Thats diengenuous in that in order to use those 29,508 CAS Aircraft you have to have a 3 million strong continental army in contact with said enemy to use them - Strategic Bombing was the only way for several years for Western Allies to directly attack Germany other than the some what 'Fringe' wars in North Africa and Later Italy.
The claims of BC was that Strategic Bombing would win the war in 6 months. All it did was open another front, while the most important front - the Battle of the Atlantic was in the balance. It's not disingenuous to ask what other capability Lancaster output could have been put to.
The reality is: lose the Battle of the Atlantic and there is no Bomber Offensive, D-Day or VE-Day. The advent of the long range fighter (P-51) meant that Germany's top scoring pilots could be hacked from the sky in Feb-March 1944. Without air superiority there is no D-Day. Without the Russians grinding away the Germans there is no VE-Day. Notice BC hasn't featured yet. They were busy 'de-housing' and initiating Germany's post-war urban renewal projects. The whole pretext was that German morale would collapse - it didn't.
BC (and the 8th USAAF) forced the Germans to deploy 1/3 of its artillery 1/2 its artillery ammo and half of its fighters to defend the 'home land' for several years with all the attendent cost in resources manpower and expended treasure - and that is not taking into account the cost of damage inflicted without a single boot on the ground! The bombing also forced German industry to adapt and while production improved during the bomber campaign - output was at least a 3rd below what had been planned.
£2.78 billion (not including USA investment) and German production increased...
Professor AV Hill, a Member of Parliament and noted research scientist pointed out that:
The total [British] casualties in air-raids – in killed – since the beginning of the war are only two-thirds of those we lost as prisoners of war at Singapore.... The loss of production in the worst month of the Blitz was about equal to that due to the Easter holidays.... The Air Ministry have been ... too optimistic.... We know most of the bombs we drop hit nothing of importance. ...
In terms of lives it was cheap for the Allies 160,000 casaulties from 1939-1945 - they replaced blood for the most part with Steel, Doller and Pound.
I'm not sure I'd call the lost aircrews cheap. For all the time invested in recruiting the best and training them you may as well shoot 160,000 junior officers, your lieutenants and captains that would lead your land armies. While the PBI would cheer, it's a terrible loss. The French didn't recover from losing 30% of their Junior Officers in WW1, the 1940 Debacle was the result.
To pick another aspect, the Navy needed the Cavity Magnetron for centimetric radar in detecting U-Boats and Periscopes at sea. They were against BC having it as it would fall into enemy hands but BC eventually overcame this protest and H2S proved to the Germans that centimetric radar was possible so they built detectors and their own AI radars.