Strategic Bombing a modest strategic (“independent”) force of 300 medium bombers by November 1943 Hitler wanted to send the force to attack Soviet power plants east of Moscow in a proposed Operation EISENHAMMER, but the Luftwaffe was unable to launch before its bases were pushed farther west by Soviet offensives, well out of range A heavy He117 capable of strategic bombing became available in mid-1944, but only in small numbers: by then, bomber production was much reduced in favor of fighters needed for air defense against vast British and American air fleets over Germany Defensively, Germany failed to adequately prepare for the air assault from 1943 to 1945, despite demonstration by Britain that an air defense-in-depth was feasible and effective Partly that reflected the gross inefficiency of the Nazi state, which neglected even passive defense measures such as construction of adequate bomb shelters The underlying reason for the failure was that Hitler believed the Western powers were bombing for morale purposes, not attacking his economy He came to a perverse, but not wholly inaccurate, conclusion that morale would never crack Worse, he said: “the devastation actually works in our favor, because it is creating a body of people with nothing to lose—people who will therefore fight on with utter fanaticism.” He and Göring also believed that anti-aircraft guns were by themselves sufficient for defense That fed into Hitler’s growing disgust with Luftwaffe failures and led to an order in 1944 to disband the Luftwaffe and replace it with a huge anti-aircraft army to defend Germany Only Göring’s residual call on past Party and personal glories prevented this bizarre order from being carried out Even so, over two million were engaged in active air defense, which consumed 30 percent of all artillery tubes produced and 20 percent of heavy ammunition The Japanese similarly never tried to build a strategic bombing force and badly neglected home air defense Their strategy was premised on pushing enemy air forces far enough from Japan that bombers could never reach the home islands That was part of the logic of establishing a wide defense perimeter in the South Pacific in 1941–1942 Bombing carried out from China was limited and ended when the Ichi-Go¯ offensive (April–December, 1944) overran the bases By 1944 the Japanese strategy of holding a distant defense perimeter in the Pacific was broken, as the enemy landed in the Marianas and thereafter began long-range bombing of the home islands with specially built B-29s Nor did Japan try—as Germany did, however ineffectively, with its V-weapons program—to meet enemy bombing with a strategic counteroffensive Some research was conducted toward building a transoceanic bomber, the “Fugako,” but Japan’s small aircraft industry simply could not spare the needed resources Instead, the Japanese turned to balloon bombs, or Fugos, which proved ineffective Defensively, Japan was wholly unprepared for the American strategic bombing campaign The home islands had no air defensein-depth system and very few fighters due to low aircraft production Japan’s cities were more susceptible to destruction by fire-bombing than cities in Europe All those weaknesses were exposed when the Western powers transferred to the bombing of Japan techniques of incendiary, firestorm, and other strategic bombing methods that they had learned at great cost to planes and crews while bombing Germany 1050