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To: Tail Gunner John
Strategic bombing during WWII was instrumental in winning the war.

no it wasn't, it prolonged the war because Hitler was able to use the bombing of Germany as evidence of his 'prophecy' that Germany would be razed from the map if they lost the war. He told them they had no choice but to support him. Same thing happened in Japan, until little boy and fat man struck.

344 posted on 02/18/2005 3:29:53 PM PST by William of Orange (I'm a DU troll pretending to be a FReeper, how am I doing?)
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To: William of Orange
Strategic bombing in both Germany and Japan destroyed the armaments industry and lines of communication, the military/industrial complex if you will. Fat man and little boy were the ultimate in strategic bombing.

Dresden probably wasn't a legitimate strategic target. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were on the short list of strategic targets because of their war making values.

Hitler's lunatic prophecies had no effect on prolonging the war. It was the German war machine. You destroy the machine and kill it's operators and the war ends.
349 posted on 02/18/2005 4:01:59 PM PST by Tail Gunner John
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To: William of Orange

Wrong.

Strategic bombing could have ended the war in late 1943 had the allies a sufficient bomber force to maintain a series of heavy attscks.

No less an authority that Albert Speer, (Schicklgruber's Minister of production, as well as the only member of the Nazi high command with a brain in his head-so he should know), says that after the horric firestorm raids on Hamburg in July of 1943 that killed 60,000 he had a meeting with Hitler and the general Staff. He said that if six more attacks like that rapidly followed, the war would be over.

Unfortunately, neither the RAF or the USAAF had the necessary amount of planes at that time to sustain such a level of destruction. When they did by late 1944 and 1945 the war rapidly ended. We learned their weak point was oil. Oil production was hammered in early 1945. So no matter how many planes the Luftwaffe had, they had no gas to fly. Even in late 1944 the Germans were worried about oil reserves. The whole point of the Ardennes "Bulge" attack was to try and seize Allied oil supplies.

Strategic bombing won that war in both theaters.


376 posted on 02/19/2005 9:33:21 AM PST by Chef Dajuan (this ain't rocket science, you know. so use your knob! -emeril lagasse)
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