, we are facing the enemy alone...like Robert Surcouf, we must strike first, very hard if possible, to have a chance to escape before the enemy could regain his mind". The Jules Verne reached Berlin just around midnight. Daillière described the approach to Berlin: "I got ready to release the bombs and realized that someone had failed to install our bombsight, so I pressed my nose to the glass of the cockpit." The Berlin area was covered by clouds, and therefore difficult to find, but all of a sudden Daillière spotted the lights of the Tempelhof airfield, and he ordered an approach before accelerating away at low altitude from the airfield.
Kind regards, Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 11 Apr 2020, 19:43
Further seeking for examples of strategic bombing, especially in WWII. We have of course the strategic bombing of the Japanese cities, already mentioned and which had obviously no effect on the will to fight on.
But thinking about Stalingrad I was hesitating, while the difference between tactical bombing and strategic one is many times difficult to make. Of course in my opinion Monte Cassino is clearly tactical...and I thought also at the Ruhr dam, and there there seems to be a mixed view of both tactical and strategic...it seems to be the first time that the British stepped down from their area bombing to the more strategic goal of cutting the industry from its resources, they way the Americans already did a whole time, by bombing during the day the railway and road connections and factories.
But back to Stalingrad...I had a look first to the difference between tactical and strategic bombing, which is in my opinion as difficult as between impressionism and expressionism...
From the wiki: Strategic bombing is amilitary strategyused intotal warwith the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transportmaterielto thetheatres of military operations, or both. It is a systematically organized and executed attack from the air which can utilizestrategic bombers, long- or medium-rangemissiles, or nuclear-armedfighter-bomberaircraft to attack targets deemed vital to the enemy's war-making capability.One of the strategies of war is todemoralizethe enemy, so that peace or surrender becomes preferable to continuing the conflict. Strategic bombing has been used to this end. The phrase "terror bombing" entered the English lexicon towards the end of World War II and many strategic bombing campaigns and individual raids have been described as terror bombing by commentators and historians. Because the term has pejorative connotations, some, including theAllies of World War II, have preferred to useeuphemismssuch as "will to resist" and "morale bombings".[1][2]
Kind regards, Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 11 Apr 2020, 20:07
And further about the German bombing of Stalingrad.
Wasn't the destruction of Stalingrad from 23 August on by the Luftwaffe, not a strategical bombing?
As I understand it, before the war, the role of the German Luftwaffe was more seen by those responsable, as a tactical role of close air support to the actions of the army, which saw it's culmination in the Fall Gelb and Rot in 1940. And that different to French approach under Pierre Cot, which was than suddenly changed just before the war in close air support, which gave a lot of turmoil within the "armée de l'air".
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 12 Apr 2020, 15:27
As I was still mulling over the difficulties between the succesive French ministers in the Thirties about the direction and the task of the French military aviation about the question of "strategic bombing" or "close air support" (as between Pierre Cot and Guy de La Chambre) I wondered how it was in the UK?
Reading it, initially I thought that Trenchard was more for close air support as you read this in the wiki:
"Trenchard's time in command of the R.F.C. on the Western Front was characterised by three priorities. First was an emphasis on support to and co-ordination with ground forces. This started with reconnaissance and artillery co-ordination, and later encompassed tactical low-level bombing of enemy ground targets. While he did not oppose the strategic bombing of Germany in principle, he rejected moves to divert his forces on to long-range bombing missions as he believed the strategic role to be less important and his resource to be too limited. Secondly, he stressed the importance of morale, not only of his own airmen, but more generally the detrimental effect that the presence of an aircraft had upon the morale of enemy ground troops. Finally, he had an unswerving belief in the importance of offensive action. "
But in the "legacy" I read then contrary to that:"Trenchard's work in establishing the R.A.F. and preserving its independence has led to him being called the "Father of the Royal Air Force". For his own part, he disliked the description, believing that General Sir David Henderson deserved the accolade.[38][179] His obituary in The Times considered that his greatest gift to the R.A.F. was the belief that mastery of the air must be gained and retained through offensive action.[180] During his life, Trenchard strongly argued that the bomber was the key weapon of an air force, and he is recognized today as one of the early advocates of strategic bombing,[3] and one of the architects of the British policy on imperial policing through air control.[181]And the (3) refers to This
As I read about the life of Trenchard in the wiki: the tribulations in the forming of the RAF seems not that much better than those in the forming of the French "Armée de l'Air", at least on the first sight...
