Why did the Japanese never build any decent heavies?

[Nikademus]

The very lack of this kind of onslaught is what gave the Vietnamese (for example) the fortitude and confidence to continue their struggle.

I recall reading that the bomb tonnage dropped on Vietnam exceeded that of all of WWII. To me, the attitude of the population after the shooting stops can't be attributed to any one factor. Its simple exhaustion....6+ years of warfare.

[DuckofTindalos]

ORIGINAL: treespider

I may be ignorant of this but wasn't the strategic bombing of Germany's oil refining industry in 1944 partly responsible for the collapse of the Luftwaffe and the fuel shortages at the end of the war?

Yes. Anyone who claims differently is either ignorant or a revisionist.

BUT, no single factor was responsible for the defeat of the Germans. It was the COMBINATION of strategic bombing and the fact that the Germans ended up fighting land wars on three distinct fronts, and the ineptitude of their supreme command that finished them.

[Ursa MAior]

ORIGINAL: Speedy

Hi,

Yes SB of Oil and the 'Transportation Plan' were the most effective strands of the 8/15th AF bombing.

Bombing of the Aircraft and Armaments Industry did not curtail Axis production greatly if at all for example.

I think it's fair to say that the strategic bombing of Nazi Europe did NOT win the war on it's own but did contribute in the war's end by reducing the production (in it's broadest sense) of certain industries. Coupled with this was the HUGE effort applied by the LW and the deployment of AA assets to counter this aerial assault.

Steven

Alright I admit, I was wrong. But it did not have the magnitude some claim. I'd say it was one of say 4-6 factors, which were mainly responsible.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Speedy

I think it's fair to say that the strategic bombing of Nazi Europe did NOT win the war on it's own but did contribute in the war's end by reducing the production (in it's broadest sense) of certain industries. Coupled with this was the HUGE effort applied by the LW and the deployment of AA assets to counter this aerial assault.

Steven

Strategic bombing in it's pre-war pure concept failed completely. The modified strategic-operational bombing campaign that replaced it succeeded completely. (A grinding, punishing attrition war which chewed up Germany's remaining experienced fighter cadres giving the Allies total air dominance.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Strategic bombing in it's pre-war pure concept failed completely. The modified strategic-operational bombing campaign that replaced it succeeded completely. (A grinding, punishing attrition war which chewed up Germany's remaining experienced fighter cadres giving the Allies total air dominance.

Very true... but one has to wonder what would happen if this modified campaign started earlier...

Would it be as productive as when it was lunched (i..e late at war) because the Luftwaffe was still force to recon with in 1942/1943?

IMHO it is "chicken and egg" question the answer to which we will nevre know...


Leo "Apollo11"

[el cid again]

But El Cid - WTF does any of that below have to do with the fact that Japan couldn't/didn't build heavy bombers???!!!

1) Japan did build heavy bombers. Perhaps you mean "didn't deploy heavy bombers in our sense of the term operationally"???? Both the Army and the navy managed a 4 engine type - although in the event neither was put into series production. [The G8N1 would have been, but the tooling and plant were destroyed].

2) Japan did plan to build bigger heavy bombers. The "Japanese B-36" is virtually identical to the US plane, except it uses tactor rather than pusher propellers, and it is years ahead of the US design (by which it mean the design was suitable for production much sooner). By identical I mean range/payload and weight/power and configuration data are almost interchangable for long range missions. There was this big difference:
the Japanese plane could not carry 20 tons of bombs - they NEVER planned for massive conventional bombing even with a monster bomber.
This ship was intended either to duplicate the role of other Japanese bombers (attack ships at sea; attack critical air bases - like the raids on the B-29 bases which caused so much grief we kept it secret for decades).
They were not intended for raids like the ones we conducted on Japanese cities.

3) Japan actually bought production rights - and the early conversions - of a German 4 engine bomber (the FW-200 - "the scorge of the Atlantic") but was unlucky in timing and never got possession of either planes or tooling. It is a strong indication of interest in a role for 4 engine bombers - although these would be heavy by Japanese standards - and not intended for a US 8th Air Force type role.

