Theories Of Strategic Bombing

The first part of the twentieth century proved to be one of the most volatile times in American and European history. The First World War had ravaged the European continent; destroyed economies, and displaced millions of people. As the war came to an end the emergence of strategic bombing theory and its application began to take shape. Principal among its architects were primarily military officers who had served during World War One in aviation units. The theory of strategic bombing was formed out of necessity to regain the offensive advantage during war. World War One became a global stalemate, the weapons of the era largely enforced military operations of a defensive posture rather than an offensive posture. As the theory of strategic bombing
emerged, so did the different interpretations in its application on the battlefield. The “four prophets” as they would become known, had different opinions on how to utilize this new form of warfare. The origins of strategic bombing were greatly shaped by the men who set out to implement it into their respective militaries. It became a very complex undertaking even for the might of the United States and British army’s. Out of all the complexity came a basic understanding of strategic bombing which was, “the most effective and moral way to fight and win wars was to bomb the enemy’s civilian population centers.” The theory was well thought out, but at the time technology did not meet nor exceed their ambitious plans. England and the United States eventually would have to reconsider strategy and doctrine established prior to their entry into World War Two in order to take the fight to the enemy on its own territory. What becomes evident during the first part of the Second World War is the fluidity and dynamic of combat, lack of technology, and attacks by axis forces hindered their plans greatly. As the war waged on both the United States and Great Britain found that lack of technology hindered their ability to apply their concepts of strategic bombing. This lead to the abandonment of their original theory altogether for a more indiscriminate bombing campaign aimed at destroying entire cities eventually crippling Germany’s economy leading to their defeat.
Strategic bombing theory was conceptualized because trench warfare bogged down World War One turning it into a war of defense. In its initial planning phase, World War One was offensive in nature. During this period imperialism had plagued much of Asia and Africa, countries involved in conflict had offensive priorities when invading others. Their goal was to take land and bring it under their control exploiting its resources. Knowing the war would be fought offensively, and the recent technological advancements in weaponry (small arms and artillery) the European elite anticipated huge loss of life from all involved. However, the Great War would not be fought on an offensive front, it would in fact become a war of defense, bogged down by trench warfare. By wars end, nearly 12,000 miles of trench line had been dug by both sides. Daily life in the trenches was gruesome. Plagued by daily artillery fire with explosions large enough to bury grown men. Rats had infested trenches by the millions, lice caused trench fever producing severe pain and high fever. Bodies caught in no man’s land would sit for weeks, sometimes months causing horrendous smells to infest every corner of the trench system. Winston Churchill described the war by saying, “The chains which held the warring nations to their task were not destined to be severed by military genius’ no sufficient preponderance of force was at the disposal of either side no practical method of decisive offensive had been discovered.” The decisive weapon of the era was thought to be artillery but it would prove to be decent at best. The result of the Great War was the need for a decisive weapon that would propel a military into offensive operations and keep the advantage for the duration of the war. The four men responsible for this adaptation would become known as the four prophets. Their theory on strategic bombing became the framework used to implement its use through the inter-war periods and World War Two.
The first and most well-known tactician of strategic bombing was an advocate of both explosive and chemical/biological munitions.