And there I read that the whole quarreling in France during the interwar, was not that important and that it didn't contribute that much to the ineffectiveness of the French army in the 1940 battle. I like to read the part about Britain, but sadly it is not available "for nothing?" (free of charge?) I will seek via the granddaughter to obtain the work after the C-crisis... It is indeed worth to discuss this comparison extending to WWII in a new thread.
Kind regards, Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
I mentioned it perhaps already in the thread: is the targeted drone bombing from distance to pick some rebel leaders thousands of miles from the target to undermine their organisation and possibility of acting as a group, strategical or tactical?
I saw recently a film about the theme: "Good Kill" from "Andrew Nicoll" (2014) I saw also recently a documentary about the subject on the French/German Arte channel, but I don't find it back immediately.
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 23 Aug 2020, 20:30
I'd would tentatively argue that the Bomber campaign kept an inordinately large number of men, guns and aircraft tied up protecting the German homeland that would have been invaluable on the Eastern Front or Normandy. Also Germany was able to (somehow) keep manufacturing right till the very end despite decimation of the traditional industrial heartlands - they had to build underground factories at great cost to slave labourers lives and materials. Imagine what they could have done if they hadn't been arranged pretty much every night for 5 years.
The other issue is that from June 1940 till June 1944 the only weapon that the UK had to take on Germany directly was Bomber command. That strategic bombing was inaccurate is not in question. At the end of the day they were using free fall bombs, dead reckoning and the genesis of radio direction. Did the RAF effectively turn to terror bombing ? Possibly but lets not forget Rotterdam,Coventry,London,Birmingham,Glasgow etc. That the Germans didn't "Hamburg" London in 1940 was simply due to the fact that they lacked (and continued to lack till V1,V2) the ability to achieve what the RAF were able to do. Harris was right when he said
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. … They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Mon 24 Aug 2020, 21:37
Thank you VF for your further comments about the Bomber Command. Of course there are always two sides at an event, a negative and a positive one.
Kind regards, Paul.
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2769 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 29 Aug 2020, 15:26
Is there protocol in the latest Geneva Convention on such bombing. Which of course begs the question about whether or not the Convention protocols stick, anyway.
nordmann Nobiles Barbariæ
Posts : 7223 Join date : 2011-12-25
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 29 Aug 2020, 18:09
The Geneva Conventions (there have been four of them) avoid reference to aerial bombing. In 1968 there was an initiative to extend the then current convention on civilians in war zones to include the banning of aerial bombardment of civilian populations except where it is done primarily to weaken the military strength of the opposing forces. The USA and the UK however refused to ratify its inclusion (the USA was then happily carpet bombing South East Asian populations so one can see that they wouldn't be too enthusiastic about the clause - the UK's opposition was never explained officially). As a result the article never got written, let alone adopted.
The 1949 Convention however does state that it is to be regarded as a sister document to the two Hague Conventions from 1899 and 1907, both of which did indeed address impact on civilians. In the earlier one there is actually an article forbidding the dropping of bombs from balloons. To date therefore this is the only reference of any kind to aerial bombardment in any international treaty. The USA and the UK, weirdly enough, also opted out of signing this article too, though couldn't prevent its adoption at the time.
The article, even for its day, was a little weird anyway. The signatories basically promised not to drop bombs on each other for five years after hostilities broke out or until a non-signatory got involved, after which all sides could happily inflate their balloons and bomb anything they liked.
that it is to be regarded as a sister document to the two Hague Conventions from 1899 and 1907, both of which did indeed address impact on civilians. In the earlier one there is actually an article forbidding the dropping of bombs from balloons
Interesting as the only nation I can think of that tried this or was going to try this (using balloons with ordinance as weapons) was Imperial Japan...
But I don't think that they signed the any over the Geneva conventions?
Japan was certainly a signatory to the Hague Conventions which included this rather forward thinking proposal, even if it wasn't quite forward thinking enough to anticipate the marriage of the combustion engine to aeronautical frames.