4) Japan actually built "heavy bombers" in numbers and used them in terms of its own doctrine and terminology. We don't happen to understand that doctrine and terminology - so we think they were "wrong." But different is not the same as wrong. Japanese heavy bombers had three or four engines and, outside of China, were not really used in city bombing. Note I have MORE respect for Japanese bombers than for US ones - and my parents BOTH served with B-17s - I grew up in a "bomber" family. [USAAF WACs were first tranied as photographers - the very first job other than nursing for women in the US Army - ending up training gunners and bombradiers - they were first trained as combat intelligence photographers - in case the war went badly this was to free men for offensive missions.] The idea you use bombers efficiently against military targets does not offend me. The idea you use them to force civilians to demand peace - when in fact they make people who otherwise have no use for the regime to volunteer to man AA guns, aircraft spotting posts, or work in war factories. I don't believe in bombing civilians - not only because it is wrong - but because it doesn't work!

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: el cid again

This ship was intended either to duplicate the role of other Japanese bombers (attack ships at sea; attack critical air bases - like the raids on the B-29 bases which caused so much grief we kept it secret for decades).

Can you please clarify on this (I asked yesterday as well [8D] - only "anarchyintheuk" gave some info)?


Leo "Apollo11"

[el cid again]

A spurious argument CID. Nobody knew that in 1940. Only after the Strategic Bombing Surveys AFTER the war could anyone say for certainty that with the armaments available the true goals of Strategic Bombing could not be realized. It wasn't possible to win a war from the air by destroying the enemies means of production. Bombing with the means available wasn't that accurate.

You are right. ALL we knew in 1940 was that strategic bombing of cities was against the law of land warfare. And we elected in 1946 to try our enemies for breaking that law - and to punish them (see the Bombing of Rotterdam case at Nuremberg for example). We also elected to make ALLIED war crimes NOT under the jurisdiction of the war crimes tribunals.
When commissioned to study the law of land warfare with respect to nuclear weapons, I suggested we change that - and it has now happened: today it does not matter what country you are from: there is no double standard any more.

Now for reasons unclear to me (it became clear in cross disciplinary conferences that this is the case) Americans prefer functional to legal or moral arguments. If it works, we are willing to do it, and the fact it is wrong be hanged. Which sounds a lot more like Axis or Communist reasoning than I am comfortable with. My father was one of 80 USAAF NCOs in a single command who turned in their officers for executing all Axis spies flown out of Yugoslavia. The US Army JAG backed them up - and heads rolled. Their letter reporting the practice ended with a sentence approximately "We are willing to fight the Nazis. We are not willing to behave like them."

[Nikademus]

Very true... but one has to wonder what would happen if this modified campaign started earlier...

not so much a chicken/egg thing but a hindsight thing. For example the USAAF went into the air war with two pre-conceived notions that quickly wilted under the light of actual combat. The 1st was that bombers could defend themselves sufficiently. The 2nd was that tech. such as the Nordon bombsight, which gave such rosey and cheerful results in the clear skies over the plains states didn't quite reproduce itself in the cloudy turbulent skies over Central Europe.

War is all about adaptation and refinement. Those that can embrace change will usually win the day. (A central theme for the Japanese high command to have pondered)

[Big B]

There may have been 2 times, 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times as many bombs dropped in the Vietnam War as was dropped in all of WWII combined - take the figure you like best - it dosen't matter.

What DOES matter is that the Air Wair over Vietnam was NEVER directed at erasing ALL towns and cities north of the DMZ and bringing the war home to the civil population of North Vietnam. Most all of that bombing was directed at empty jungle in Cambodia - Laos - and South Vietnam.
Hitting the cities is what made a huge difference in Communist North Vietnam's attitude towards continuing the war...as the 1972 Christmas boming of the Haiphong/Hanoi area demonstrated.

I am NOT an advocate of mass extermination of civilian population centers in war time. But don't kid yourself that mass destruction by air bombardment has no effect.

Further, as for the contribution of the Red Army in bringing down Germany - HUGE, I agree.
But Germany was also completely exhausted after the mass bloodshed followed by occupation after WWI, and still never considered itself beaten.
I submit that THAT change of heart happened only because her cities were leveled, here economy was destroyed and the entire country was occupied...after another long bloody war.