Giulio Douhet was an Italian aviation Commander in World War One. He published his first book on strategic bombing in 1921, Command of the Air. Douhet argues that artillery and submarines changed how war would be fought on land and sea. He also argued that new military technology gave the advantage to the defense. His conclusion was that neither side could deal a “death blow” or an attack “which leaves a deep gaping wound and the feeling of imminent death.” His air strategy centered on new technology developed as a result of the Great War. Douhet theorized that with the advancement in air technology and chemicals during the Great War, it would make high-explosive bombing raids over any enemy sector possible. Making it possible to ravage the enemy’s country with chemical and bacteriological munitions. Effectively delivering a “death blow” from the air. He believed that this style of warfare was far superior and gave the battlefield a third dimension. Douhet saw aerial bombing as the future and the technological advancement coupled with the military tactics it would employ exhilarated him. His air strategy was grounded on destroying the enemy air force then bombing large targets only and often. “The objective must be destroyed completely in one attack, making further attacks on the same target unnecessary.” Douhet not only theorized the types of
targets to attack but also which munitions to use and why. He explains, “The explosives will demolish the target, the incendiaries set fire to it, and the poison-gas bombs prevent fire fighters from extinguishing the fires.” Douhet’s objective of aerial bombing was for those to quickly capitulate or they would face a continued bombing campaign where there is no separation between military targets and the civilian population. Douhet understood the implications of what could happen if a war became bogged down in a defensive struggle. He emphasized that strategic bombing was the most effective and moral way to win a war. Another prophet of strategic bombing realized its potential while acting as an aerial observer for a ground training exercise. Hugh Trenchard was a British air officer who would eventually become the first Commander of the Royal Air Force (RAF). Trenchard theorized “only those acting on the offensive could achieve moral superiority.” Both Douhet and Trenchard advocated for the bombing of what he called the ‘centres of communication’ undermining the political will of the enemy to resist. Decisive bombing against “Germany, its government, and the crippling of its sources of supply” was what Trenchard had proposed before the start of World War Two. The difference between these men was that Trenchard woefully disagreed with the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. He fostered the idea that precision bombing of industry would undermine the morale of the working class and then eventually the general population. The British theory of strategic bombing would change as the country moved deeper into the twentieth century. The idea at the time was destroying the industrial might of Germany and doing the least amount of damage to the civilian population. Although not everyone from Britain thought this way. British military strategist, and prophet of strategic bombing, Basil Hart rationalized strategic bombing through his “indirect approach”. His “indirect approach” argues that each nation has an Achilles heel. A vulnerable point not related to the military that if identified prior to war and attacked swiftly would lead to decisive victory. Basil Hart rationalized that the objective of war was to “subdue the enemy’s will to resist, with the least possible human and economic loss to itself.” He also believed that terror bombing would kill less than a long drawn out land campaign like that of World War One. He also believed that by filling bombs with gas instead of explosives would decrease the horrors witnessed by people during war.
William Mitchell more than anyone understood that air power held the key to future victory during war. He was quoted as early as 1906, in the Calvary Journal saying, “Conflicts, no doubt, will be carried out in the future in the air.” He became one of the first Americans in Europe to observe German movements after the US entered the war in 1917. Mitchell would continue to write, extensively, on strategic bombing during the interwar period. In 1926, he conceptualized that land wars between industrial nations would “end in absolute ruin, if the same methods that ground armies have followed before should be resorted to.” Mitchell, like Trenchard, argued that hitting the “vital centers” of major cities was paramount to winning a war. Mitchell, over the years, was very vague on whether or not indiscriminate bombing was part of his strategy. He argued that bombing factories was okay as long as workers were not working inside of them, but on the other hand he argued that hitting the civilian population where they lived was paramount to his strategy. Among the differences encountered between each man, it is evident that several similar factors remained. Aviation technology was moving fast; it was offensive in nature; it possessed unquestioned potential to be the “decisive weapon” of war; and it would be able to deliver a “crushing blow” forcing the enemy to capitulate or face continued bombing.
