From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Senate Interrogation
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Distribution: can
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 03:25:07 GMT

In article <schuck.721855327@sfu.ca> Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca writes:
>John G. Spragge <SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:
>
>You can prove what German production would have been without bombing
>then? I can't. Nobody can. It's all a guess.

Quite true.  But some guesses may be better than others.

>>>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.

It looks like the bombing in question didn't have an enormous amount
of effect on German production.  Thus, SOMETHING was done wrong.
Either the bombing was done incorrectly, or it was done right, and
just didn't have the desired effect.  It's not apparent that the
bombing was a particular SUCCESS.  As a surrogate for the abominable
word "non-success," "blunder" isn't drastically unreasonable.

The fact that this blunder/non-success resulted in the destruction of
a large number of British planes, and the deaths of a large number of
Allied pilots makes it tragic.  There's not been any disagreement on
the fact that a lot of bombers got shot down. :-)

If a lot of men died, with relatively little effect, is that not a
tragedy?

>>>       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.

Discussions of disagreements omitted...

>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.

Here's a more appropriate comparison to make with Iraq;

The Coalition bombing WAS effective because the Iraqis didn't defend
themselves effectively from the bombing.

Luftwaffe attacks on London DID elicit some major defense responses,
and if the British Air Force had been less effective in their defense,
there would have been nothing left of London and other such cities,
just like there wasn't much left of the Iraqis in the Gulf War after
the Coalition bombings.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |===================================
University of Ottawa              |  The Personal Computer:  Colt 45
Master of System Science Program  |  of the Information Frontier
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