Item — HN Reader

Similar to the "Gun Club" (and also in the U.S. in the WWII era) was the Bomber Mafia - convinced that lots of long-range heavy bombers could win any war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_Mafia

They were profoundly resistant to reality (such as sustained "unsustainable" loss rates in un-escorted daytime bomber attacks on Germany), or even ideological compromises (such as long-range fighter escorts for those bombers)...up to the point where the en-mass sacking of mafia members, or massive "de-emphasis" of their branch of the armed forces were clear and present dangers.

1 comments

The astonishing thing was that the UK had just sustained a massive bombing campaign by Germany whixh had veeu obviously and singularly failed to break the civilain spirit and make the UK sue for peace.

So, obviously, the UK airforce proposed that a massive bombing campaign would clearly break the German civilian spirit and force Germany to sue for peace.

Well yes, but the Blitz was never all that effective. London was never burned like Dresden, let alone Hiroshima. In any case, the aim was absolute destruction of production, not civilian demoralization.

The bombing of Dresden was very late in the war. Those making decisions in 1942 would not have had the insight to see how the bombing would (fail to) break the civilian spirit. On the contrary, in fact, for the Germans Dresden was as much of a propaganda win as are dead children for Hamas today, even when Hamas kills the children themselves.

The allied bombing of civilian targets in Germany officially never happened. They were 'military' or 'industrial' targets. It's commonly understood that they were retaliatory as opposed to strategic.

Really? Was Dresden a military target? Most major German cities were reduced to rubble.

Theoretically yes, because it was "a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort".

It's worth remembering that at this time precision munitions didn't exist. Attempting to bomb a factory was largely worthless, especially at night and under enemy fire. It was really just about dropping as many bombs as possible over a wide area and hoping that somehow, some of them would get kinda near the actual targets. The fact that most wouldn't was taken for granted.

Cities are major industrial centers. In the twisted logic of the generals at the time, destroying them wholesale was a legitimate way to strike at the military-industrial strength of a country

Countervalue was a thing in nuclear planning too - tie down enemy AA/missile defense defending cities