With respect, you are grossly overstating the ability to close down ports by bombardment. They're huge, hard to hurt seriously and very easy to repair unless the damage is done up close and personal by skilled demolition teams. To give you some idea of the problems, between 25th August 1958 and 1st October 1958, the Chinese Communists pumped 445,000 artillery shells into Kinmen Island. Not only did they fail to stop any resupply of the Nationalist forces on the Island but the port capacity there actually increased during the bombardment. That's with artillery firing precision barrages at a range of less than three to nine miles. Trying to achieve that using bombers at night simply isn't a practical proposition.
If you want another example, take Kobe after the earthquake there a few years back. Despite being completely flattened, it was back in operation within two days and back to full capacity within three weeks. Or you might try the German ports in WW2; they were never closed down and the Allies were much better at bombing things than the Germans ever were.
Also, without a Battle of Britain, the British RAF will be able to put most of its resources into the night battle. The ability to intercept formations flying to the same targets at long range, night after night won't stay primitive and those losses won't stay low for long
Bombers carry much more tonnage than artillery shells, unless we're talking the 350mm caliber and above, then its a 1/2 ton shell with 600 lbs HE, and then even the HE111 carried 2 tons worth of bombs with larger percentages of HE to shell container.
Armor penetrating bombs can burrow in concrete and steel and do even more damage, but its the incendiaries like Thermite that causes the most trouble. Historically the British determined that German incendiary bombs caused roughly 10x the damage of HE to steel and concrete.
What caliber of artillery were the Chinese using? I'm betting it wasn't anything above 155mm, which is less than 100lbs of HE per shell. You're not going to hurt much of the concrete and steel with that. And there really aren't thermite artillery shells that I'm aware of; also did the ChiComs have White Phosphorus?
How much effort did the Allies try to put into closing German ports? AFAIK ports were relatively useless to the German war effort as far as production goes, unless we're talking about subpens and the like, which the Allies created the Grand Slam bomb for, which did a damn fine job of knocking out those pens. The US and RAF put most of their efforts into bombing cities and factories, only later switching to infrastructure (rail roads) and oil production. They weren't able to safely bomb Germany reliably until 1944 either by day or night.
But the other issue isn't just the ports. Its getting material off the docks before it can be destroyed. In Liverpool where the greatest import capacity was in 1940-1 and Britain handled 87% of its imports in 1940-1, it didn't have a direct connection between the docks and the rail lines, so required trucks to take imports from the warehouses to the trains. This means that filling the streets with rubble would seriously disrupt the ability of the ports to discharge goods to the trains and distribute it to the rest of the country.
In London they found that delayed action bombs and unexploded ordnance from even single raids took weeks to clear and blocked roads during that time.
Plus there is the matter of the dockworkers, who were, IOTL with the limited bombing of cities like Liverpool, increasingly absent from work because they were 'Trekking' to avoid bombing raids. Increase those raids to several times a week on special targets like Liverpool and finding the men to work the docks is going to get harder and harder, especially as they have no place to live and their families aren't safe in the cities any longer.
As to British night defenses, the Luftwaffe was bombing Britain by night consistently, though not in concentrated formations, from June 1940 through May 1941. By May 1941 the loss rates from all causes, losses to enemy and accidents was only about 1% and there were still major raids that were not being intercepted at all. Considering that the Germans stopped daylight raids, except for small ones, in October the British didn't improve their night defenses enough to inflict even a 1% loss rate on the Luftwaffe after 7 months of sustained night bombing, including after a small firestorm in London on the night of December 29th.
As to precision, the Luftwaffe had developed Radio Navigation and pathfinder formations pre-war, which allowed them to achieve as good of and in some cases better precision (within 100 meters) at night than during the day during the Battle of Britain and beyond.
The British tried to jam the German beams, but even as late as May 1941 the Germans were still able to use X-Gerät without trouble if they took precautions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Blitz
The May blitz
May 1941 saw a renewal of the air assault on the region; a seven night bombardment that devastated the city.[3] The first bomb landed upon Wallasey, Wirral, at 22:15 on 1 May.[4]
The peak of the bombing occurred from 1 – 7 May 1941. It involved 681 Luftwaffe bombers; 2,315 high explosive bombs and 119 other explosives such as incendiaries were dropped. The raids put 69 out of 144 cargo berths out of action and inflicted 2,895 casualties[nb 1] and left many more homeless.
One incident on 3 May involved the SS Malakand, a ship carrying munitions which was berthed in the Huskisson Dock. Although its eventual explosion is often attributed to a burning barrage balloon, this fire was put out. However flames from dock sheds that had been bombed spread to the Malakand, and this fire could not be contained. Despite valiant efforts by the fire brigade to extinguish the flames, they spread to the ship's cargo of 1,000 tons of bombs, which exploded a few hours after raid had ended. The entire Huskisson No. 2 dock and the surrounding quays were destroyed and four people were killed. The explosion was so violent that some pieces of the ship's hull plating were blasted into a park over 1 mile (1.6 km) away. It took seventy-four hours for the fire to burn out.[5]
Bootle, to the north of the city, suffered heavy damage and loss of life.[6] Over 6,500 homes in Liverpool were completely demolished by aerial bombing and a further 190,000 damaged.
