From: schuck@fraser.sfu.ca (Bruce Jonathan Schuck)
Subject: Re: Senate Interrogation
Reply-To: Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Distribution: can
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 19:22:07 GMT

John G. Spragge <SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:

>In article <schuck.721767010@sfu.ca>, schuck@fraser.sfu.ca (Bruce Jonathan
>Schuck) says:

>>I would disagree on contribution to the war effort. I shudder to think
>>what projects might have been completed by Germany without bombing
>>attacks. The atomic bomb come to mind. I also wonder how many more
>>tanks and planes and ships would have been completed, and how many
>>more would have reached the front.

>Since we have already established that German military production
>continued to rise throughout the period of bombing, 

Until Mid-1944 as someone wrote in todays paper.

>such objective
>evidence as we have suggests the bombing did not slow production
>down much, if at all. 

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

>I challenge you to come up with one major
>weapon or division that British strategic bombing stopped. 

I challenge you to produce figures for German industrial production if
allied bombing had not taken place. 

>As for
>your shudder about nuclear weapons, Germany did not get close to
>developing them (scholars suggest the top German physicist
>deliberately sabotaged the nuclear weapons project). However, since
>the RAF could not stop Von Braun's rocket program, I suggest that
>bombing would not have prevented the Germans from developing nuclear
>weapons.

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.

>>Very true. But I disagree that bombing of Germany was a tragic
>>blunder.

>Because you don't want it to have been a tragic blunder? Because you
>want to believe it attacked targets Air Marshall Harris himself admitted
>he could not hit, stopping production lines we know did not stop
>producing military goods? On what do you base this assertion? Your dislike
>of historians who claim it was a tragic blunder? I'll append my sources
>below.

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

>>England switched to night bombing because the casulties were so high.
>>The English bombers were not as well armoured or armed as the US B-17
>>and B-24's. The US chose to fight during the day while the English
>>fought at night.

>Wrong. Bomber command never made strategic raids during the day.

Early in the war they did, and they lost a lot of planes.

>The US designed their air force for precision daylight bombing. 

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

>>       And if you remember, the bombing of Iraq's military and
>>military industrial complex did a great job of bring Iraq to its knees.

>It did no such thing. The UN Allies defeated Iraq the old fashioned
>way: they launched a ground offensive with better cavalry, better tanks,
>and better generals than the Iraqis. Iraq did not pull out (or try to)
>before the US armoured divisions chased them out.

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.


You fail to suggest a resonable alternative for the allies during
WWII. You would have just had them sitting there, letting the
Luftwaffe bomb the crap out of London and other British cities without
striking back. Thats ludicrous. The people would not have allowed
their leaders to sit and do nothing.

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