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Strategic Bombing tactical support During the interwar period a shift in thinking about bombing occurred among air power theorists, from seeing the bomber in a purely tactical role toward what some later called the “bomber dream” of a strategic bomber force as a singularly effective, war-winning weapon This new doctrine grew out of revulsion for the experience of trench warfare during World War I, in which massive amounts of war matériel and millions of men were destroyed without bringing about decisive victory for either side, at least not quickly It became clear that it was vital to destroy the means of resupply to such giant armies and not just the armies and navies, and to erode and undermine enemy civilian morale At its most ambitious, this idea was touted as a substitute for direct combat by great land armies The doctrine also grew from the RAF’s interest in operational and constitutional independence, and from its interwar experience in “air control” of rebellious colonial populations in the 1920s, notably in Afghanistan and Iraq Notions about the future war-winning capabilities of strategic bombing were widespread among air men in the 1920s and 1930s, but only in two Western air forces—the RAF and USAAF—were they really taken seriously and applied to weapons design, procurement policies, and force disposition No other major air force would even attempt “the knock-out blow” that radical air power theorists proposed, or try to build a long-range bomber force to deliver it Part of the explanation for that divergence is the island status of Great Britain and, on a vaster oceanic scale, also of the United States Water barriers protecting these Western powers conduced to a view of air power as uniquely advantageous to a political strategy that sought isolation from continental entanglements The war in the air in Europe quickly produced countermeasures—effective day and night fighters, increasingly sophisticated radars, better anti-aircraft guns, dispersed and underground war production—that severely limited the effectiveness of bombers Even more limiting was the inaccuracy of most bombsights, a fact that quickly restricted RAF bomber fleets to area bombing of city-sized targets Even the USAAF, which believed completely in its top secret and highly complex Norden bombsight and the idea of precision bombing, would be compelled to adopt area bombing in practice As gross bombing inaccuracy was revealed by after-bombing surveys, the RAF and USAAF incrementally developed doctrines that fit the actual practice of their bombing, though the USAAF arrived at the same conclusion as the RAF at a different rate and much later time Theoretical justification for what was actually being done incorporated not just industrial plant as legitimate targets, but also workers’ homes Ultimately, it came to include workers’ and other civilians’ lives as well, as the two great Western Allied air forces and their minor allies moved to indiscriminate targeting of civilians under a doctrine known as morale bombing As the bomber fleets expanded and better heavy bombers became available city bombing took on a logic of its own It was driven by the return on production investment in heavy bombers and the fact that the Western powers wished to make an offensive contribution to the defeat of Germany even before they put armies onto the continent Air power enthusiasts clung to their vision of the bomber as a war-winning weapon, despite the obvious fact that Britain proved in 1940 that a 1046
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