Allied Strategic Bombing Campaign
The Allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany was the longest sustained air campaign of World War II and one of its most morally contentious. It was waged by two forces with different doctrines: the RAF's Bomber Command under Air Marshal Arthur Harris, which conducted area bombing of German cities by night, targeting civilian morale and industrial infrastructure; and the USAAF's Eighth Air Force under General Carl Spaatz, which attempted daylight precision bombing of specific industrial targets. The campaign went through several phases. In 1942–43 both forces suffered enormous losses: the RAF found that accurate navigation was impossible at night and switched to area bombing entire city blocks; the USAAF found that unescorted daylight bombers (like the B-17 'Flying Fortress') suffered catastrophic losses from German fighters (the Schweinfurt raids of 1943 lost 20% of attacking forces). The arrival of the long-range P-51 Mustang escort fighter in early 1944 changed the equation: American bombers could now penetrate Germany with fighter protection, and the air superiority battle shifted to destroying the Luftwaffe's fighter force. The campaign's effectiveness is contested. The US Strategic Bombing Survey (1945) concluded that area bombing of cities had not broken German civilian morale; German industrial production actually increased through 1944 despite bombing, as the economy was rationalized from peacetime production. The most clearly effective targeting was German oil production: the systematic bombing of Ploesti and synthetic oil plants from early 1944 reduced German fuel supply by 90% by early 1945, grounding the Luftwaffe and immobilising German armoured divisions. The moral cost was enormous. Approximately 400,000 German civilians died in bombing raids; the fire-bombing of Hamburg (July 1943) killed 42,000 in a single week; the Dresden raids (February 1945) killed between 22,000 and 25,000 people. The Dresden figure was inflated to 135,000–250,000 by Nazi propaganda at the time and repeated uncritically for decades; modern archival research has established the lower figure. The bombing of Dresden — a city of questionable military value in February 1945 — became a post-war controversy about the ethics of area bombing that has never been fully resolved.
- Year: 1942 CE
- Category: Military