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Also the
Butt Report concluded that only about a third of Bomber command aircraft reached their target in the early part of the war. I can't imagine that the Luftwaffe will be able to do much better and of course they are limited to medium bombers delivering much lesser payloads. And yes if the Germans switch their efforts in such a way the British will doubtless respond; even if their success was limited why should anyone assume that this version of the 'Blitz' will work any better than the OTL one?
Yeah, the RAF was much worse at night bombing that the Luftwaffe in 1940-1941. The Germans had radio navigation devices in 1938, which the British only developed in 1942. The Luftwaffe also had pathfinder units ready in 1939 that played a major role in the accuracy of German raids IOTL (within 100 meters with pathfinders and radio guidance).
The British did respond IOTL when the Germans switched to night bombing virtually exclusively in October 1940, though the Luftwaffe had been night bombing since June 1940 over the British Isles and had launched small raids in 1939 at night.
The loss rate between June 1940-May 1941 from all causes during night bombing raids was never much above 1% and mostly even less. This is with Britain pulling resources into airborne interception radar and Beaufighters for the 7 months of the Night Blitz at a high rate and really since 1935 when they started research into nightfighters and airborne radar, before anyone else in the world.
As it was the British were incredibly ineffective until 1943 in their night defenses.
As to why the Germans had a decent shot at night bombing, they didn't really try to concentrate their bombers for missions. Goering kept changing strategies weekly and ordered so many bombing targets that the Luftwaffe was too dispersed to achieve anything. Even London was only sporadically bombed from September 1940-May 1941 and it was the heaviest his city in Britain. Nevertheless the Luftwaffe bombed every major city in Britain, but didn't concentrate against any one for long enough to achieve anything. The British intelligence services were so confused by the dispersed bombing they concluded that the Germans were simply trying to terrorize all of Britain, instead of going after specific targets, as Goering did actually order. He just ordered so many targets that none were actually knocked out. Focus on three main targets for several months and that could have changed:
Liverpool/Merseyside
Avonmouth/Bristol
River Clyde/Glasgow/Clydeside
These port areas handled 95% of all British imports from the Fall of France to the German invasion of Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Blitz
Liverpool, Bootle, and the Wallasey Pool were strategically very important locations during the Second World War. The large port on the River Mersey, on the North West coast of England, had for many years been the United Kingdom's main link with North America, and this would prove to be a key part in the British participation in the Battle of the Atlantic. As well as providing anchorage for naval ships from many nations, the Mersey's ports and dockers would handle over 90 per cent of all the war material brought into Britain from abroad with some 75 million tons passing through its 11 miles (18 km) of quays. Liverpool was the eastern end of a Transatlantic chain of supplies from North America, without which Britain could not have pursued the war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz#Night_attacks
Regardless, the Luftwaffe could inflict huge damage. With the German occupation of Western Europe, the intensification of submarine and air attack on Britain's sea communications was feared by the British. Such an event would have serious consequences on the future course of the war, should the Germans succeed. Liverpool and its port became an important port for convoys heading through the Western Approaches from North America, bringing supplies and materials. The considerable rail network distributed to the rest of the country.[122] Operations against Liverpool were successful. Around 75% of the ports capacity was reduced at one point, and it lost 39,126 long tons (39,754 t) of shipping to air attacks, with another 111,601 long tons (113,392 t) damaged. Minister of Home Security Herbert Morrison was also worried morale was breaking, noting the defeatism expressed by civilians.[121] Other sources point to half of the 144 berths rendered unusable, while cargo unloading capability was reduced by 75%. The roads and rails were blocked and ships could not leave harbour. On 8 May 1941, 57 ships were destroyed, sunk or damaged amounting to 80,000 long tons (81,000 t). Around 66,000 houses were destroyed, 77,000 people made homeless, and 1,900 people killed and 1,450 seriously hurt on one night.[123] Operations against London up until May 1941 could also have a severe impact on morale. The populace of the port of Hull became 'trekkers', a term used to describe the mass exodus of people from cities before, during, and after attacks.[121]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm
Sir Arthur Harris, the officer commanding RAF Bomber Command from 1942 through to the end of the war in Europe, pointed in his post war analysis, although many attempts were made to create deliberate man made firestorms during World War II few attempts succeed:
"The Germans again and again missed their chance, ... of setting our cities ablaze by a concentrated attack. Coventry was adequately concentrated in point of space, but all the same there was little concentration in point of time, and nothing like the fire tornadoes of Hamburg or Dresden ever occurred in this country. But they did do us enough damage to teach us the principle of concentration, the principle of starting so many fires at the same time that no fire fighting services, however efficiently and quickly they were reinforced by the fire brigades of other towns could get them under control."
