http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj99/win99/ash.htm
Published Aerospace Power Journal- Winter 1999
Terror Targeting – The Morale of the Story, by Lt Col Eric Ash, USAF

Thoughtful piece.

Alertken that is an extraordinary reference piece … it’s extensive but accessible and IMHO a “must-read” for contributors to this thread.

For those who can’t find the time to read it … a taster

“World War II’s [Combined Bomber Offensive] was successful in setting the stage for the success of Overlord, but the terror bombing of civilians was not very successful. As a strategy, it caused negative morale among bomber crews, and it failed to target the Schwerpunkt of German morale, just as firebombing Japanese cities failed to break the Japanese will to resist. Why then did Allied decision makers go for the terror-bombing option? There are many plausible reasons: desire for revenge and “eye-for-an-eye” retribution, inability to do anything else while facing a daunting enemy and a very uncertain future, perceived opportunity to prove the raison d’être of the air forces, avoidance of friendly ground casualties, and belief that it would break enemy will. All of these and other reasons aside, the important point for today is knowing that targeting morale requires precise aerial bombing of [command and control] and leadership to disrupt the linkage among leadership, morale, and organization success. Damaging a populace’s living conditions may not break its will to resist unless carried to the morally questionable extremes of killing most of the people or completely destroying their ability to survive. At the time of the CBO, such apparent ruthless retribution as part of a strategy was more understandable to decision makers and Allied societies than it is to students of history who have not lived through the blitz and faced such an enormous task and uncertain outcome.”

This is great. This whole revisionist thing is a little like a war of statistics … these data argue such and such and these other data argue the opposite … seen alone either could be correct. There was an awareness campaign here not so long ago stating that in Greater Wellington 52% (something like that, about half) of car accidents occur at intersections (so watch out). I wrote to the Wellington City Council asking where the hell all the other accidents happened? They replied saying oh yes, it’s actually much higher than 52% … it all depends, on how you define “Greater Wellington” and how you define an accident at an intersection. Lies, damn lies and statistics.

And so it is with the Strategic Bombing Campaign. I (and clearly many of us here) have read widely of the various issues and there are contradictory arguments in almost all cases. For example:

The morale impacts of bombing. In the aggregate the outcome is almost always positive (for morale) all round (it’s great that we’re hitting those B’s … and … those B’s are hitting us, now we’re getting really p’d off). But if it gets really serious you get the reverse effect. IIRC Schorsch is right that double-figure loss rates at times caused Allied changes in both strategy and tactics (different targetting, pulling certain aircraft off front-line duties, etc.). And really heavy air-raid damage causes a rethink – was it Speer who commented after the Hamburg raids of July ’43 something to the effect that a couple of repeats of that magnitude would have had very serious morale and capability consequences? And of course as you note JDK, the atom bombs had significant effect.

The manufacturing debate … various arguments to and fro above. Manufacturing output goes into overdrive at wartime, as does the enthusiasm of the other side to reduce it. Germany’s manufacturing capability increased hugely through the war years, but to have it reduced by war’s end to any point below where it started the war was a heavy impact. Contrast that to The Soviet Union’s and USA’s massive output growth and you see the skew clearly.

And there’s this argument that the bombing campaign tied up resources otherwise valuable elsewhere. This is actually the point that kicked off this thread. I believe that to argue that this was the intent of the bombing campaign is revisionist. It was no more than a by product. But it may have been brought more to the forefront to answer the Soviet Union’s call for a second front; anyone care to comment on that? I believe the intent lies somewhere in either, or both, of the “destroy manufacturing capability” and “destroy the enemy’s morale” camps.

The efficiency argument is interesting too. I’ve read that one from time to time, more or less as Schorsch puts it. Do war planners/strategists concern themselves with efficiency? Certainly the procurement people do – they put up specs and test protoypes etc. and then buy the most effective tool, overlaid with the efficiency of manufacture. Reflect here on the continued production of ME110 when arguably the HE219 was a better nightfighter – but the loss of production whilst retooling and the greater use of materials etc would have been inefficient versus continuing to turn out an adequate/effective product (the 110 as nightfighter) which anyway was not expected to have much service life. I’ll say it again; do the war planners consider efficiency in the aggregate? I’m with JDK on this one – IMHO they do not. And if you don’t value that aspect at the time, it must ‘a priori’ be revisionist to argue it after the fact.

Exactly so Ken (I assume you’re Ken, “Ken the Alert” perhaps?). I confess to perennial amazement that the RAF/Allied bombing campaign could be waged, theoretically or at least apparently, in line with Douhet’s theories – yet only a year or so before Londoners, indeed all of England, had rallied as a result of the Blitz. If anything, bombing appears to increase (or stiffen) the morale of those on the receiving end. They get p!ssed off.