Green George Censura
Posts : 805 Join date : 2018-10-19 Location : Kingdom of Mercia
As to the origin of "strategic bombing" in UK Forces, it was actually the RNAS rather than the RFC which started this - particularly under the influence of Murray Sueter and Frederick Handley Page - the Handley Page O-100 was the epitome of RNAS strategic bomber construction. It was also the IAF (Independent Air Force), set up at the instigation of Jan Smuts, which Trenchard commanded, which continued the strategic bomber effort after the creation of the RAF (RN opinion was then, and at least until the early 70s and the "mobile Australia" debacle remained, that the 1st April was the only possible appropriate founding date for the RAF). Trenchard's dictum "the bomber will always get through", with the consequent relative neglect of other arms, notably Coastal Command, almost certainly cost Britain more in shipping and cargo losses in WWII, as also that for much of the "Bomber Offensive" in WWII its cost to Britain was greater than the damage done. Remember too that a considerable number of the Luftwaffe flak crews were actually female (as was the case in the UK,too), and thus not really considered capable of offensive deployment.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Thank you very much Gil for this additional information. Kind regards, Paul.
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2769 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 05 Sep 2020, 15:41
So what does your post also mean, Paul? Are you closing the door on the thread - such posts seem to do that. - and not all posters have been thanked, either - and thank goodness for that because it would halt the flow.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 05 Sep 2020, 19:01
Priscilla wrote:
So what does your post also mean, Paul? Are you closing the door on the thread - such posts seem to do that. - and not all posters have been thanked, either - and thank goodness for that because it would halt the flow.
Priscilla, you very well know that I am always polite to everyone. And that was as usual such a thanks to Gil, especially while he for the first time reappears again since some time. And if "you" or everyone else see that as halting the flow so be it.
Are you the new master of the boards now instead of nordmann? Normally I am polite to everyone, but as you publish it in public I answer in public too.
Caro said once that she had never met such a quarreling messageboard as overhere, could it be that she was right?
Nevertheless as usual: "Kind regards, Paul"...or is that not allowed too anymore on this board?
PS. I know that MM once mentioned that he was annoyed at his former work with all the "thank you" replies he received which were complete unnecessary and augmented perhaps the workload, but as he now resides in France he has perhaps realized now that that is Romance language mode and that he is lucky that he, as an Englishman, is not an inhabitant of Italy...
PPS. Sorry to everyone for this aside, but I hope that everyone on this board will agree that I had to answer on this public aside from Priscilla.
Priscilla Censura
Posts : 2769 Join date : 2012-01-16
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sat 05 Sep 2020, 23:17
Not the master of the board, Paul, just a tad saddened by the few numbers we have now and I rather thought it was because the flow was interrupted.
As children in my day we were told that if one had nothing interesting to add to a conversation then to shut up. Posts in a site like this can be derailed by prattle...... and yes, I have done my share of that t too;
Sadly, my name will go on top of this thread post and there is far too much Priscilla in the list as I try to get some sort of interest going b posting - and yes, get some order too. Posts were tending to wander all over the place and to lose focus. Just like this ramble here between us. And I have done it too from time to time.
This post is a truthful and upfront about what I have been about -and sadly with my name up front yet again. What we really want are some of the others posting and not just the same few - such as me and you -and they probably want to stick to the subject of the thread.
A 'thank you' post can always be sent by PM and also a welcome back too - that;s what I do. I honestly have no urge to be Top of the Posters, that's for certain.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 06 Sep 2020, 11:57
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 06 Sep 2020, 12:19
You may have learned a new word from my last post but nothing else apparently.
In the focus of the thread title I would say my Strategic Bombing is next to useless and not efficient in any context. Where is the supporting flak and Coastal Command when you need them? Down the pub, as ever, I guess - Dad's Army style.
nordmann Nobiles Barbariæ
Posts : 7223 Join date : 2011-12-25
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 06 Sep 2020, 15:25
There is an element of confusion, on this thread too, every time strategic bombing is discussed, whether in terms of pure military objective or in the broader terms of morality. It is a fault of language as much as anything else, in that the terms "strategy" and "tactic" are often used synonymously, and this linguistic looseness can in turn be blamed at least partially on the military who, as appropriators of both terms have sometimes deliberately misrepresented one as the other, especially when retrospectively assessing and justifying past conduct.
Most military handbooks these days however will at least attempt to distinguish one from the other. A general may employ a strategy (the word, after all, comes from the Greek word for just that - the art/skill of a general), but will need then to employ tactics in order to pursue it. A tactic is simply any deliberate action or policy designed to achieve a particular goal in the immediate future, whereas a strategy's goal may be much more long term, and even intended at times to remain purely aspirational.
The bombing of cities is a case in point and one where the distinction becomes very important. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, whose command of Strategic Air Forces from early 1944 coincided with a massive escalation of the bombing of civilian populations in occupied Europe and Germany, addressed this point when challenged after the war at a senate hearing to justify the large civilian death tolls this "saturation" bombing policy had inflicted.
