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Hi Sid, You say that the Baedeker raids tied down British AA guns at home and prevented the RAF in the Middle East from getting modern aircraft. Surely, if true, this is evidence FOR the efficacy of strategic (even area) bombing, not against it? I think everybody on both sides from Hitler and Church...

Hi again Sid, If you consider the strategic bombing campaign prohibitively expensive - and it was undoubtedly more expensive for Germany in terms of human and material destruction than it was for the Allies - you have to advance an alternative that would produce the same major affects. Where are the...

Hi Sid, ...Personally, I have always thought that strategic bombing was the only justification for an independent air force and that all tactical activity could be better left to air arms of the ground force they were supporting. Well, I think you have the primary reason why the inter-war RAF insist...

Hi Sid, Like everyone else, the RAF was operting on theory until it had empirical evidence. The mst easily quantifiable evidence came with the first Italian raid on Barcelona. The Barcelona raid was the key trigger for the mass civil defence programmes begun in its wake across Europe, Britain promin...

Hi Sid, Certainly the theories about strategic bombing predated the Spanish Civil War. However, the empirical calculations of its real effectiveness had to await its application in the Spanish Civil War. The first Barcelona raid (usually overshadowed in the popular memory by Guernica) was central to...

Hi Sid, Across Europe, calculations on the likely impact of the bombing of urban areas were based on the first Italian air raid on Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War... The theories behind strategic bombing are certainly older than the Spanish Civil War. Billy Mitchell, Hugh 'Boom' Trenchard (co...

Hi again Sid, ...I don't see that Britain came out of the Blitz strengthened, except in the sense that it had survived it. There was enormous relief that the bombing had been far less damaging than pre-war estimates had predicted but, nevertheless, widespread death and destruction had been caused Ye...

Hi Sid, Hi Vagabond, A couple of points. There were moral (and legal) constraints left after Rotterdam. For example, Allied area bombing did not continue to the end of the war. It stopped in March 1945. Perhaps over Europe, but certainly not over Japan - and concentrating solely on the ETO would in ...

... The modern firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons was not apparent in 1945. I think you are right that there was no 'firebreak' between nuclear weapons and area bombings of civilian targets in 1945, but I would add that mass bombing of cities was seen in much the same light at least...