[el cid again]

However, it wasn't a total waste of effort. Your quote is accurate for the early British efforts at night bombing..., they were missing by 100 miles and more on occasion. But they got a lot better as airborne radar and pathfinder marking were gradually perfected. US efforts at achieving better accuracy by day suffered many problems as well, but eventually led to the winning of air superiority when escorts became available in large numbers. The Western Allies were trying to learn "on the fly" how to conduct a totally new form of warfare, and it took virtually the entire war to get to where they THOUGHT they were in 1940.

This must be a USAF version of history. As I was trained, by the official US Army historian, EVERY strategic bombing campaign in history, from WWI to Viet Nam, failed. And it failed in terms of the original theory.
I note support for this military scholarship in the academic world (See John Newhouse: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; McGeorge Bundy: Danger and Survival; Freeman Dyson: Weapons and Hope). If you get technical (and I am mainly a technical analyst), the bombing campaign really did fail to hit its targets well. Only today is anything approaching "precision bombing" possible, and it still is sloppy. To paraphrase Newhouse, the idea was "bombing could be an independent means of achieving victory" - and that idea failed utterly. US bombers did more useful damage to Japan dropping mines than dropping bombs - and that according to a USAAF dominated analysis! But it was not "politically correct" inside bomber units - so we stopped doing it!

[Nikademus]

There may have been 2 times, 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times as many bombs dropped in the Vietnam War as was dropped in all of WWII combined - take the figure you like best - it dosen't matter.

Have to disagree. It does matter. Much of the bombing campaign was directed at North Vietnam. The Vietnamese people, like the Japanese, Germans and British before them never had their will broken by bombing...it only served to harden it. Nielland's book on the Bomber War of WWII went over this in pretty fine detail. You are junxtapositioning the general exhaustion caused by a total war and attributing it as a success factor in the strategic bombing campaign. At no point did the bombing campaign break the will of German people. Had it, then the Soviet and Allied armies would not have had to have a meeting on the Elbe.

[Ursa MAior]

BigB
I dont want to get into a quarrel, but if you were right the situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan would be completely different than the current one.

[DuckofTindalos]

Strategic bombing as an instrument for breaking the will of the civilian population has never worked. It didn't break the British will to fight, it didn't break the Germans, it didn't break the Japanese, and it didn't break the North Vietnamese.

[el cid again]

The Axis powers never got close to the kind of production figures per man hour that the US did..., because they couldn't afford the kind of massive and effecient production plants the US could and did build.

Not exactly.

The Axis powers never did approach levels of taxation in the USA or in the UK. They also had much smaller economic systems. So they lacked sheer captial to build something like a Boeing Renton (the largest building on the planet) or Willow Run (the second largest). Then too, they suffered from a lack of political will to organize for a long war early on. They believed their enemies were softer than they were, and didn't make the right sorts of technical decisions. The Allies made similar errors: RN cancelled battleships, still believing in them, on the basis "they could not complete in time for this war" - but in the event there was enough time!
The Axis powers lacked economic focus. Germany did not fully mobilize for war production until 1945! [Steinweg finally stopped making pianos in February!] There are far too many planes (or whatever else you wish to name) built in small batches - and far too many research projects - meaning few are completed and almost nothing is produced in decisive numbers. There was not sufficient effort made in early analysis of production methods - here Japan did better than Germany - and for its size it shows up with relatively better aircraft production - but it pales by US standards and lags the UK. [See The Air War - the one about production - there is another about operations] These are more about choices than about necessity. Planning for the possibility of a long war - or of not fighting because a long war cannot be won - would have been wiser. Fewer research projects, fewer production types, more efficeincy research, higher taxes, mobilization of the whole economy - all were possible paths not taken - not impossible paths either.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

There's some information at the hyperwar site, chapter 19 on Iwo Jima.

Finally found time to search for it - thanks for info!

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/V/AAF-V-19.html


Leo "Apollo11"

[el cid again]

The absolute destruction wrought upon Japan and Germany left their civil populations in no mood for continued hostilities, nor did the idea escape them that they had been utterly defeated - unlike the First World War. In short, it (the bombing campaign) very much produced a finality to the war that allowed peace to proceed and victory to become complete (albeit at horrific cost in human terms).

The very lack of this kind of onslaught is what gave the Vietnamese (for example) the fortitude and confidence to continue their struggle.

