NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/can/politics/9710

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-15 | 6.1 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!torn!news.ccs.queensu.ca!qucdn!spraggej
Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 16:00:01 EST
From: John G. Spragge <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Senate Interrogation
Distribution: can
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Lines: 103

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bruce Jonathan
Schuck) says:

>You can prove what German production would have been without bombing
>then? I can't. Nobody can. It's all a guess.

If so, what makes the guess by the producers of "The Valour and the Horror"
less valid than the "guess" by the members of the Senate or the CBC
ombudsman? And why bother with history?

In fact, we do have a good deal of information about the effect of the
bombing, and the cost to Britain of maintaining bomber command. And
the evidence suggests that while the night bombing may have affected
German military production, it probably did not eliminate a third of
it, whereas supporting bomber command took up about a third of the
resources Britain devoted to military ends during the later stages
of the war. So far the facts: on that basis, it seems to me that
a reasonable person could conclude continuing the night bombing campaign
in the face of high casualties in the air crews did not make ethical or
military sense.

If you deride that as hindsight, I reply that the benefit of hindsight
provides a reason for the unbiased study of history: so that having seen
what social, political and military ideas worked, we can avoid making
similar mistakes in the future. Letting our wish that a particular
tactic had or could work get in the way of that learning process makes
learning from our mistakes impossible.

>Germany was very close scientifically, but did not commit the massive
>economic resources necessary for bomb production. That may be they
>were too busy countering the destruction caused by allied bombing. I
>can't prove it. Its a guess. Just as your assertions are guesses.

We can put more than guesses to put into the subject of history.
I say that German nuclear weapons research made so little progress
scholars wonder if the physicist in charge deliberately sabotaged it
because I have read an article on the subject in the New York Times
review of books. Objective evidence for these things does exist. The
Allies did capture documents after the war that established the Germans
did not come close to having the know-how to build nuclear weapons.

>Tragic blunder? The allies had to fight back somehow. Bombing was one
>of the few ways open to them.

Fighting back only works if you can do more damage to the enemy than you
do to yourself. The British (in 1940) did not have the resources to do
serious damage to German cities, but they did write down the strength of
the Luftwaffe quite nicely by an effective anti-aircraft defence.
(source: Shirer, Berlin Diary, and Deighton, Fighter).

>The US did not get to Europe until 1942. They had two years of
>learning from the British experience.

The US decision to bomb by daylight had nothing to do with British
experience. Both air forces came into the war with fixed aircraft
designs (the Americans designed the B-17 in 1937). Technology dictated
the strategy. Theory dictated the technology. And have admitted you
don't know the theory, and you refuse to even try to learn it.

>You are dense. The estimate is that over 50% of the Iraqi military had
>fled the front lines by the time of the allied assault. Troops
>couldn't get to the front lines, transportation was completely
>disrupted. And the vast majority of bombs dropped by the allies were
>old iron dumb bombs dropped by B-52's.

The "estimate"? Well, I can give you two solid facts: first, Iraq did
not leave Kuwait until the ground assault, and the allied generalship,
troops, tanks, and tactical aircraft far outclassed the Iraqis in
every way. The US M-1 tanks and Apache helicopters would have outgunned,
outshot the Iraqi tanks if not a single bomb had fallen on Baghdad, and
the intelligent generalship of General Schwartzkopf would have made the
end run around Saddam's army possible in the complete absence of
"strategic" bombing.

In any case let me clarify: I do not consider aerial assault per se
immoral. Bombing the roads, railway yards which directly support
enemy troops works, as does bombing the troops themselves. Bombing
civilian populations because you don't have the technical ability
to hit their military assets seems (on the historical evidence)
not to work. Destroying cities from the air, even with weapons
as awesome as the B-52 strato-fortress has never yet by itself won a
war: not in Vietnam, not in Iraq, not anywhere. In order to defeat
Japan with bombs (even after they had killed a third of a million
people and rendered many more homeless) the US had to escalate to
nuclear weapons.

As for your definition of me as dense: possibly, but you have a
worse problem: you don't know the subject very well (by your own
admission), and you refuse to learn. When I press you, you refer to
history as "guessing". Drawing lessons from history does require
a certain interpretation, but the facts to base those interpretations
on do exist. I have quoted the sources I use: you refuse to quote
any sources but your own evident wish to believe the tactics of
bomber command worked.

I would love to see you quote the evidence on which you base your
claims. Where do your conclusions come from (save an evident desire
to disbelieve the NFB and the CBC)? Quote me a reference here.

Your culture will adapt to service ours - Columbus to Natives, 1492
Your culture will adapt to service ours - Borg to Captain Picard, 24th C.

standard disclaimers apply ----------------------- John G. Spragge