WI: US Night Bombing in the ETO (WWII)

Japhy

Banned
The popular view of the Air War in Europe is that in 1939 the British learned that their Daytime Attacks by bombers are too costly and switch over to Night Bombing which they follow though the rest of the war. When the USAAF arrives in 1942, they scoff at the idea and say "Damn the FW-190's, we have the Machine Guns" and push forth with daytime raid after daytime raid, and the 8th Air Force suffers higher casualty rates then the entire USMC. Things are rough until the Box system and then long range escorts are introduced.

I'm not a WWII expert, I admit, so that view might be completely and utterly wrong, I don't know. But thinking it over I have to wonder, is there a technological and doctrinal option for the USAAF to make the same turn over that the British did? Could the US in Europe resort to night and area bombing just like it would later do over Japan in 1945? And if so, what impact would it have?
 
The USAAF leaders might have evaluated Brit experience a bit more carefully and drawn different conclusions in early or mid 1943.

This would not preclude daylight bombing techniques outside of Germany. The anti transportation campaigns, such as Operation Strangle in Italy in the Spring/Summer of 1944 could not have been executed using area bombing techniques at night. Neither could the transportation attacks in France during the same months, which isolated the Normandy invasion site. These depended on extremly precise attacks to knock down the railroad bridges. The RAF contributed to the transportation campaigns and their raids were often in daylight.

Similarly the campaign attacking the V1 launch sites under construction from November 1943 through March 44 could not have been of any value if night bombing techniques had been used.
 
I once asked the same question and received a plethora of responses: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=214053

The consensus was that bomber streams would've been greatly complicated by simultaneous 8th AF and RAF Bomber Command operations. Airfields could only accommodate so many aircraft at a given time and that sort of thing, and accidents like aerial collisions might likely have been exacerbated by doubling the number of aircraft airborne on a given night.

Furthermore, US daytime bombing allowed the 8th AF to aid in whittling down what remained of the Luftwaffe's fighter force (albeit at enormous cost), whereas nighttime bombing campaigns did little to make a dent in Luftwaffe force strength (German nighttime air defense always emphasized flak emplacements over employment of nightfighters)

And regardless of whether it worked accurately or not, the Norden bombsight is certainly useless at night, and the Americans were still at that point wrongly convinced that they could accurately target industrial/military targets. Area bombing had yet to enter 8th AF's vocabulary, as I understand it.
 
I once asked the same question and received a plethora of responses: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=214053

The consensus was that bomber streams would've been greatly complicated by simultaneous 8th AF and RAF Bomber Command operations. Airfields could only accommodate so many aircraft at a given time and that sort of thing, and accidents like aerial collisions might likely have been exacerbated by doubling the number of aircraft airborne on a given night.

Furthermore, US daytime bombing allowed the 8th AF to aid in whittling down what remained of the Luftwaffe's fighter force (albeit at enormous cost), whereas nighttime bombing campaigns did little to make a dent in Luftwaffe force strength (German nighttime air defense always emphasized flak emplacements over employment of nightfighters)

Agree with most of that. USAAF leadership buying off on night bombing techniques of Germay creates a lot of problems. Those could be overcome during 1943 as the USAAF in the UK started realtively small & grew over the entire year. Still those problems and others would make it difficult.

And regardless of whether it worked accurately or not, the Norden bombsight is certainly useless at night, and the Americans were still at that point wrongly convinced that they could accurately target industrial/military targets. Area bombing had yet to enter 8th AF's vocabulary, as I understand it.

The 9 AF & others managed to solve the riddle on precision bombing. I dont know the entire story there, but the 9th AF was sucessful dropping those French bridges to isolate the Normandy invasion target. Bridges demand the ultimate in accuracy & the 9th AF managed to figure it out. They were not unique in finding how to make the precision bombing thing work so I suspect the problem was not entirely the Norden bombsight itself but other parts of the attack techniques that had to be changed .
 
Japhy said:
is there a technological and doctrinal option for the USAAF to make the same turn over that the British did?
Seeing 8th AF didn't do it OTL, ISTM you'd have to spike losses quite a lot before they'd overthrow their doctrine... IMO, you'd get an earlier LR escort, like P-38 or even AAF version of F4U, before you'd get 8th AF night bombing...:rolleyes:
 
At school one of my teachers mentioned that the USAAF stuck with day-bombing because they had a higher tolerance for casualties. Unlike the RAF who couldn't afford to keep up the loss of planes and men that daylight bombing caused the USAAF had enough resources to pay the butchers bill for increased accuracy and effectiveness. Any accuracy to that?
 