If you are suggesting it might have won in Viet Nam, you are confused.
We defeated seven divisions at Ke Sahn - wiped out 5 and the other two took two years to reform. [Originally Westmoreland wanted to use atomic bombs, but (a) the President said no and (b) it was pointed out that B-52s with massive conventional bomb loads would actually kill more troops.] I went to Viet Nam (and Cambodia) three times. I had a North Vietnamese captain as a translator/advisor. I got to live ashore and to fight alongside Vietnamese militia. I do not think you have a clue what would have cowed that people, nor the (then secret) political deal between LBJ and Mao meant about options (or consequences - had we invaded the North or bombed as you suggest we would have had a war with China).

As to WWII - the IJA was undefeated as an institution - and it was anything but clear Japan was cowed. We cut a deal (details just now published in The Nakano School) - and we did NOT occuply Japan in the sense we occupied Germany. JAPAN ran Japan - under our direction - but Japanese institutions in place. [Plans to dissolve the Zaibatsu, the Finance Ministry, the Armaments Ministry - well NONE of them were dissolved - although the latter changed its name - twice - today it is called MIDI. We never did make Japan a true democracy either - ministers are NOT responsible to the Diet - they swear to the emperor - even today!]
We won Japanese cooperation, and we felt we wanted that in the context of deteriorating relations with the USSR. Cooperation is not the same thing as a cowed population.

But IF you were right - IF bombing cowed Germans or Japanese or anybody else - it would still be immoral, illegal - and I would still arrest you if you deliberately did it without a military target. I don't care if it is a single Vietnamese girl being rape/murdered, or thousands of civilians - it is wrong to do such things and I have never laid down for it. I also never let real operations planners get away with the sort of thinking that prevailed in WWII - different standards for us and the enemy. If we do not respect what it means to be a noncombattant, why should anyone prefer our system to win? Even us?

[el cid again]

It was NOT the bombing that brought the nazis to their knees but the land forces. The huge losses of men and territory in the east, and then the much feared two front war.

On Vietnam something like the quadruple of all WWII's bombs was dropped without any REAL success, also in the terms of war efforts. It also has to be said that the vietnamese did not have to produce themselves the equipment they were fighting with (it was supplied by the russian and the chinese), but their will to fight was not broken by the strat bombingg or the unproportionally high losses.

Correct on all points. I am a techie guy and a believer in airpower - TACTICAL air power. Even so, I believe that the INFANTRY is the decisive arm. ONLY infantry can take or defend any place. The Soviet Military Encyclopedia defines a "strategic target" as "one that is vital to control" - not "destroy."

[el cid again]

I may be ignorant of this but wasn't the strategic bombing of Germany's oil refining industry in 1944 partly responsible for the collapse of the Luftwaffe and the fuel shortages at the end of the war?

While Germany suffered shortages of fuel -

its strategic fuel situation was never good -

and never going to be good unless it took some oilfields.

What broke the Luftwaffe was personnell. They got to the point that there were virtually no experienced pilots, and the life expectancy for inexperienced ones was something like eight days of operations. [Actually less if you count actually meeting the enemy only]. They ALSO suffered from limited supply of bauxite/aluminum, a failure to recycle,
an inefficient use of aluminum (pounds of plane per ton of refined metal),
and a host of other problems. It is very hard to say ONE thing broke the Luftwaffe. But I have a USAF history whose subtitle is "Strategy for Defeat" - USAF believes the whole strategic concept of the Luftwaffe doomed it!

[el cid again]

I think it's fair to say that the strategic bombing of Nazi Europe did NOT win the war on it's own but did contribute in the war's end by reducing the production (in it's broadest sense) of certain industries. Coupled with this was the HUGE effort applied by the LW and the deployment of AA assets to counter this aerial assault.

The question is not "did bombing hurt the enemy?" Of course it did.
The proper questions are these:

Did bombing hurt the enemy as much as it hurt us? [The only stastical analyst at the time, Freeman Dyson, says it did not. He determined it cost us THREE TIMES as much to inflict damage as it cost the Germans to fix what we damaged.]

Would the SAME investment in other military efforts have paid off more?
For example, commit the bombers to hunting U-boats, or to tactical support of land armies, or to dropping mines. Analysis of all these options by various historians and military stutents usually concludes the answer is "yes, and by a considerable margin."