Aerial bombing during World War II
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Aerial bombing during World War II was a crude and controversial form of aerial warfare, especially the aerial bombing of cities. The technology available during World War II did not include satellites, guided missiles or other advanced targeting systems. 50 years after the end of the war it was possible to launch a missile, in extremely poor weather, 1,000 miles from a target and achieve greater precision than was achievable by the aerial bombing of un-defended targets in ideal conditions in 1945.
During the 19th century, the forms of warfare employed by the major European powers in Europe and those employed in the American Civil War limited the number of non-combatants who died as a result. During the first half of the 20th century, the increasing mechanization of war lead to the concept of Total war, where the resources of nations were used to achieve victory. The fact that the mobilisation of civilian industrial resources was essential to win a war against an industrial state led to the claim that the destruction of the enemy's civilian infrastructure would reduce the materiel available to an enemy for waging war. This led to concepts like Strategic bombing where the target was the strategic reserves of the enemy and in which the destruction of civilian and military infrastructure was blurred to the point where no distinction remained.
[edit] Europe
Populations of occupied countries cannot be regarded as targets but in war stopping the means of making war is just as valid as stopping the enemy's fighting forces. In war, many constraints on the behaviour of the combatants are loosened and it was Hitler who offered his and other people Totalkrieg. The Luftwaffe had begun experimenting with massive bombing of civilan targets during the Spanish Civil War, a technique used later known as terror bombing. From 1939, German aircrews bombed cities such as Warsaw and also attacked British cities, in attempts to break the morale of the people.
By mid-1941, Britain was besieged and RAF Bomber Command was its only means to attack the enemy. Frederick Lindemann, a senior British advisor, recommended the attack on the German civilian population, even though such a strategy had failed when used against British civilians.
Daylight bombing was tried by the RAF early in the war with huge losses and dismal results, noted in the Butt Report. Bomber Command concluded that bombing large areas at night could be done.
In a cloudy climate like northern Europe, it is not often possible using manual methods alone at night, for navigators to find anything as "small" as a city. In the dark at 16,000 feet, a blacked-out city is impossible to see and only just visible under a full moon (hence the phrase a "Bombers Moon").
The US Army Air Force did no better in daylight raids later in the war. The Norden bombsight worked in the clear skies over California, was less effective in the often cloudy skies of northern Germany. However they persisted using formation flying techniques, a combination which posed its own problems.
Raids in conditions which suited the navigators were too costly. American raids on Schweinfurt, designed to wreck ball bearing factories, resulted in horrendous losses. The best that could be achieved was carpet bombing of industrial areas, with high civilian casualties.
Even with the help of the air-to-ground radar systems in the later part of the war, places like Hamburg (see Operation Gomorrah), where there was a distinctively-shaped margin between land and water, could experience the most severe forms of firebombing by the RAF. The RAF's most controversial attack, the bombing of Dresden, became infamous only by chance: the attack could have been expected to be marginally effective but the city happened to be in a quite small cloud-free area after a long dry spell. The bombers were able to bomb accurately leading to a firestorm.
Eventually, it became clear that the way to bomb was by overwhelming the defences and this was proved by the Thousand Bomber Raids, but RAF Bomber Command did not have the front line order of battle to sustain this size raid for very long.
[edit] Asia
The decision to use firebombing against civilian targets in Japan followed accounts over several years of many attacks on civilians by Japanese forces, during the Pacific War, including the use of incendiary bombs against civilian areas in the bombing of Chongqing (1938-43). Because of such events, the decision to firebomb Tokyo was not controversial at the time.
The development of the atomic bomb was spurred by many considerations, including the need to develop nuclear weapons before Nazi Germany did. After VE Day, the Allies were still faced with a bloody and bitter conflict, which would result in many losses if they were to invade the Japanese home islands. It was considered the lesser of two evils to sacrifice the civilian residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than the millions who would have died in an invasion. Put simply, the assault of Japan by Allied ground forces, island by island, would have caused far more civilian deaths than the use of atomic bombs on two cities. An invasion or blockade would also have severely damaged Japan's agriculture and other economic infrastructure, causing more prolonged suffering.