And if so, what impact would it have?

Hmmm. Well, IOTL, there was no time of day or night at which residents of German cities could feel safe from attack. If all the bombing took place at night, the Germans would see the pattern, hide in bunkers and shelters at night, and bustle around taking care of necessary business during the safety of daylight. I won't pretend that being bombed is ever going to be easy on the targets, but this altered pattern does seem easier to cope with.
 
At school one of my teachers mentioned that the USAAF stuck with day-bombing because they had a higher tolerance for casualties. Unlike the RAF who couldn't afford to keep up the loss of planes and men that daylight bombing caused the USAAF had enough resources to pay the butchers bill for increased accuracy and effectiveness. Any accuracy to that?

Well, we did have an enormous air fleet, and a great capacity for replacements (men and planes both). And clearly we were willing to take the hit. Part of the reason was that the US did not want to make terror bombing, per se, doctrinal. They were ok with the fact that civilians were going to get killed (make of that what you will), but they didn't want it said that it was the official purpose of the campaigns. Admittedly, that was a distinction that bore less importance as the war progressed. So basically, your teacher is correct.
 
hairysamarian said:
great capacity for replacements (men and planes both). And clearly we were willing to take the hit.
Thoresby said:
higher tolerance for casualties. Unlike the RAF
I don't think it's so simple. The U.S. war-fighting approach has always been one of reliance on technology rather than sheer manpower--the U.S. has traditionally relied on technology, because her population has been too low to support use of manpower. (It's why the U.S. developed sophisticated machine tools, for one thing.) I suspect the "willingness" to accept losses was because the AAF just didn't appreciate how flawed the self-defending bomber concept was...:eek:
 
I don't think it's so simple. The U.S. war-fighting approach has always been one of reliance on technology rather than sheer manpower--the U.S. has traditionally relied on technology, because her population has been too low to support use of manpower. (It's why the U.S. developed sophisticated machine tools, for one thing.) I suspect the "willingness" to accept losses was because the AAF just didn't appreciate how flawed the self-defending bomber concept was...:eek:

I agree with you about 95%. We rotated crews out of the European theater after 25 mission, If you made 25. So we realized the losses would be high. The US did use technology though. We tried, using the best available tech for precision bombing. It didn't work well but we tried.
 
The U.S. war-fighting approach has always been one of reliance on technology rather than sheer manpower--the U.S. has traditionally relied on technology, because her population has been too low to support use of manpower.

When the USA entered the war, her population was about double that of the UK, and slightly more than Germany and Japan combined. Our doctrinal reliance on technology came not due to population, but simply because our industrial base allowed us to produce, equip and use equipment as no one else copuld.
 
hairysamarian said:
When the USA entered the war, her population was about double that of the UK, and slightly more than Germany and Japan combined. Our doctrinal reliance on technology came not due to population, but simply because our industrial base allowed us to produce, equip and use equipment as no one else copuld.
I think you're forgetting, the U.S. reliance on tech over manpowr had deep roots. That the situation had changed didn't make the U.S. automatically more willing to accept more casualties. Take a look at the U.S. reaction to frontal attacks: it was universally considered foolish, even when, of the major combatants, the U.S. could afford it far more readily than (frex) Japan.
 
Take a look at the U.S. reaction to frontal attacks: it was universally considered foolish, even when, of the major combatants, the U.S. could afford it far more readily than (frex) Japan.

Because we had been there, done that, found a better way. We had done the Napoleonic charges in the Civil War, seen the same thing done in WW1. Our military may be accused of being slow learners, but they do get there. The last time we fought a war as the smaller belligerent was 1812, I think.
 
And what was the better way? Better tech...? As it usually was for the U.S.

Yes, better tech and more of it. I haven't argued that we don't throw a lot of material at the battlefield; of course we do. But it happens because we have the industrial base for it, not because we have a small population.
 
Because we had been there, done that, found a better way. We had done the Napoleonic charges in the Civil War, seen the same thing done in WW1. Our military may be accused of being slow learners, but they do get there. The last time we fought a war as the smaller belligerent was 1812, I think.

Why do people always say that the Civil War armies used Napoleonic tactics?

Neither side relied heavily on cavalry and artillery combined with huge number of troops fighting aggressively at close range.
 
Why do people always say that the Civil War armies used Napoleonic tactics?

Neither side relied heavily on cavalry and artillery combined with huge number of troops fighting aggressively at close range.

I was referring to the casualty-incurring charges across open ground against massed troops, a scenario which did happen repeatedly.
 
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