The massive bombing campaign of WWII over Europe wrecked great destruction over Germany. In Germany numerous cities were flattened. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were killed. Massive amounts of resources were expended to pursue strategic bombing, resources only Britain and America could spare.
In contrast Germany used their aircraft in large part as a Tactical bombing with immediate military results. The Stuka 87 was used extensive against enemy military positions to destroy tanks and such. Strategic bombing needed years to show results although the proponents of it thought otherwise.
The British who began the strategic bombing campaign first by November 1941 in the Butt report determined that the bombers couldn’t find nor hit their targets. Only 30% of the bombings were as close of 5 miles of the target. And they found daylight bombing too costly. With fewer resources than America they went to night bombing.
Area attacks on cities began to be the object; the goal of the bombings became terror against the civilian population. As was found out this only hardens the civilian determination as it did in both in England and Germany. Before the war the idea of strategic bombing was to destroy the countries means to carry on war and shorten wars. In the light of the bloody stalemate of WWI this was seen as a way to relieve war of the butchery with its millions of casualties.
Armadas of airplanes were required to propagate the campaign. Groups up to 1000 airplanes were sent up to reign bombs over German cities. Flying tight formation almost wing tip to tip to concentrate fire power and not allow a small group or single plane to be picked off.
Americans came into the bombing campaign with a thought that it could do daylight pinpoint bombing over strategic industries. B-17 was to have been literally the Flying Fortress able to defend itself against fighter attacks. Problems arose. European skies were overcast much of the time. And thus the Norden bombsites that were to have guided the bombers to their final destination were ineffective. In the bomber campaign of the Battle of Berlin, Royal Air Force here, of the winter of 1943-44 the cloud cover so obscured the target that these bomber groups of 500 or more bombers missed it completely, a city of some millions.
Unescorted daylight bombing was perilous the British had quickly found out. With the Flying Fortress the Amercian airforce thought they could fly into Germany to attack industrial sites with pin point bombing. On August 17th, 1943 USAF fly in force over the Schweinfurt ball bearing plant some 38 were shot down out of 200 hundred. On September 6 they went to Stuttgart and 48 out of 338 were shot down. They came back on October 15 and some 60 bombers were shut down. These type of losses simply couldn't be maintained. But unlike Britain's stated military policy America's was always directed to industrial type targets; in practice due to the inaccuracy of bombing in the war they participated with Britain in their "area" bombing as well.
Despite the fact a vast majority of the bombers got through, even with a kill rate of 5% or so, your highly trained air crew and hugely expensive machinery would be run through in no time. 30% of bomber crew wouldn’t survive 25 bombing trips if the kill rate was 5% which oft times it was higher. Americans lost some 25,000 airmen during the war, that is one tenth the number of Americans killed in WWII.
Bomber groups got bigger thus more defensible and the P-51 and P-47 fighters began to escort the bombers on their entire trip. The P-51's and 47's were superior aircraft to what the Germans could put up and they began to hunt the hunters so to speak as well. During 1944 the German fighters were wiped from the skies at least during day.
Hilter effectively ruined the effectiveness of German fighter defense against these bomber attacks by refusing to put the necessary resources into it. In fact the Me-262 jet plane, meant to have been a fighter plane, was forced to be used as a bomber. This plane could have in use by spring of 1944 but Hitler was always thinking offense: V2 rockets and such. He thought fighters as defensive agents were a waste. Only in late 1944 were the Me-262 began to used as a fighter in much fewer numbers than could have accomplished earlier. The result Germany was eventually overrun. More importantly the arsenal of democracy, United States, was able to massively produce thousands of fighters and bombers to overwhelm Germany.
Hitler’s Germany couldn’t afford to pursue a strategic bombing policy. In its attempt the London blitz in 1940 was carried on over the Fall by fighter bombers that were meant to be able to fly away from their pursuit. Great Britain’s Spitfires fighters fought off the bombers, although thousands of civilians were killed during the bombing, but with increasing destruction of the bombers, the campaign was halted. The biggest failure of the Lutfwaffe was the fact that the Royal Air Force was not driven from the air and thus gain freedom of the skies that would permit invasion by land forces across the Channel.
After all the expenditure of resources its telling that in 1944 Germany produced more armaments after three years of strategic bombing than ever. Much thanks to Albert Speer, whose contribution was held so highly he spent the next 20 years in prison. And of course especially revealing was Britain’s concession to the inaccuracy of strategic bombing by a change to area bombing, which in effect was terror bombing.
Since WWII no nation has targeted cities as was done in WWII. In America’s wars against Iraq great efforts were made to avoid collateral damage, as was the bombing in Kosovo despite the unfortunate collateral casualties.