From its very inception, there were some controversy over strategic bombing and its application within war. One side of the controversy was Douhet and Harts support for the purposeful slaughter of civilians. On the other side, Trenchard and Mitchell advocated the intentional destruction of civilian industrial life. Strategic bombing was designed with total war in mind, bringing to bear the entire nation and its population. The British would take it one step further using this form of warfare to subdue its colonies in Africa and the Middle East into paying taxes and maintaining control of a very volatile area. After World War One British had maintained authority over vast land masses in Africa and the Middle East. Due to economic loss inquired as a result of the war, British neither had the funds or the manpower to control their colonies. Trenchard proposed that bombing the natives into submission would be more cost effective than sending troops to control the masses and collect taxes. Much of the interwar period was plagued with discrimination by one side against the other, usually the oppressor against the oppressed. Britain, who controlled vast swaths of land in Africa and the Middle East would bomb civilians without reprisal from The Hague even though several ratifications at The Hague convention prohibited attacks on unarmed civilians. Douhet who supported the use of chemical bombs would drop tear gas, mustard gas, and explosives on Ethiopian civilians in 1935-36. The British used phosphorus bombs and other munitions to destroy Iraqi towns. The Royal Air Force headed by Trenchard excused the killing of Iraqi woman with the opinion that, “unlike their European civilians counterparts, Iraqi society seen woman as just a piece of property, ‘the same as a cow or a rifle.’” The French invoked a “police action” in Syria dropping bombs on many of its inhabitants. French politicians argued and eventually concluded that their bombing of the “undeveloped” colony was a domestic issue resorting to their role as a mission of civilizing the colony. The Hague had no jurisdiction over non-European “uncivilized” colonies. The Spanish, who also used terror bombing in Morocco was deemed perfectly appropriate because they viewed the Moors as “children who needed a father’s firm hand”. The view of colonized areas as the “other” contributed to the brutality of strategic bombing theorist especially in Britain.
There was, however, an attempt to control and even stop the indiscriminate bombing that was taking place throughout the colonies. The Hague convention, which were a serious of peace treaties governing the laws of war defined the use of aerial bombardment by land, air, and sea. The conventions treaties, signed in 1907, attempted to minimize and hold countries accountable for their actions. These treaties only covered aerial bombardment by naval ship on defended places. The treaty did not prohibit the indiscriminate bombing—by other means—on civilians in defended places. By 1938, a collapsing League of Nations attempted to end the tug-of-war over the morality of targeting civilians by adopting a resolution entitled: Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing From the Air in Case of War. Given its best intentions, the League of Nations was falling apart, Germany had broken away and the United States, which at the time was a major world power, was not a member. In effect it failed to enforce and protect civilians from aerial bombardment. However, “while the norm for indiscriminate bombing of civilians was legally codified before World War II, it was not internalized by military and political actors and thus broke down during the war”. Much of the theory envisioned by the four prophets followed the norms of the era. Douhet and Hart had already been implementing their theories throughout their colonies and Trenchard and Mitchell’s views of World War One enabled them to visualize a faster paced offensive war where they could hit the vital areas of an enemy in the hope it would capitulate. Technology would be a major factor in the advancement and eventual redefining of strategic bombing.
The application and execution of strategic bombing would relieve the modern battlefield of weapons and tactics employed during World War One. As time proceeded into the twentieth century, new theorist came to the helm along with new technology that would thrust strategic bombing farther, faster, and higher than anyone could have imagined. As war with Germany became ever so present, the Army Air Force set out to refine its strategic bombing doctrine. The Air War Plans Division plan 1 or (AWDP-1) would become the blueprint of American strategic bombing throughout the European theater. However, once America had entered the war, their theory of precision bombing, and British theory of area bombing would coexist in what would become known as the Combined Bomber Offensive.
Air power theorist expect technology to follow them translating their ideas into reality with the expectation it can be done right away. However, “theory cannot be practiced, because it outruns technology.” This would become evident with the United States after it committed aircraft to the European theater. Military pilots and strategist at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) set out to refine America’s precision bombing strategy. They conceived the enemy war machine as a “complex set of interconnected manufacturing, transportation, electrical communication, and fuel distribution systems.” By destroying these particular key targets they could paralyze the machine, without directly targeting enemy populations. This theory would become known as the AWPD – 1 (Air War Plans Division plan 1) in 1941, became the blueprint America attempted to implement in the European theater of war. This was essentially where the United States and Britain differed on strategic bombing. United States theory at the onset of WWII was that a “modest number of bomber aircraft could accurately attack key sections of an enemy’s war industry, bringing manufacturing to a halt, and/or panic the civilian population into surrender.” The key to their precision was that they bomb targets during the day using the very precise Norden sight.
