Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
USAAF bombed the ball bearing plants to pieces, the Germans simply decentralized and went under ground. Even the Strategic Bombing Survey stated that going after ball bearings caused needless losses for little gain.
|
That's even a bit optimistic, from what I've read.
Quote:
|
But after Ike finally convinced 8th Air Force/Bomber Command to go after the oil fields and refineries, it crippled Germany on so many levels. At one point Hitler ordered all of the 1944 potato crop in order to make alky-based fuel for the Wehrmacht, part of the reason for the famine of 1945.
|
Oil was always on the list, it was just that it was much better defended, and harder to get to.
As I read it, the real keystones that collapsed the German war machine was the transportation infrastructure and power grid. Once the fighters were turned loose on the railnet and the Rhine River barges (used to move coal and iron ore to the Ruhr) were attacked, that's when the wheels came off. To avoid the factories getting bombed, the Germans dispersed them. That came back to bite them when the rail & barge net went down, and whatever pieces couldn't be assembled.
Modern bombing analysis has found that the power grid is an easy soft-kill, as the Serbs and Iraqis found out in the 1990s.
A really good book on this is Stephen Budiansky,
Air Power. In there, it's related that the easiest-attacked link in the supply chain is between factory and supply depot, not depot to unit or at the factory. Of course, wars are always different, as this is why the USAF spent a lot of time working over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.