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HBO working on another WW2 Series

Pugs

Pugs

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Fog said:
WWII "strategic" bombing was generally about the greatest waste of men & materiel in the history of warfare, based on what I've read - and, in 69 years that's rather a lot. The 8th AF lost more personnel than the Marines in the Pacific Theater.
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Their bravery was never in doubt but post war Strategic Bombing report was pretty clear about high level daylight bombing and it's ineffectiveness. Low level medium bombing was pretty effective but the losses were incredible as well.

My grandfather was 2 weeks from going to the ETO as a ball turret gunner in B-17's in the 8th in 43 and got pulled for pilot training and spend spent the rest of the war in flight school or as an instructor. I'm sure it disappointed him but the odds of him being around to see me winged would have been low.
 
jmcquate

jmcquate

Well-Known Member
Contributor
Fog said:
WWII "strategic" bombing was generally about the greatest waste of men & materiel in the history of warfare, based on what I've read - and, in 69 years that's rather a lot. The 8th AF lost more personnel than the Marines in the Pacific Theater. And the 8th was just bombing in the daytime. At night, Bomber Harris' Brits took over, and - God Bless them - they were often lucky to bomb the right city. With the exception of the low-level B-24 raid on Ploesti (Romania), the loss of men and the relative inaccuracy of the bombing convinced me that Yossarian got it exactly right in Catch-22. JMHO, it'll be interesting to see how Hanks & Speilberg play it.
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The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany devastated German POL, ammunition and truck production having a direct effect on the defeat of Germany. It also attired the Luftwaffe pilot numbers to a point where it was largely a non factor in the Western Theater post D-Day.

Whether it was worth the cost in lives (10 per aircraft) I don’t think we will or can ever know.
 
HokiePilot

HokiePilot

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
I recently finished reading Masters of the Air by Donald Miller about the 8th Air Force. (I highly recommend it.) The big takeaway was that all strategic bombing did was force the Luftwaffe to come up and fight. Both side took huge losses but we had the training program and factories to sustain.

The 8th should take all the credit for essentially no enemy planes during D-Day. It is impossible to know what would have happened if the Luftwaffe was able to put up credible resistance that day.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
 
Pugs

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jmcquate said:
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany devastated German POL, ammunition and truck production having a direct effect on the defeat of Germany. It also attired the Luftwaffe pilot numbers to a point where it was largely a non factor in the Western Theater post D-Day.

Whether it was worth the cost in lives (10 per aircraft) I don’t think we will or can ever know.
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Note that is different than what I took away from that study. Now, it's been more than a decade since I read it but the Germans were producing more oil at the end of the war than the beginning and by adapting to distributed manufacturing they had no shortage of aircraft but pilots indeed were in short supply and that had more to do with P-51's and P-47's ranging freely over Europe as anything to do with bombing.

Certainly the Brits firebombing at night, horrific as it was had a big affect on moral and civilians.
 
jmcquate

jmcquate

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Pugs said:
Note that is different than what I took away from that study. Now, it's been more than a decade since I read it but the Germans were producing more oil at the end of the war than the beginning and by adapting to distributed manufacturing they had no shortage of aircraft but pilots indeed were in short supply and that had more to do with P-51's and P-47's ranging freely over Europe as anything to do with bombing.

Certainly the Brits firebombing at night, horrific as it was had a big affect on moral and civilians.
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It’s been over 20 years since I’ve read it. True most German production numbers were higher at the ending of the war than the beginning. But that was due to the German economy not ramping up wartime production until 1943ish. The production numbers are relative to what they could have been. If memory serves me much of this was based on interrogations of Nazi Party officials that may not be all that reliable so I may be full of shit, but the Germans were out of gas, ammo and trucks at the end of the war. As for the Pilot attrition, I agree it was the fighter escorts going hunting on the way home but the reason they were in the air at the numbers they were was to escort the bombers.

As for the actions of Harris and Bomber Command, I’m conflicted, but I think revenge had too much to do with it.
 
Pugs

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jmcquate said:
True most German production numbers were higher at the ending of the war than the beginning. But that was due to the German economy not ramping up wartime production until 1943ish. The production numbers are relative to what they could have been. If memory serves me much of this was based on interrogations of Nazi Party officials that may not be all that reliable so I may be full of shit, but the Germans were out of gas, ammo and trucks at the end of the war. As for the Pilot attrition, I agree it was the fighter escorts going hunting on the way home but the reason they were in the air at the numbers they were was to escort the bombers.

As for the actions of Harris and Bomber Command, I’m conflicted, but I think revenge had too much to do with it.
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And at the end of the war they could make it but we were so busy dismantling bridges and railways day andf night that they couldn't distribute it.

No doubt Bomber Harris was still a little irked over the blitz! http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900 and vowed to a bit of a scorched earth policy. The we went and did the same to Tokyo and other Japanese cities. War is hell.
 
M

MasterBates

Well-Known Member
Anyone ever think that if we actually went 'total war' on a country again, maybe, just MAYBE we could beat a bunch of people who would barely be in the Iron Age if not for imported and abandoned tech from other cultures?
 
Scoob

Scoob

If you gotta problem, yo, I'll be part of it.
pilot
Contributor
MasterBates said:
Anyone ever think that if we actually went 'total war' on a country again, maybe, just MAYBE we could beat a bunch of people who would barely be in the Iron Age if not for imported and abandoned tech from other cultures?
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Actually, we only needed 5 weeks and special forces advisors to do that. Since then its been a counter-insurgency. Good understanding of what we've been doing for the last 11 years though.
 
jmcquate

jmcquate

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Contributor
Scoob said:
Actually, we only needed 5 weeks and special forces advisors to do that. Since then its been a counter-insurgency. Good understanding of what we've been doing for the last 11 years though.
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Agree, but it is amazing what a snake-eater with a laser range finder and a BONE with a belly full of JDAMS can do.
 
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phrogpilot73

Well-Known Member
jmcquate said:
Agree, but it is amazing what a snake-eater with a laser range finder and a BONE with a belly full of JDAMS can do.
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I think you have a misunderstanding of how the technology works. A LRF will only tell the snake eater how far away from the target he is, and if it's tied to his GPS a 10 digit grid that is NOT accurate enough for a JDAM. We routinely train our studs that the grid they get from the Vector/DAGR combo is only good out to about 8 digits. The snake eater likely will have PSS-SOF which will give him a JDAM quality grid. After all, a JDAM is a GPS guided weapon. You need a hyper-accurate grid in order to drop BOC (Bomb on Coordinate). If you drop BOT (Bomb on Target), the aircraft systems are the ones that generate/refine the grid.

A more accurate statement would have been "...what a snake-eater with a laser target designator and a BONE with a belly full of GBU-12s can do."
 
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