Why didn't the Allies Target powerplants?

They probably did at some point, but in general I'd assume because it would cause needless civilian casualties since not only would military installations likely have their own back-up power supplies, but blowing-up the Power Plant powering say Frankfurt am Mein is'nt going to help you fight the Nazi troops in France or the Balkans.
 
Why didn't they?
it could have considerably shortened the war!!!!

At a guess, I'd say: Because they chose to destroy, or attempt to destroy, the industries
that would have run on said plants and the logistics that fed them. Factories that get no fuel or spare parts or raw materials won't have much use for electricity, even if they themselves survive the attacks.

Further, a lot of big factories back in the day had their power plants built in - bombers had to destroy the factories anyway. I've seen this in industrial photos from the era, and I expect it would have been a factor in Germany too.

So no, specifically targeting power plants wouldn't have had the bigger effect you expect.
 
I just googled "allied air raids on German power stations in WWII" but I didn't have the time to spend reading all the entries.
 
Uh, why haven't the Dambusters been mentioned yet? While British propaganda exaggerated the damage done to German hydroelectric output, they did work to temporarily halt industrial activity in the vicinity.
 
It's just that power plants are a lot more resilient than one might think, like a lot of the industrial processes a lot of it was probably moved underground.

A lot of power generation was also done locally, so there wasn't the same centralisation of large facilities. Many factories had their own powerplants, so they would have had to be targeted anyway. To be honest, I think targeting the transport links - railways and canals, etc - might get even better results.
 

Cook

Banned
One difficulty is that a lot of the Reich’s electricity was Hydro-electric and dams are very difficult targets for conventional bombers by their very nature, and because they are well defended. Operation Chastise was one effort to target them.
 
One difficulty is that a lot of the Reich’s electricity was Hydro-electric and dams are very difficult targets for conventional bombers by their very nature, and because they are well defended. Operation Chastise was one effort to target them.

I saw the movie :)
 
To be honest, I think targeting the transport links - railways and canals, etc - might get even better results.

Not really. Railways and canals are great to hit with modern technology (assuming there was a war), but with unguided bombs the only way to hit railways accurately would be with dive bombers, and dive bombers are extremely open to counterattack. With normal bombers there would have been a lot of damage, but they couldn't reliably hit them like they could cities.
 
Uh, why haven't the Dambusters been mentioned yet? While British propaganda exaggerated the damage done to German hydroelectric output, they did work to temporarily halt industrial activity in the vicinity.

Indeed, but my understanding was that the purpose of those attacks was more to disrupt water supplies, and to keep the Germans from using controlled flooding as a defense, than to disrupt power service. 'Course, it DID accomplish that also.
 
Check out the page about precision bombing on wikipedia, using average precision rates, it would take something like 108 B-17s to guarantee just 2 hits on a 400' by 500' plant.
 
The main case where precision bombing was most effective was targeting oil fields, and in this case it was a literal lethal weapon that contributed immensely and successfully to wiping out the German war effort by the end of the war. As a rule precision bombing really was a panacea, bombing was too inaccurate and a modern economy too diffuse and well-put-together for simple raids to destroy it.
 
Top