Hi Sid,
sid guttridge wrote: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 this...
Not for RAF Bomber Command, who for years had advocated the total dominance of the bomber in war of the future. You can speculate that the RAF was really only out to define a role for itself that no other arm could fulfill, in any case it predated the RA raid on Barcelona by many years.
If the RAF had concluded that because the Blitz had failed Bomber Command should disband,
That would have been a radical conclusion indeed, and to my certain recollection I have not suggested that the RAF should have drawn it. Rather, I suggested that the RAF might have decided to abandon all ideas of seriously affecting the outcome of the war by area bombings on civilian targets.
I ask again, are you not really advocating that Britain effectively drop out of the war altogether, given that the Royal Navy could not threaten Germany directly and the British Army alone was too small to hold a lodgement on the continent, let alone liberate it?
I'm questioning the effectiveness of the strategic bombing campaign that was waged against Germany's cities, particularly in the early years. I fail to see how you can equate that with letting Britain drop out of the war altogether.
It's true that Britain had few offensive options against Germany after the summer of 1940, but aggressive strategies were nonetheless pursued where possible, chiefly in the Mediterranean.
What is this "simply"? Is the absence of the front of some 10,000 high velocity weapons capable of anti-tank use of no significance?
Those 10,000 AA guns were not absent from the fronts, they were simply built because they were needed.
The USSBS puts it succinctly thusly:
For the (early war) years, the conclusion is inescapable that Germany's war production was not limited by its war potential - by the resources at its disposal - but by demand; in other words, by the notions of the German war leaders of what was required to win
From BBSU p. 31, from the PDF that Guido kindly linked to on the first page of this thread. Illustrative graphs accompany the text.
Is the shortfall in German production in 1944 of enough armour to entirely re-equip the Panzerwaffe of no significance?
As a percentage of 1940 tank production, the shortfall is massive. As a percentage of 1944 production, it is rather less significant.
Is an aircraft productivity level only half that of the UK in 1944 really the productive miracle it is sometimes claimed?
It certainly shows that the strategic bombing campaign put a real strain on the Luftwaffe, as I also aknowledged in my previous post; however it equally shows that the German economy in fact was up to the challenge of stepping up production of needed items as required even in 1944.
Why do you bring the USAAF into the equation as a separate entity.
The USAAF's bombing effort over Europe is chronologically seperate from the early, unsuccessful campaigns of RAF Bomber Command.
The USAAF's attempt at targetting a selected production bottleneck by hitting the Schweinfurt ball bearing factories seems to mirror Bomber Command's early efforts rather well, and just like Bomber Command's oil and transport plans, it failed - not due to inaccuracy, but due to prohibitive losses.
Surely, if the failure of the Blitz ought to have taught the British that strategic bombing was a failure, the US ought to have drawn the same conclusion? If there was no raison d'etre for Bomber Command, there was also presumably no raison d'etre for the US 8th Air Force
Strategic bombing, and in fairness also colonial policing, had been the RAF's chief reasons for existing as an independent arm in the inter-war years. By late 1940 the colonial dimension was largely irrelevant, and the strategic bombing dimension certainly needed revisions. The German campaign in France, and later also the Greek debacle, had demonstrated that much closer cooperation between land and air forces was necessary, and the Blitz had demonstrated that air raids on civilian targets could not bring about a nation's surrender.
Forgive me, but I thought Anglo-American bombing of tranport infrastructure and oil facilities were major contributors to German defeat in 1944-45. This being so, surely the continued pursuit of an ever stronger strategic bomber arm over 1942-43 was entirely justified by results?
The bombing campaign against the synthfuel industry indeed eventually proved effective - but this should be contrasted with the same target category being ruled out by Bomber Command in 1941 when they realized that Bomber Command did not possess the accuracy needed to knock out the synthetic oil industry. That's why they switched to hitting mainly civilian targets, in the shape of German cities.
It is perhaps perfidious to mention that the collapse of the synthfuel industry coincided rather nicely with Germany's loss of Romania's oil wells. Germany's and perhaps especially Italy's transport infrastructure was seriously damaged by strategic bombing - even so, the Germans were quite capable of concentrating forces by rail as late as March 1945, when the SBC stopped.
Yup. The early British strategic bomber offensive against oil and transport targets failed to achieve its aims in 1940-42. But the, by then, Anglo-American offensive against the same objectives succeeded in 1944 when a much greater weight of aircraft was available. What exactly are you proposing to use against these targets if the Allied strategic bomber force had been run down, rather than expanded, in 1942-43?
