A Better Use Than Strat Bombing?

PMN1 said:
And in exercises in peacetime with no blackout a sizable chunk had shown themselves incapable of doing that, with the situation not improving when forced to do the same over the continent.

The RAF did have a plan for attacks on transportation and oil right from the start (W.A.4 and W.A.5) but quickly showed they were totally incapable of doing so with the navigation skills and equipment that they had at the time.

Another plan was W.A.15 - sowing mines - and that died a similar death with the realisation that Ludlow Hewitt was right in what he had said previously - that his aircraft couldn't even navigate they way to the pub.

He also said that if they had to attack Germany, his medium forces would be gone in 3 1/2 weeks and his heavy in 7 1/2.

Like i said in a previous post, his reports were not good reading for the rest of BC.
:eek::eek: I had no idea it was so bad.:eek:
 
Operation Cobra

If the german Army had to select the single most destructive air operation in WW2they could well choose the massive bombing raid that wiped out PzLehr and opened the way for the US Army to finally leave the beach and get to work on liberating France (the summer was nearly over anyway...).
There were a number of places within fighter range from 1942 were Germans units presented targets, and if they couldn't find them in Africa France or Italy they could have worked out a way to get bombers and escorts to Russia. Send hundered of heavy bombers in daylight to destroy a single concentration of ground forces and the LW would have to show up for the fight and engage the escorting fighters, or pull out of Figher range and let the Army get pounded or spread out.
There were also lots of people working on the atlantic defences, and they made great targets
 
Strategic bombing was utterly worthless before 1943 except as a propaganda exercise and advancing up the learning curve. There should have been a token British bomber force for the sole purpose of occassionally night bombing Berlin and other cities as a propaganda exercise and learning curve lessons, and all other bombers given over to maritime patrol. Simply put, the people at Bomber Command were wrong.

By 1943 however, good enough designs and plentiful numbers (plus having severely reduced the U-Boat threat) makes strategic bombing somewhat viable for the US and Britain. Then with hindsight of what works and what didn't, you can design a bombing campaign that will be more effective than IOTL at less cost. You are still going to get hammered in 1943 before the introduction of long range escorts, but it's probably not politically feasible to wait until they are available.
 
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