WW2 strategic bombing

Question, how much effort was put into by the allies or axis powers to operate bombing operations against the civilians? Who had the most success and which side saw it as a valuable and helpful operation for the war effort?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II
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Germans tried it during Blitz but stopped doing that when most Luftwaffe was sent East.
All it did was strengthen British resolve to fight.
British in fact retaliated and bombed Germans to shit but it did fuck all to weaken German morale.
Americans bombed Japanese but it didn't make them surrender (until they dropped nukes)
In short Terror Bombing was pointless and a waste of pilot's and civilian lives.

Axis not so much. They had a semi-sustained strat bombing campaign against England, and a few shorter terror bombing campaigns that accompanied their advances, but they were generally using repurposed lighter bombers and aattack crafts. Not surp[risingly, they were not particularly effective.

The Allies, on the other hand, put a hell of a lot more effort into it. See pic related

As for who was most effective runs into a complicated system of metrics. At least Anglo-American strat bombing failed in its stated goal of forcing the Germans to surrender without need for a ground invasion. It caused economic dislocation, but it's hard to determine how much that actually affected the German war machine (which was complex and often deeply dysfunctional in other ways). You can very plausibly question whether it was worth the effort, especially if those aviation resources could be better employed elsewhere. If you think the Strat bombing campaigns were effective, probably the Americans, as their economic bombing did work to a degree whereas the British morale bombing really didn't. If you think it was a waste of time and resources ,you'd go for someone like the USSR, who didn't really have one and consequently didn't waste time and money on it.

It was probably better carried out by the allies.
Strategic bombing became very successful from 1943 afterwards. They devastated the Ruhr industrial area and most German cities.
They also wiped out the Luftwaffe in France and had pretty much unchallenged supremacy by D-day.
Once Harris started launching regular 1000 bomber raids, it went downhill for Germany.
In contrast, Germany's blitz on Britain failed to gain air supremacy and did really nothing outside of destroying London, thr British war machine survived the Luftwaffe bombing relatively unscathed.
Germany did tremendous damage to the soviet union, they reduced most urban areas to rubble save Moscow, and although they won the war, the USSR was devastated for years after.

This basically.
In theory it should since it causes collosal damage and suffering to the enemy but to an enemy with a strong will it just creates a fury in their hearts to keep resisting and get revenge.
I can imagine the idea of enemy bombers carrying out a raid purely to cause suffering and burning hundreds of women and children to ashes, then coming back shortly after whilst they have left their shelters, the firefighters are extinguishing the fires and doing it again when they don't expect it when they are out in the open to be excellent fucking rage fuel.

This is a good summary .
All major countries conducted bombing attacks on civilians, in terms of civilian deaths the most "successful" were (in that order): the Allied attacks on Germany, Italy and France, then the Allied attacks on Japanese cities, then the German attacks on Soviet cities, then the German attacks on British and other cities.
All sides aimed to kill civilians.
>Axis not so much.
German air raids on Soviet cities cost 500,000 lives according to Wikipedia.
Besides, the graph you posted is skewed, compare the '44 number with '45 and then the size of the respective symbols, for example.
>They also wiped out the Luftwaffe in France and had pretty much unchallenged supremacy by D-day.
This is true, but that wasn't achieved by strategic bombing, was it?
>Once Harris started launching regular 1000 bomber raids, it went downhill for Germany.
False:
>Much of the doubt about the effectiveness of the bomber war comes from the fact German industrial production increased throughout the war.[24]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II

Americans were easily the worst
Millions of Japanese women and children died to American firebombs between 1942 and 1945

Watch The Gave of Fireflies to get an accurate account of American war crimes

>German air raids on Soviet cities cost 500,000 lives according to Wikipedia.
And their ground forces killed something on the order of 20,000,000 people. The air raids were very little in comparison.

>Besides, the graph you posted is skewed, compare the '44 number with '45 and then the size of the respective symbols, for example.
That's because they're attempting to show how 1945 only shows a bit over 4 months of bombing instead of being spread out over a year.

>This is true, but that wasn't achieved by strategic bombing, was it?
Not the other guy, but check out this link. don-caldwell.we.bs/jg26/thtrlosses.htm Strategic bombing forced the Luftwaffe to come out and fight, and often lose. They spent far more of their fighters on the Western Front than the Eastern Front.

>Millions
That's wrong, it were 330,000-500,000 dead.
>war crimes
Strategic bombing in WW2 was incredibly brutal and inhumane, but at the time it wasn't illegal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II
>The air raids were very little in comparison.
Still considerable when you look at bombing campaigns during the war.
>Last reply
So the Allies defeated the Luftwaffe over France by baiting them to the bomber formations and inflicting losses the Germans couldn't replace?

>Americans were easily the worst

lolwut? We didn't even attack anyone pre-emptively, unlike the (((Japs))) and (((Krauts))) who just loved bombing people without even a declaration of war.

>Millions of Japanese women and children died to American firebombs between 1942 and 1945

It was 800,000 at maximum you lying Nip.

>The Gave of Fireflies

It's Grave of the Fireflies you twit, and next time, think about your own poor children before you decide to bomb Pearl Harbor and invade US territories.

