Do you raid?

[Lord Claremorris]

The Historical Strategic Bombing Campaign was the US and UK’s way of showing the Russians (and themselves?) that they were doing SOMETHING against Germany, because before 1944 the Russians were tangoing with pretty much the entire German Army and Luftwaffe. So naturally Western writers would prefer to pretend their SBR was decisive instead of admitting that “The US and UK bombed Germany to little affect while the Russians did all the actual fighting at the time.” Albert Speer thoroughly debunked that in his memoirs, Germany’s production actually INCREASED during the bombing campaign, instead of decreasing. Pretty pathetic performance in my opinion, complete waste. It was a total political tool to satisfy the Russians.

EDIT: Bear in mind this is in relation to the war against Germany only. I’m well aware that the British wrecked the Italians and the Vichy French, and fought hard in Greece, Norway, France etc, and were also engaged in heavy fighting in Burma. I’m also well aware that the Americans primarily defeated Japan, and helped defeat Italy and eventually Germany. The Russians bore most of the brunt against Germany, but did hardly anything to Japan or Italy, so no need to inform me of what the Americans and British were doing (which was much more than nothing), as I’m perfectly aware.

[JimmyHat]

I am a bit jaded when it comes to the allied air effort against Germany.  Lots of lives lost for very little gain.  You could claim their ineffective bombing forced the Germans to disperse their production capacity into bomb proof locations, either through a cottage industry type system with manufacture in the homes or underground factories.  Almost all instances of successful bombing was done by tactical air strikes, not carpet bombing.  The only exception I can think of is the allied attack on Polesti.

The largest contributing factor achieved by the allies in the air was through a campaign of attrition, where they were able to whittle German air defenses down to nothing by the time of D-Day.  This is also largely due to Hitlers interference in all parts of the war, as he wanted bombers for offense instead of ftrs for defense.

My main beef however is that the major winners in this example are actually the guys making the 1000’s of bombs that are dropped at 30,000 ft in the hopes one gets close to something valuable. (the sweet spots gotta be down there somewhere right!)  Now I’m going to bring a bit of the politics into this, but guess who was supplying the US army with bombs and had a strong lobby in DC?  The Prescott family, scions of the Bush family we have today.  When we were finally able to talk them into stopping sale of arms to Germany(early 1941) the Prescott’s needed a new source of revenue.  So they built tons of bombs and had them dropped on farms in Germany.  That way they could sell more.  All the while trumping up the press back home with ‘victories’ in Europe before the main landings.

Now to bring you back from the world of conspiracy theories, with a message as to what the US military /should/ have been doing with the millions spent on large bombers and wayyyyyy too many bombs.  Had they built up a large supply fleet of aircraft, they could have supplied the Allied beachhead from airfields on Normandy.  Now the storm that wreaked a Mulberry harbor was insignificant, and the Allies pressed on early.

Perhaps they are stalled, but eventually Patton swings the right hook and the race for Paris is on.  As the Rhine approaches, in real life the Allied drive stalls due to lack of supplies.  But ta-daa!!  Supply planes from Britain fly directly to the front, all the while covered by the Allied air supremacy.

But lets say even the natural features stall the allies along the Rhine, in real life Monty comes up with a ‘brilliant’ plan to attack along a narrow front at many points…but due to lack of SUPPLY AIRCRAFT the units are dropped in piece meal and the precious timetable is disrupted.  We all see where this is going.

Lastly, establishing a beachhead across the Rhine would have been easier if the advancing army in Germany could be supplied by air, most German airfields being hard surfaced and easily repaired.

Jeez what happened!  I get peeved at mention of the awesomeness of the allied air offensive and I end up with a rant…I apologize in advance!:)

[Gargantua]

SBR wasn’t about bombing prodcution during the war.

What it was really about - well for the allies atleast, was killing planes. For later air supremacy.

I think there are some unexplored strategies when it comes to SBR, for this very purpose.  Since Fighters now don’t face AA guns.

It could work well for a g3 sealion, send in your planes, at the british planes on G2 - see if they bite, if they don’t, you bomb the factory, if you do, it’s plane on plane - attacker at lower odds, but no aa faced.

To answer the thread.  No, I don’t SBR at all, and have yet to see it in over 30 games played - ever.

