Delta Force
Banned
In the 1930s people viewed the prospect of a strategic air war similarly to how people would later view global nuclear war. It was expected that hundreds of thousands of people would be killed by conventional and chemical bombing of cities within the opening weeks of war.
The dire predictions were based on extrapolating some assumptions from World War I that didn't quite apply to the situation with aerial bombers attacking cities, and also with the development of early warning systems (especially radar) and civil defense infrastructure. However, the final year of World War II and the Korean War show that aircraft of the 1940s were quite capable of inflicting massive destruction. Curtis LeMay almost ran out of targets in Japan during World War II, and air strikes were making the rubble bounce in Korea. The deadliest air raid in history (possibly the deadliest day in the history of human conflict) wasn't one of the nuclear attacks, but the firebombing of Tokyo. That involved 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs (the equivalent of 1.67 kilotons of explosives, smaller than even many early tactical atomic weapons) but killed possibly over 100,000 people and destroyed most of Tokyo.
If radar and other early warning and civil defense systems hadn't been developed, and/or a major war had taken place with more developed aircraft, might the dire predictions of the 1930s have come true? Could a conventional or chemical air war have repercussions on par with a nuclear war?
The dire predictions were based on extrapolating some assumptions from World War I that didn't quite apply to the situation with aerial bombers attacking cities, and also with the development of early warning systems (especially radar) and civil defense infrastructure. However, the final year of World War II and the Korean War show that aircraft of the 1940s were quite capable of inflicting massive destruction. Curtis LeMay almost ran out of targets in Japan during World War II, and air strikes were making the rubble bounce in Korea. The deadliest air raid in history (possibly the deadliest day in the history of human conflict) wasn't one of the nuclear attacks, but the firebombing of Tokyo. That involved 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs (the equivalent of 1.67 kilotons of explosives, smaller than even many early tactical atomic weapons) but killed possibly over 100,000 people and destroyed most of Tokyo.
If radar and other early warning and civil defense systems hadn't been developed, and/or a major war had taken place with more developed aircraft, might the dire predictions of the 1930s have come true? Could a conventional or chemical air war have repercussions on par with a nuclear war?