I know the world has changed, but we're such a long way from the 'thousand plane raids' I remember reading about in my history books as a kid.
How much you wanna bet our military brass knew about this locale and Obama’s directives forced them to ignore what they knew?
When the bombs never miss, you don’t need nearly as many.
You are right. The world has changed a lot.
I was watching a show on “The History Channel” about one of those 1000+ plane raids.
The idea was to bomb the Messerschmidt factory at the same time as a ball bearing factory. This was supposed to divide the defending Luftwaffe fighters.
Things did not work out well and we lost over 60 B-17s on the raid and a further 40 bombers were written off as too badly damaged. That is over a hundred four engined bombers.
A loss like that today would devastate the whole country. Then again we lost over 3000 innocent civilians on 9-11.
Those massive air raids were lucky to put a few bombs on target. Worse, the payload was much smaller.
B-17: 4500lb (long range) to 17,600lb (overload)
B-24: 2700lb (very long range) to 8000lb (max rated)
B-29: 20,000 lb
F-18: 13,700 lb (bombs, rockets, missiles)
Importantly, the F18 handles PGMs with ease.
Simply put, we don't need those huge raids any more, and are spared the enormous losses they entailed.
With less than 5/10ths cloud coverage an average B-17 Group could be expected to place 32.4% of its bombs within 1000 feet of the aiming point when aiming visually.
The average B-24 Group under the same conditions could be expected to place 30.4% of its bombs within 1000 feet of the aiming point. SOURCE
These guys don't bother to try to hit a factory building - they pick a single window.
Plus an F-18 pilot is back at base playing video games in the time it would take a squadron of the old prop planes to get over target.