When asked the same question Arthur Harris, speaking for the RAF's involvement, always fell back on a "Well, they started it ..." defence of the strategy and emphasised the destruction of German civilian morale as a worthy tactical aim in its own right. Spaatz however took a rather more nuanced stance and even went so far as to say that not one US bomber crew sent over Germany had ever been briefed tactically beforehand simply to cause loss of life. In military terms, he explained, this is never a tactical objective and for good reason. A soldier given this objective alone is also being given room to doubt the morality of the order, especially in the absence of a visible proof of advantage once the objective has been achieved. A tactic, he said, must be conveyed to a combatant in three ways, clearly stated objective, clear instruction regarding how to achieve it, and clear proof of success once achieved. The tactic may be part of a grand strategy, but this is not the soldier's concern on any mission.
When it came to bombing cities therefore the tactical objectives were always clear and related to property and infrastructure when it came to targets. The overall strategy, frustration of the enemy's industrial war effort, could be interpreted many ways (the USAF and RAF disagreements were already well known). However this openness to interpretation should not diminish the tactical aims. Even in the case of Dresden, a sore point for the victors after the war when challenged about its timing, conduct and effect, Spaatz could point to very specific tactical objectives and how bombers under his command pursued them. This was something that Harris normally failed to explain successfully when equally challenged, not because he lacked Spaatz's tactical awareness but because the initial bombing waves, conducted by his own bombers, seemed to have ignored most of the listed tactical targets to which Spaatz could easily refer, and about which he could specifically account for success or otherwise in achieving on the nights of the 13th and 14th February 1945.
This difference between the two men's subsequent accounts highlighted therefore the importance of distinguishing strategy from tactic in military terms. Harris, often maligned even now for his role in WWII and Dresden in particular, had painted himself into a moral corner largely through his obdurate pursuance of a tactic of "area bombing" throughout the war, achievement of which could not avoid high civilian casualties. By February 1945, even when working in close tandem with US allies, his tactic (one that actually made military sense in terms of night-bombing and which the Luftwaffe also had pursued earlier in the war), was still the one his crews were best equipped to pursue, no matter how many specific targets of interest had been identified in and around the city of Dresden. US crews, on the other hand, were briefed very differently when it came to their involvement in the same raids, with much more emphasis in their debriefing afterwards on measuring success or failure based on visible elimination of quite specific tactically selected targets.
This allowed Spaatz to later justify civilian losses in a way that Harris never really could. Tactical bombing, he said, produces as much loss of life as the successful elimination of targets involves and this loss is incidental to the exercise, not an aim of it. Strategic bombing, on the other hand, simply because it accommodates many different tactical measures, allows for such loss of life, and even predicts it. In fact in predicting it this can then even become a strategic objective in its own right. Dresden, and the carpet-bombing of other German cities he said, had been tactical missions in so far as the US participated in it. Civilian loss was regrettable, but necessary. Had it ever been a deliberate strategy, such as had been pursued by their allies, then he would not have had the conscience to dismiss these deaths as merely regrettable. He did not name Harris in his remarks (made as a formal submission to the US senate in 1948), but he did add the telling barb that it was handy for some individuals to justify their conduct after the event by describing their strategies as "tactics". He noted how this had also been done several times by defendants at the Nuremburg trial, but left the senate and the public to draw their own conclusions regarding how much it applied to the victors.
PS. Paul - isolated thank-you posts without attempt to further the conversation have the rhetorical effect of interrupting the conversation, and can even be interpreted as intended "full stops" to the conversation, as Priscilla mentioned. To avoid confusion I would suggest you by all means remain as polite as you undoubtedly are, but also enhance your politeness with intellectual engagement by adding even a small remark more germane to the discussion to elucidate why you are expressing gratitude.
PPS - there is no "master" of the site. Our only masters should be common-sense, curiosity, and willingness to engage.
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 06 Sep 2020, 16:29
nordmann wrote:
There is an element of confusion, on this thread too, every time strategic bombing is discussed, whether in terms of pure military objective or in the broader terms of morality. It is a fault of language as much as anything else, in that the terms "strategy" and "tactic" are often used synonymously, and this linguistic looseness can in turn be blamed at least partially on the military who, as appropriators of both terms have sometimes deliberately misrepresented one as the other, especially when retrospectively assessing and justifying past conduct.