>So the Allies defeated the Luftwaffe over France by baiting them to the bomber formations and inflicting losses the Germans couldn't replace?
Western Germany more so than France proper, but yes, essentially. The attrition the Luftwaffe suffered especially in 1943 led to a drastically less effective air force overall, which meant that by the time you had things like the Transport Plan and the D-Day landings, the Germans weren't really up to putting up more than a token fight in the sky.

isn't the only reason it wasn't a warcrime back then basically because the allies said "it isn't a warcrime"?

Alright, thanks for explaining.
No, attacking defended civilian areas was legal back then, only the the Hague treaty (I think that's the name) forbade attacking civilians at all, but after the war.

>it was only 800,000 dead civilians guys!!!!

just watch The Fog of War, that will put into perspective how destructive bombing was in the war and how vital it was in winning it

*correction: the the Hague treaty was from 1907 and did in fact allow attacking defended civilian areas: "International law at the outset of World War II did not specifically forbid aerial bombardment of cities despite the prior occurrence of such bombing during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War."

Only from 1949, additions to the Geneva Conventions illegalized it.

The actual reason would be that everyone did it.

"defended civilian area" sounds extremely vague though, but i guess that technically doesn't make it a warcrime.

>All it did was strengthen British resolve to fight.
>British in fact retaliated and bombed Germans to shit but it did fuck all to weaken German morale.

this

Germans shouldn't have bombed civilian targets like Coventry (Coventry Blitz), it did jack shit and in fact it served the british propaganda to gather people together.

British shouldn't have bombed civilian targets like in Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah), it did jack shit as well and in fact it ironically served the german propaganda to gather people together.

They were really out of other options. There was no way to make a sealion work what with no navy worth mentioning, the submarine "blockade" was generally ineffective and would take years to work even if it could. They didn't really have much else of a way to take the fight to the UK once France fell.

Start shit, get hit.

>bombing operations against the civilians?
Not sure if joking??
They were military targets.

Allies and allies.

The major problem was accuracy. To hit a factory you had to also bomb all the area around it. Precision bombing didn't really exist then.

>They were really out of other options
i guess they really were

They could have bombed primarily military and industrial targets, though. Or infrastructure, but not civilians.

Wrong, there were elaborate air-to-ground radar systems available. The Allies deliberately targeted civilians, just like the Axis did.

>They could have bombed primarily military and industrial targets, though. Or infrastructure, but not civilians.
And do what with that? Say it even works (Anglo-American bombing over Germany indicates that it isn't likely to). You still can't touch anything outside of fighter escort easily, and you certainly can't touch any overseas pools of industry and manpower. Britain outproduces you by a reasonable margin, and you can slightly cut into that. How do you go from industrial bombing to actually forcing the British out of the war?

>British retaliated
WRONG
Churchill ordered a "savage attack" on Berlin after that ONE lost German bomber bombed a chicken coop in outer London.
The Blitz were retaliatory because they only began bombing civilization targets AFTER several raids on Berlin and several warnings from Hitler.

>How do you go from industrial bombing to actually forcing the British out of the war?
You don't, but bombing cities and losing aircraft meanwhile was dumb. Instead they should have kept their defenses tight over France and Germany, targeted merchant ships, and bomb railways, bridges, factories and military targets within their range. They wouldn't force Britain out of the war, but it would be the most effective way to fight the UK. Meanwhile more effort should be put into driving the British out of the Mediterranean, but that's a completely different topic.

>You don't, but bombing cities and losing aircraft meanwhile was dumb. Instead they should have kept their defenses tight over France and Germany, targeted merchant ships, and bomb railways, bridges, factories and military targets within their range.
That wouldn't lose any fewer aircraft than terror bombing, and it almost certainly will be as ineffectual. The big industrial belt of the UK was up in the Midlands (in bomber range, but not fighter escort range), and most of the merchant shipping was going through Liverpool and up in Scotland precisely because that was harder to bomb.

>Meanwhile more effort should be put into driving the British out of the Mediterranean, but that's a completely different topic.
How? They couldn't land enough supplies for the 3 divisions they went on the offensive with as it was. Unless you can magic up a bigger harbor for Tripoli, or a railroad running from the Italian colonial capital to connect with Alexandria, putting in more effort isn't going to correlate with more results.

Why did they drop so many bombs on trans people?

they were close to putting Fighter Command out of action if they kept bombing airfields
instead Goring changed tactics to bombing cities like the retard he was for no reason

FG 11 was not the whole of fighter command user. And the British were never considering putting them out of the fight, merely retiring to bases further up north. That gives them slower reaction times and safer on the ground situations. It's not going to give the Germans free reign over the skies.

Hitler had still terror bombed the Poles and Dutch. Churchill was just beating him to the punch

>elaborate air to ground radars
Not really. And not cheap or small enough to install on every bomber and still allow a reasonable bomb load. Even the best mechanical bomb sights were inaccurate above 15k feet - within flak range, so most bombers flew around 25k feet or higher. Then there was night bombing like the brits did so even when they were flying low accuracy was absolute shit.