"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...
In article , Andrew Chaplin
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

Doolittle raid

Tactical mission, but politically strategic.

Was there not a change in the deployment of Japan's air forces as a
result? If so, would it not fall into the strategic realm?

Part of the problem in placing this particular raid is that it was
planned mostly for domestic morale reasons, not the immense strategic
effect it actually had. We get into the fundamental definition of
"strategic".

In general, I use "strategic" to describe an air operation that will
have a significant effect on the entire war, without major interaction
with other operations.

I think you were sort of on the right course, but you left the tracks with
that last clause. "Without major interaction with other operations"? I'd
posit that if your goal does NOT "interact" with "other operations", as in
being complimentary of, then it is not only not a strategic operation, it is
probably one that was a wasted effort in the first place.

A better solution IMO would be to look at things from the overarching
strategic framework perspective. At the top you have strategy--the setting
of goals, and resourcing elemnts such that they can acheive those goals,
that lead to obtaining national goals, or the endstate desired. In a broad
sense, for example, our strategic goals for the combined bomber offensive
against Germany was to significantly reduce the effectiveness of German
industrial production, degrade their capability of transporting military
resources to their desired destinations, and defeat the morale of the German
populace and reduce their support for continuing the war. Next comes the
operational level, where successive campaigns are planned and resourced to
acheive these goals over a period of time; IMO, the "transportation plan"
and the "oil plan" were not really *strategies*--they were instead
operational level efforts aimed at helping acheive strategic objectives.
Then you would have the individual raids, which are essentially the tactical
level execution of the operational plans (i.e., they equate to "battles" in
the ground combat arena).

Note that we refer to what occured in Europe during WWII as the "European
Theater of Operations", not the "European Theater of Strategy".

The Doolittle raid, in particular, brings up the
question "do the planners need to be aware they are trying for a major
[strategic] effect?"

Yes, they do, and in this case they apparently did--the effect being more
the domestic morale boost that you pointed to above before you veered a bit
offcourse. That they *also* acheived some degree of strategic effect
(causing the Japanese to rethink and redeploy their available air assets)
may have been an unforseen benefit, but it had some strategic ramifications
nonetheless. And those strategic ramifications would have been measured in
how much they "interacted" (or more accurately impacted) other operations.
IMO, the Doolittle Raid was one of those rare exceptions to what I outlined
above; it was a single raid (or "battle") planned to acheive a strategic
goal (morale boost), that also had the added benefit of at least marginally
impacting what was then still a japanese "center of gravity", which was
their (at the time) still effective air operations throughout their theaters
of operations.


This didn't appear to be a consideration in planning this raid -- the
effect was unforeseen.

But it occured anyhow. The thread posits missions that had a strategic
impact, not necesarily those that acheived said impact that was preplanned
as an objective.

Perhaps we can also consider what might be
called "negative strategic" decisions, such as Goering deciding to stop
what we'd now call a SEAD campaign, and switch to city bombing.

I'd put that decision more into the "negative operational decision"
category; he changed the operational objective from defeating the RAF (an
operational objective if there ever was one) to the more daunting task of
defeating British morale with raids often targeted at nothing of direct
military value. And he had a rather paltry capability of acheiving that goal
(morale defeat) with the force he had available; say what you will about the
RAF targeting of large urban areas, but at least they had the muscle to make
an honest effort of it.

Brooks