[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

That's even a bit optimistic, from what I've read.



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.

Dispite the tonnage of bombs dropped on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they still manage to get fair amount of supplies through to the troops they were supporting.