Most military handbooks these days however will at least attempt to distinguish one from the other. A general may employ a strategy (the word, after all, comes from the Greek word for just that - the art/skill of a general), but will need then to employ tactics in order to pursue it. A tactic is simply any deliberate action or policy designed to achieve a particular goal in the immediate future, whereas a strategy's goal may be much more long term, and even intended at times to remain purely aspirational.
The bombing of cities is a case in point and one where the distinction becomes very important. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, whose command of Strategic Air Forces from early 1944 coincided with a massive escalation of the bombing of civilian populations in occupied Europe and Germany, addressed this point when challenged after the war at a senate hearing to justify the large civilian death tolls this "saturation" bombing policy had inflicted.
When asked the same question Arthur Harris, speaking for the RAF's involvement, always fell back on a "Well, they started it ..." defence of the strategy and emphasised the destruction of German civilian morale as a worthy tactical aim in its own right. Spaatz however took a rather more nuanced stance and even went so far as to say that not one US bomber crew sent over Germany had ever been briefed tactically beforehand simply to cause loss of life. In military terms, he explained, this is never a tactical objective and for good reason. A soldier given this objective alone is also being given room to doubt the morality of the order, especially in the absence of a visible proof of advantage once the objective has been achieved. A tactic, he said, must be conveyed to a combatant in three ways, clearly stated objective, clear instruction regarding how to achieve it, and clear proof of success once achieved. The tactic may be part of a grand strategy, but this is not the soldier's concern on any mission.
When it came to bombing cities therefore the tactical objectives were always clear and related to property and infrastructure when it came to targets. The overall strategy, frustration of the enemy's industrial war effort, could be interpreted many ways (the USAF and RAF disagreements were already well known). However this openness to interpretation should not diminish the tactical aims. Even in the case of Dresden, a sore point for the victors after the war when challenged about its timing, conduct and effect, Spaatz could point to very specific tactical objectives and how bombers under his command pursued them. This was something that Harris normally failed to explain successfully when equally challenged, not because he lacked Spaatz's tactical awareness but because the initial bombing waves, conducted by his own bombers, seemed to have ignored most of the listed tactical targets to which Spaatz could easily refer, and about which he could specifically account for success or otherwise in achieving on the nights of the 13th and 14th February 1945.
This difference between the two men's subsequent accounts highlighted therefore the importance of distinguishing strategy from tactic in military terms. Harris, often maligned even now for his role in WWII and Dresden in particular, had painted himself into a moral corner largely through his obdurate pursuance of a tactic of "area bombing" throughout the war, achievement of which could not avoid high civilian casualties. By February 1945, even when working in close tandem with US allies, his tactic (one that actually made military sense in terms of night-bombing and which the Luftwaffe also had pursued earlier in the war), was still the one his crews were best equipped to pursue, no matter how many specific targets of interest had been identified in and around the city of Dresden. US crews, on the other hand, were briefed very differently when it came to their involvement in the same raids, with much more emphasis in their debriefing afterwards on measuring success or failure based on visible elimination of quite specific tactically selected targets.
This allowed Spaatz to later justify civilian losses in a way that Harris never really could. Tactical bombing, he said, produces as much loss of life as the successful elimination of targets involves and this loss is incidental to the exercise, not an aim of it. Strategic bombing, on the other hand, simply because it accommodates many different tactical measures, allows for such loss of life, and even predicts it. In fact in predicting it this can then even become a strategic objective in its own right. Dresden, and the carpet-bombing of other German cities he said, had been tactical missions in so far as the US participated in it. Civilian loss was regrettable, but necessary. Had it ever been a deliberate strategy, such as had been pursued by their allies, then he would not have had the conscience to dismiss these deaths as merely regrettable. He did not name Harris in his remarks (made as a formal submission to the US senate in 1948), but he did add the telling barb that it was handy for some individuals to justify their conduct after the event by describing their strategies as "tactics". He noted how this had also been done several times by defendants at the Nuremburg trial, but left the senate and the public to draw their own conclusions regarding how much it applied to the victors.
PS. Paul - isolated thank-you posts without attempt to further the conversation have the rhetorical effect of interrupting the conversation, and can even be interpreted as intended "full stops" to the conversation, as Priscilla mentioned. To avoid confusion I would suggest you by all means remain as polite as you undoubtedly are, but also enhance your politeness with intellectual engagement by adding even a small remark more germane to the discussion to elucidate why you are expressing gratitude.
