quote:
Unfortunately the planners still refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation through 1944 and happily traded air crews for strikes on targets that often had little if any tangible military impact right up until the P51D minimized the consequences of their blundering.

No one envisioned a war where Germany had taken all of mainland Europe. Yes, they thought the bombers could protect themselves at the start of the war. But in the case of war, sometimes technology and tactics don't match at first. What they needed to do was reduce German air power so they could invade Europe. As escorts were lacking, were they supposed to just all sit in England and wait two more years for escort technology to improve. They had what they had and decided to proceed. They sent the bombers up knowing they were trading men and aircraft against German pilots and aircraft, with the added benefit that bombing was reducing German ability to wage war and lower German moral. That was the quickest way to win the war.

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how pitiful was the British military that they couldn't have driven Germany out of France? on top of that the US was fighting on the Japan front as well

The UK had less than 50million people. Meanwhile, Germany (including Austria, Memelland and Sudetenland) had a population of over 80million. Yes, the British Empire had more but it would have taken a lot of effort to move enough military age men to Europe to make much of a difference. In addition, they didn't have the industrial capacity to launch an invasion while protecting it from the Luftwaffe. Plus, Germany had the resources of all of Europe at its disposal. Oh yeah, and they were fighting Japan too.

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Posted by tide06

Member since Oct 2011

11352 posts

Posted on 3/11/24 at 6:39 pm to TigerDeacon

quote:
As escorts were lacking, were they supposed to just all sit in England and wait two more years for escort technology to improve.

They spent the first year bouncing 500lb bombs off 30’ of concrete on the submarine pens.

Those missions and the crews who died making those runs could’ve been much better spent on many other missions or yes, saved until they had sufficient numbers to inflict meaningful damage on targets of substance rather than as sacrificial lambs to justify the daylight bombing campaign.

If you read the book they outline the real motivation for why they were used how they were and much of it has to do with bomber command attempting to save face for their prewar tactical assumptions.

quote:
They sent the bombers up knowing they were trading men and aircraft against German pilots and aircraft,

Which made sense later in the war when they had fighter escorts capable of inflicting positive loss rates against the Luftwaffe. Before the escorts got involved that was emphatically not the case. So why would you want to send bombers up against fighters with a negative loss rate? That’s a poor use of a limited resource and demonstrates poor generalship by incurring unnecessary casualties.

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the added benefit that bombing was reducing German ability to wage war and lower German moral. That was the quickest way to win the war.

Post war analysis doesn’t support the conclusion that German morale was significantly impacted until very late with the mass casualty civilian target raids and more so it states unequivocally that because the German people had no ability to resist Nazi leadership that morale had no tangible correlation to decreases in German war production.

US bomber command was wrong about almost all of their prewar assumptions and tactics and it wasn’t until they had overwhelming numerical superiority and rushed development of fighters capable of escorting the bombers to their targets (which bomber command insisted weren't necessary as late as 1943) that they were able to grind the Luftwaffe into dust.

This post was edited on 3/11/24 at 8:15 pm

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