How can you destroy that which already lies in ruins?
That is what Curtis LeMay referred to as making the rubble bounce.
He also said, “I can’t tell difference between incompetent and unlucky. I can’t afford to have either in my Command.” or close to that. Kind of makes one think of the current administration, doesn’t it.
Wasn’t he, Lemay, also the fellow who rather famously said “it was necessary to destroy the ville in order to save it?”
I think that quote is usually attributed to Churchill. LeMay was too busy designing the "box formation" that helped our daylight bombers defend themselves from Nazi fighters before the Mustangs appeared on the scene to escort them to their targets. The "formations" became a well known sight, hundreds of bombers wide, familiar even to German civilian onlookers, who as likely as not were rooting for us against them in the last year of the war.