Britain, who had entered the war much early than the US, already had their capital ‘terror bombed’ by the German Luftwaffe in 1940 at night. They retaliated as expected, bombing the naval facilities at Wilhelmshafen. The daylight raid cost the British seventeen of its thirty-six aircraft. In contrast the British RAF conducted reconnaissance and leaflet-dropping at night which proved more successful because German anti-aircraft guns could not see the airplanes. The first night raid was conducted on December 16, 1940, against the German city of Mannheim. In 1941, between June and July Lorde Cherwell had one of his statistical investigators, David Bensusan-Butt, study the effectiveness of the bomber offensive being conducted over Germany. The outcome of the investigation was culminated in the Butt Report, which revealed that of 100 bombing raids over Germany less than one third of its bombers navigated within five miles of its target. The analysis was impressive compared to the assessment of night bombing conducted during the same period. Only five percent of bombs dropped on Germany came within five miles of their target. This lack of accuracy had as much to do with weather conditions as it did technology, the United States would have similar outcomes. The lack in ability to hit targets precisely without inflicting heavy losses would encourage the United States to adjust its strategic bombing doctrine after they entered the war.
Lack of technology coupled with human error would lead the United States to reconsider its doctrine on precise strategic bombing. The Norden M-1 bombsight was a revolutionary sight implemented into United States bombers during WWII. The sight, which had a gyroscopically leveled stabilizer attached to the planes autopilot and a head sight aligned with the stabilizer made it possible for the sight to be used in the nose of a bomber. After entering airspeed and altitude into the sight the bombardier was able to get a targets location. The new sight was considered the ‘secret weapon’ claiming that at 20,000 feet you could hit a pickle barrel with a bomb. This, however, was highly overrated, in Europe alone fifty percent—sometimes as little as ten percent—of bombs would fall within a quarter mile of its designated target . Adding to their ineffectiveness, smoke screens and bad weather such as overcast would deem the sight useless once over the target. This was concerning for the United States because their theory going into the war was based solely on its ability to hit targets “precisely”, minimizing civilian casualties. Human error was a factor that cannot be forgotten. Pilots often times would come off auto-pilot to conduct evasive maneuvers once they got close to the target area. The Bombardier had to guide the pilot over the target area and release the payload all while being exposed to the harsh conditions of war. Aircrews would often times release payloads early causing them to spend less time in the target area allowing them to avoid more flak or enemy fighters as they return to base. The lack of technology and overall shift in strategy by the Allied forces led to a devastating blow to Germany as a whole. The Allied forces, throughout the war, would drop more than 2.7 million tons of munitions on German destroying vital centers of war production . The economic toll inflicted was heavy with more than 20 percent of dwellings in Germany destroyed displacing more than 7.5 million civilians. The civilian death toll numbered around 300,000 with more than 780,000 Germans wounded as a direct result of strategic bombing. The Allied forces suffered heavy losses as well, more than 40,000 planes were destroyed with more than 158,000 Airman killed in air action. Theorist believed that air superiority—if achieved early on—would be the decisive blow needed to end the war.
As the war waged on it became a small portion of a much larger picture centered on a ground invasion of the European continent. Strategic bombing was able to cripple much of Germany’s industry rendering much of its new production useless. This kept Germany from keeping pace with technical advancement and producing newer versions of its airplanes and submarines. The effect that that strategic bombing had on Germany by 1945 was concluded in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War) which read “The German experience suggests that even a first class military power—rugged and resilient as Germany was—cannot live long under full-scale and free exploitation of air weapons over the heart of its territory.” By the beginning of 1945, before the invasion of the homeland itself, Germany was reaching a state of helplessness. Armament production was falling permanently, orderliness within the war effort disappeared, and total disruption and disintegration had ramped up. “Germany’s army was still in the field but with the impending collapse of the supporting economy, the indications are convincing that they would have had to cease fighting—any effective fighting—within a few months. Germany was mortally wounded.” Germany was destroyed and much of it was in large part due to strategic bombing. From an idea thought up by a man taking photos of a
training exercise to its full scale implementation less than twenty years later, strategic bombing had become and still remains to this day an effective tool for winning wars.