Area bombing is not a dirty word.

"Bill Phillips" wrote in message
...
The impact the CBO had
prior to 1944 was to draw manpower to defend Germany from the front.
Every
guy
manning a AAA piece or fueling a fighter would have been carrying a
Mauser-98
on either the eastern or western front if it wasn't for the CBO.

Just like all the effort being put into bombing as not available to
help
the
allied armies.

Nor could it have been, at least not effectively (see below). At least
they
kept the Luftwaffe largely in check while also makiong the POL and
transportation situations within Germany a nightmare (all three of which
were very good things for the "allied armies").

Also the flack units could and did turn their guns on ground
targets in the later stages of the war.

Great. Imagine how much MORE succesful they would have been had they not
had
to concentrate all of those resources on defending the homeland and
instead
had been putting them on more mobile armored platforms.


How long would a Kar-98 carrying soldier last if the allies put all
that
effort into the battlefield?'

And pray tell just HOW would you put all of that effort "onto the
battlefield"? We know that level bombing was of mixed, at best, tactical
value when applied "to the battlefield" (witness COBRA). The allied
ground
forces in France in late 1944 were about as big as you could manage
given
logistics constraints (and no, having all of the bombers play transport
would not have appreciably changed that picture), so you would not have
been
reorienting the bombing resources into the ground fight very easily.
Sounds
like your plan is not very workable. OTOH, having the CBO ongoing
prevented
what was left of the Luftwaffe in late 44 from being able to effectively
focus on supporting their own ground forces opposing the oncoming allied
ground juggernaut. It did indeed make the POL situation a critical one
for
German forces, including those on the ground facing Ike's troops. I just
can't see how we could have substantially improved upon the situation by
reorienting the resources applied to the CBO--as Buffdrvr points out, we
could have better *focused* them to be more effective, given the benefit
of
hindsight, but in the end the combined weight of *all* of the resources
brought to bear, from the CBO to the ground soldiers and TACAIR, working
simultaneously to apply pressure to the Germans from all directions and
forcing them to try to defend *everywhere* versus concentrating solely
upon
the ground equation, was the optimal solution to be had.

It depends on when you divert the resources.

Once you have built bombers you are restricted in what you can do with
them.

However change early enough and you can build almost anything instead,
such
as a tank that could take on Tigers and Panthers 1 to 1. Note: resources
are
a quality issue as well as a quantity one, better equipment could have
actually reduced the logistic burden by achieving a given effect with less
equipment.

Then you would have had to scrap the entire US military production strategy,
which was based upon getting a LOT of "good enough" stuff produced as
opposed to the German approach of building a few really good items--we know
which side lost, so I would side with the winning strategy.


Even if it was put into air power then it could have won the battle of the
Atlantic earlier

That is not assured. merely tossing a few hundred more aircraft over the
ocean was not going to stop the German subs; it took a combination of
aircraft and emerging technology (i.e., small radars capable of seeing the
surfaced little buggers). Then you would have had to factor in that the
germans, not being subjected to any kind of CBO, would have produced even *m
ore* boats ata faster pace, and trained them more effectively since there
was not the additional effect on their POL supplies, not to mention the fact
that all of those flak crews and resources would have been reprogrammed to
face your other threats, and their Luftwaffe would have been better able to
support operations on *both* fronts, etc, ad nauseum.

and some more CAS and air transport would have been useful
for the advance across Europe. For example a little more air power would
have turned Operation Market Garden into a victory.

No freakin' way. The weather shut out air support almost altogether during a
critical window of that operation, and a few more C-47's would NOT have
affected the outcome at Arnhem.

Brooks


Much the same is true of the German efforts.