By 1942 these targets had been abandoned, and the RAF had settled for raids on civilian targets. The Lübeck raid of March 1942 yielded spectacular results, the question is if it was also a war-winning result.
I think Bomber Command's eventual settling for hitting civilian targets (and before you put words in my mouth, I am not questioning the morality of bombing civilian targets) was a simple case of trial and error: the oil plan failed. So did the transport plan. That left only civilian targets to hit, even if the Blitz had demonstrated that aiming for such targets, while easier, is not likely to decide the outcome of war.
Exactly. Germany's economy was so poorly geared to war production that it was almost bound to rise when it got going. However, largely thanks to strategic bombing, it failed by a wide margin to meet its expanded production targets or gain anything near the level of productivity achieved at the same time by the UK, let alone the USA.
Considering that the RAF undertook a strategic bombing campaign that was demonstrably unsuccessful in its early stages, and considering that Germany only went on something approaching a full war footing as late as 1943, I think you could argue that a largely speculative drop in German 1944 war production was a poor dividend from an air campaign waged at such a high cost in men and machines lost.
Are you seriously proposing as an argument that had there been no Allied air threat to Germany, it might have turned over the machine tools used in the production of anti-aircraft artillery to producing consumer products for the home market while there was still a war on the Eastern Front requiring similar high velocity weapons?
No, I am in fact arguing that civilian production would not have been changed to military production if there was no need for it. Vide the BBSU quote, above.
Incidentally, can you produce evidence to the effect that high velocity guns were diverted from the fronts to the defense of the Reich?
Have you any evidence that a single German factory was ever switched from war to civil production between 1933 and 1945?
Many weapons projects were axed and various orders for armaments were cancelled after the successful 1940 campaign. But no matter, my point was that Germany's civilian economy still had the surplus to produce such comparatively lavish items as civilian cars and rubber-soled shoes as late as 1942.
There doesn't have to be a direct causal connection between Allied bombing and German failure to reach production targets that were deemed feasible before strategic bombing disrupted them. Indirect causal connections are perfectly adequate. Is there any doubt that direct damage impinged on production? Is there any doubt that transport damage impinged on production? Is there any doubt that any absentee rate at all impinged upon production? Is there any doubt that forced relocation impinged upon production? And so on.....
No. The point is simply that Germany's economy was able to expand and produce more despite the Allied air campaign.
It may be difficult to quantify precisely because production lost does not leave the physical evidence of production physically destroyed. However, by matching German expected production against actual production we can come to the reasonable conclusion that the cost to the German armaments industry of Allied strategic bombing was very considerable.
We can conclude that German actual production did not match expected production - it is still something of a stretch to give the SBC full credit for that dividend. I think it is more fruitful to see where the SBC actually forced the Germans to change priorities - and nowhere is that more evident than in the production of aircraft types.
OK. Could the Luftwaffe have been worn down by other means than a threat to Germany itself? What else was so certain to force the Luftwaffe into the air?...
That was Kesselring's reasoning for switching targets from RAF airfields to London: to force a British air force that according to his statistics was on its heels to fight over a target that it
had to defend. He was wrong. The Luftwaffe's earlier raids on RAF airfields were much more disruptive.
Yes, less resources devoted to strategic bombers could have benefitted some other aircraft projects, but this can't be done just for its own sake. There has to be a demonstrably better alternative project? What is it to be?...
For example closing the Atlantic air gap earlier. Or developing an operational airlift capacity for the British army.
Nope. Far from meaning that there were fewer long range aircraft available to Coastal Command capable of bridging the mid-Atlantic "air-gap", strategic bomber production meant that suitable aircraft actually existed. If not a strategic bomber design, what other aircraft do you suggest could have been employed? Nothing springs to my mind immediately.
Suitable aircraft existed prior to the war, in the shape of the domestic Wellington and the US built Catalinas and Fortresses. The struggle for resources between Bomber Command and Coastal Command was very real; in fact Harris had to borrow aircraft from Coastal Command to assemble enough bombers for the first 1000 bomber raid on Cologne in 1942. Very evidently, that meant a weakening of Coastal Command's efforts over the Atlantic.
The air gap was finally closed by the use of Liberators and escort carriers. It was only narrowed by the occupation of Iceland and the entry of the USA. If it had already been closed, the diversion of strategic bombers would have been a non-issue.
All other things being equal, less aircraft devoted to an inconclusive strategic bombing campaign (or so the Butt Report claimed) would have meant more aircraft available to provide air cover over the Atlantic.
Best regards,
Jon