[Lord Claremorris]

@Cmdr:

And it was hardly ineffective!  Sure, they might not have hit their targets all the time, with 100% precision and accuracy, but the goal in any war is to get the enemy population so sick of losing they force their leaders to capitulate.  It’s why Sherman was a pioneer (an a**, but a pioneer!) in warfare.

That was the argument of Giulio Douhet, which was thoroughly debunked during WWII and also the Spanish Civil War. Cities could be blown to pieces and the population would still have no intention of capitulation. Germany only surrendered after it was physically occupied by the Allies. No amount of carpet bombing ever broke any nation. Also the Confederate States of America did not surrender because of Sherman, they surrendered because their forces in the field were decisively defeated and they had no means of further prosecution. Terror tactics generally create more resistance rather than extinguish it.

[Jennifer]

@Lord:

@Cmdr:

And it was hardly ineffective!  Sure, they might not have hit their targets all the time, with 100% precision and accuracy, but the goal in any war is to get the enemy population so sick of losing they force their leaders to capitulate.  It’s why Sherman was a pioneer (an a**, but a pioneer!) in warfare.

That was the argument of Giulio Douhet, which was thoroughly debunked during WWII and also the Spanish Civil War. Cities could be blown to pieces and the population would still have no intention of capitulation. Germany only surrendered after it was physically occupied by the Allies. No amount of carpet bombing ever broke any nation. Also the Confederate States of America did not surrender because of Sherman, they surrendered because their forces in the field were decisively defeated and they had no means of further prosecution. Terror tactics generally create more resistance rather than extinguish it.

I disagree VEHEMENTLY!  Nagasaki and Hiroshima are prime examples of using mass bombing raids to force enemy capitulation.

Sherman is another example, but people prefer to reference Grant instead.  Eh.  I disagree, but it’s really hard to prove either way there.

[Jennifer]

Oh, and before carpet bombing, it is my personal, educated opinion that seiges were the same thing.  Since they couldn’t bomb the enemy into submission, they used seige equipment and starvation to do the same thing.

Not that I have a Ph.D. in history, so take it as an educated layman’s opinion.

[Lord Claremorris]

Nagasaki and Hiroshima were very different from carpet bombing. Furthermore the UK, USA, and USSR had just beaten Germany into the dirt, and Germany was a much stronger country than Japan. So Japan was at war with those three, as well as France, China, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada etc. with no fleet. They were bound to surrender anyway. I wouldn’t argue that they would have surrendered with or without the bombs, but they couldn’t long resist a landing in Japan itself. All examples of conventional air forces attempting to bomb their enemies into submission have been failures. The Spanish Nationalists could not do it to the Spanish Republicans, the Germans could not to it to the British, and the British and Americans could not do it to the Germans. Other examples would include Vietnam, where the US dropped more bombs than they did on Germany, and they still lost the war. It’s not as decisive as it’s made out to be. As for sieges, that’s a very different operation, where the intention was to take physical possession of a given location, whether it be a proper fortress or a fortified town. In carpet bombing the hope is that you can force a capitulation without needing to occupy the enemy’s territory. Besides, in Medieval Wars objectives were very limited, the entire overthrow of your adversary was practically impossible, so a well conducted siege might get you some small concessions. Carpet bombing would imply you desire the total destruction of your enemy’s war making capacity, which was simply an unattainable goal in previous centuries. Even much later than Medieval times, heck, in the 9 Years War France alone withstood all the other Great Powers of Europe and neither side achieved hardly anything.

Well Grant defeated the main Confederate Army, and his victory at Vicksburg cut the Confederacy in two. A brilliant achievement militarily. Anyhow, the purpose of the Army (defined by Clausewitz, who attributed the idea to Napoleon) is to destroy your enemy’s ability to prosecute war, i.e. defeating them in the field. If they still have an army they will not surrender, no matter how much terror you cause.

[Jennifer]

I’m saying bombing the civilian population into submission, not specifically firebombing or carpet bombing.

[Lord Claremorris]

They don’t ever submit. That’s the whole point. I cannot think of single example where this happened besides Japan in WWII. The French used terror tactics (killing civilians in retaliation for French casualties) on the Spanish and that just caused the Spanish to resist even more fiercely. The Germans did that in Russia and in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Resistance was intense in those areas, whereas in Denmark or the Netherlands, where German occupation was relatively benign, there was very little resistance. All the examples in history go against the use of terror on civilians instead of for it.