PPS - there is no "master" of the site. Our only masters should be common-sense, curiosity, and willingness to engage.
I think that when it came to tactical strikes the RAF did quite well (Rhur dams,Tirpitz sinking etc). That they used night bombing as opposed to USAF doctrine of daylights raids is probably down to several things. Firstly the RAF had suffered heavy losses early on in the war when attacking in daylight (thinking Keil/Whilmeshaven).Secondly they had given the Luftwaffe a bloody nose when they tried it in 1940 over London and thirdly up till the point that the P-51 arrived there wasn't really a long range fighter available. You could probably add a fourth and say that they simply weren't trained for a large scale daylight raid like the USAF.
Area bombing was a very crude tool, however if you have a situation where unlikely to get more than a couple of bombs near a target then options are limited. The atomic bomb was probably the crudest of all. Yes, there was an aiming point,but in reality if they had missed the bridge by a mile,so what?
nordmann Nobiles Barbariæ
Posts : 7223 Join date : 2011-12-25
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 06 Sep 2020, 16:55
Exactly, VF. And the point I was making too regarding how area-bombing made military sense in terms of night-bombing using the targeting instrumentation available at the time.
However to call area-bombing a "tactic" (as Harris always did) as opposed to a "strategy" struck Spaatz, among other US chiefs of staff, as an all too convenient way of dismissing huge loss of civilian life as regrettable but necessary, when in fact this was blatantly a strategic decision in which tolerance of such loss of life was a given, and in fact a quantifiable measure of the strategy's success.
As you say, the US's own decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, was very much a change of strategy and not merely adoption of a new tactic. At the time this distinction was something the US recognised, and proof of the distinction's importance is probably most evident in the fact that the decision went right up the chain of command to the president himself, so much a change of military strategy it represented.
The confusion between when one term should apply ahead of the other persists to this day when it comes to bombing. It was noticeable in both Gulf Wars, for example, when US debriefing to the press after such air strikes invariably referred to "tactical deployment" and "tactical strikes" - whereas the general press, in the UK too, often referred to the same actions as "strategic air strikes". However even with that said, in Vietnam the US itself was probably just as guilty as Harris when it came to purposefully obfuscating between the two terms - the use of napalm to defoliate large areas of vegetation was certainly a "tactic" (and the word was favoured by the military), but the known effect on the civilian population was certainly part of a general strategy designed to encourage a mental association by civilians between the sheer terror of such assault and the presence of Viet Cong in targeted areas, thereby reducing the latter's chances of securing any cooperation from the former. This was rarely publicly admitted at the time, especially by those who had designed the strategy, as it would be an admission that the Cong were receiving assistance from the same locals the US was purportedly "defending". However the tactic, as long as it was described simply as defoliation, could be readily admitted to.
ScribeAndSaint Quaestor
Posts : 8 Join date : 2020-12-20
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Sun 20 Dec 2020, 18:15
Big question about strategic bombing is it entered its most significant stage at the same time the land war was in its most significant stage. So it is tricky to say which one was the decisive factor. Was it the bombing? Was it the land war? Was it both together?
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Tue 02 Feb 2021, 16:22
ScribeAndSaint wrote:
Big question about strategic bombing is it entered its most significant stage at the same time the land war was in its most significant stage. So it is tricky to say which one was the decisive factor. Was it the bombing? Was it the land war? Was it both together?
Sribe And Saint,
from all what I read up to now and on whatever theatre it was certainly always the "land war" which prevailed upon the "strategic bombing". As it is not so an easy statement to prove, I will nevertheless seek for it, when I have a bit more time for this board.
Kind regards, Paul.
Dirk Marinus Consulatus
Posts : 298 Join date : 2016-02-03
Subject: Re: Strategic bombing...Efficiency? Thu 04 Feb 2021, 15:16
ScribeAndSaint wrote:
Big question about strategic bombing is it entered its most significant stage at the same time the land war was in its most significant stage. So it is tricky to say which one was the decisive factor. Was it the bombing? Was it the land war? Was it both together?
ScribeAndSaint,
the bombing of Germany by the Allied air forceshad a demoralizing effect on the members of the German army especially those in countries which were occupied by German forces. I have seen and watched many times the reaction of German soldiers, the younger ones as well as the older ones, when they watched Allied planes on their way to Germany or returning from bomber missions over Germany. And yes , there were times they had tears in their eyes and said they were worried about their families. And never mind the ones who had received correspondence informing them of deaths of family members due to bombing of German cities and towns.
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