Air Power of desperate sorties by technologically immature jets made as the regime expired, the Luftwaffe mainly left the skies over Germany to vast fleets of Western Allied bombers and fighters in March–April, 1945 Neither before nor during World War II did any Axis air force develop an effective strategic bomber force or doctrine The Luftwaffe, Regia Aeronautica, and Japanese Army Air Force all employed their bomber strength tactically rather than strategically, in support of ground attacks or against enemy naval forces and shipping Germany developed the first ballistic missile in the form of the V-2 rocket late in the war, but that weapon was—as the name suggested and Hitler conceived of it—a vengeance weapon rather than a strategic or war-winning weapon The Japanese experimented with incendiary bombing and dissemination of germ weapons by high-altitude balloons (Fugos), but these had such limited success they were a nonfactor in the air war While theorists in all air forces considered the role of bombing in psychological warfare, until mid-1940 no air force engaged in terror bombing against enemies capable of retaliation in kind: the Luftwaffe brutally bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam but not Paris or London, while the French and British failed to carry out their prewar threats to massively bomb the Ruhr and other parts of Germany within reach of their planes The Battle of Britain changed that equation, but only slowly Hitler concluded that economic bombing was ineffective In any case, the Wehrmacht needed the Luftwaffe to continue its primary tactical role supporting ground forces on the Eastern Front and lacked the proper aircraft to conduct a campaign of strategic bombing It was thus the RAF that crept toward deliberate targeting of civilians, both as a primary form of economic warfare and as a means of trying to crumble German morale The real difference from the Luftflotte was that the British poured more of their resources into bomber production to match their growing and grim dedication to a hard doctrine of area bombing Once the means became available in the form of new four-engine heavy bombers, the British used these to strike at the German economy RAF Bomber Command reached deep into the enemy heartland in an effort to destroy war production But once it was discovered that precision bombing was ineffective, RAF Bomber Command accepted as a corollary of area bombing that it must kill German workers and level their homes; “dehouse” them, was the way Winston Churchill put it RAF doctrine thus evolved from attempting precise targeting of military and economic targets into an effort to foment a popular uprising against the Nazis It was hoped and argued by air power advocates that Britain might thereby avoid the necessity of invading the continent, where it must surely face another series of great land battles comparable to the Somme, Ypres, and Mons It was the British followed by the Americans who most employed terror bombing, or “morale bombing.” That was because the Western Allies developed the physical means to conduct a strategic campaign on a scale that seemed able to fulfi ll the war-winning promise made by radical adherents of the doctrine, which during the war turned into a dogma for the Allied bomber chiefs It is generally agreed that strategic bombing as promoted by air power radicals failed Bombing Germany proved less than effective on several levels A secret 1941 study reported to Churchill and the combined chiefs of staff that 30 percent of 29