[Gargantua]

There should be a sliding bar in Axis and Allies, for each nation, which determines will to fight.

I don’t know how it should work, or what it would take to move the bar up and down lol, but it would be a cool thing to implement, and would have some exciting game effects.

[Jennifer]

If you can’t repair to full on every facility damaged, then your people give up in whatever territory you couldn’t repair.  All units are replaced with neutrals and the territory is made neutral (true neutral, not leaning.)

[JimmyHat]

To shine a little more light into an obscure time in history:

The Japanese were essentially begging the allies for peace in 1945.  After Germany was finished the Japanese stopped relying on German wonder weapons to end the war. (nukes)  Germany’s capitulation was quickly followed by Russia’s involvement, and this was feared more than the US for the Japanese.  They believed, rightly I might add, that loss of territory to Russia would mean satellite states and potential puppeting of Japan as the Peoples Republic of Japan.  So the question for the Japanese high command was how to surrender to the western allies ASAP.

The War against Japan could have ended without the dropping of atom bombs and a few months earlier had the Allies been a bit more flexible with this whole horrible idea of Unconditional Surrender.  We were like, you gotta give up your god the Emperor.  The Japanese were like, how do you surrender a god?

It was the deification of the Emperor that was the sticking point for Japan, and it was Macarthur’s realization that control of the Emperor meant control of the spiritual aspect of the country and a peaceful occupation, so he back slid and allowed the Emperor’s cult to continue.

I think had Russia not declared war it is possible that Japan would have continued after the Abomb drops.  Had they stuck in for a few more months they would have noticed a severe lack in the A-bomb offensive, cause the US used both its nukes.

[Lord Claremorris]

Precisely, and it should be remembered that the Home Islands of Japan were overpopulated and unsustainable without imports of food. Just like Britain, except that the US Navy managed to do to Japan what the Germans tried to do to England. The Japanese were being starved, and since they had no fleet they had no further means of effectively resisting. Their troops were scattered and isolated with no way of getting back to Japan and no way of preventing American and British forces from eventually throwing them out. So Japan already knew the gig was up long before the A-Bombs were dropped.

[TheDefinitiveS]

I try and SBR as much as possible with max of 2 interceptors in territories with ICs. Especially Russia with its lack of air power. The Southern Ukraine and Volgograd ICs can both be reached from Greece or Bulgeria with return flight.  Potential 12 IPCs right there. Its awesome.

[Jennifer]

starting to change my mind.  If I am SBRing, then I can probably afford to lose some fighters and should relish the thought of his scrambling, since I should be getting a fighter or two AND damage on his complex.

[Young Grasshopper]

@Cmdr:

starting to change my mind.  If I am SBRing, then I can probably afford to lose some fighters and should relish the thought of his scrambling, since I should be getting a fighter or two AND damage on his complex.

I hate losing aircraft.

[special forces]

@Young:

@Cmdr:

starting to change my mind.  If I am SBRing, then I can probably afford to lose some fighters and should relish the thought of his scrambling, since I should be getting a fighter or two AND damage on his complex.

I hate losing aircraft.

Tht’s exactly why she would do this ;)

[rocknroll]

i only raid if i don´t need any of my bombers. sometime, even if i do not need them i won´t raid, because i don´t want to loose him to fulfill a very special and important task. after this, no problem with SBR.

but as a stratey it never worked really, did it? is it possible to take down UK, for example, by SBRing it?

rock`n roll

[Jennifer]

@special:

@Young:

@Cmdr:

starting to change my mind.  If I am SBRing, then I can probably afford to lose some fighters and should relish the thought of his scrambling, since I should be getting a fighter or two AND damage on his complex.

I hate losing aircraft.

Tht’s exactly why she would do this ;)

I don’t LIKE losing aircraft, but if I am going to do so, I feel it is in my best interests to force the enemy to not only lose their aircraft, but also take damage on their complexes!

[TheDefinitiveS]

You dont have strategic bombers for their defensive capabilities, so make the most of what they have offensively. Scorched Earth Policy.