Bombing Can Win: We Can Do It Now

by FRANCIS VIVIAN DRAKE

HUGE United Slates assembly lines last summer achieved for the first time a bomber production that justifies our use of the term “Air Power.” For the first time we have in our hands a new and primary weapon of war. There is one basic requirement for its effective use: concentration.

To use Air Power decisively means concentrating a lot of big planes at one place. Instead of this, our new bombers have been dispersed all over the world in support of surface forces. In some theaters, the South Pacific and North Africa, this course is unavoidable, and no bombers can be withdrawn from current battles without inviting catastrophe. In principle, however, we shall throw away our most vital asset unless we observe two common-sense principles: —

(1) Just as there is a naval theater where all forces — sea, land, or air — support the naval effort, and just as there is an army theater where all forces support the land effort, so there is an air theater where air is the primary and not the supporting weapon. In this war, the air theater is Germany, the vital heart of enemy production which cannot be attacked by either the army or the navy.

(2) Time is of critical importance in organizing this air theater, because of the current shift of German war industry to Southeastern Europe, and because of the increasing Nazi production of big bombers like our own. If the enemy is given time to build these bombers up to a mass force, England may be so crippled that we shall be unable to strike in force from her base.

Therefore, immediate concentration remains the dominant need. A few hundred small planes here and there may injure but they can’t destroy. A few thousand big planes pounding continuously at one target can smash it utterly.

It is such Air Power that the United States now has in its grasp. By October, 1942, our bomber plants were pouring out multiengined long-range bombers in such numbers that United States Air Power had begun to dwarf anything ever produced by any other nation. If even one half of our potential Air Power were concentrated it could destroy the main Nazi war industry inside Germany proper in one long, irresistible assault. And we now lack very little to begin the job. We have the crews, the spares, the fuel, the bombs. Most important of all, we have the operating bases ready for use.

Major General Ira C. Eaker, head of the United States Bomber Command in Europe, stated last September: “There are enough airdromes in the British Isles, now built and building, to accommodate all the Allied Air Forces needed for the destruction of Germany.”

United States Air Power should at last be recognized as a great primary weapon, instead of being subordinated to the support of surface attack. Though every admiral and general in the United Nations knows that victory is utterly impossible without an offensive, the RAF’s heavy bombardment of the Reich has been the only direct assault upon Germany itself. Even if we control the whole of North Africa, there still remains the formidable distance between our fighting forces and the vitals of the Axis war machine. The direct attacks of the RAF are hurting the Reich badly. Russian Intelligence reported to Wendell Willkie that “the raids on Germany have had a devastating and demoralizing effect on the German people.” At the same time, not even the heaviest of these raids approaches the decisive force of Air Power that it is now ours to deliver.

The RAF is doing all it possibly can. It is using every heavy bomber it has. It cannot do more. The air chiefs know that victory is in their grasp if they can only step up the bombing rate. Air Marshal Harris, head of the RAF Bomber Command, said early this year: “ If I could send a thousand bombers over Germany every night, Germany would not be in the war by autumn.” General Eaker reported from England: “I believe it is possible to destroy the enemy from the air. It should be recognized that Air Power is the most powerful means we have to win the war.” These men are the professionals who talk facts, not theories. They are the men best qualified to judge the value of Air Power. The time is long overdue when they should be listened to.

The proposal to concentrate half our bombing power for an air offensive against Germany does not involve abandonment of existing fronts in the Pacific and in Africa. I repeat that if only half our current bomber production were concentrated in England, we could launch against Germany proper a reign of devastation that could successfully reduce to rubble her whole means of supplying her armies. General Eaker has said: “By destroying the enemy’s aircraft factories you can put an end to his air force. By destroying his munitions plants and communications you can bring his army to a halt. By destroying his shipyards you can make it impossible for him to build submarines. There is nothing that can be destroyed by gunfire that cannot be destroyed by bombs.”

Russia alone, with her titanic engagement of the Nazi armies, has kept the door of opportunity open for us. As long as she holds, the Nazi citadel, strained to breaking point by the Russian campaign, remains critically vulnerable to air attack.

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The Nazi war machine is acutely aware of its predicament, even if we are not. Said General Erich Quade of the Nazi Air Force on September 4: “Because of Russia, the second front must be stripped to the lowest possible limit. Germany and the whole of the Greater Reich are the second front. Those areas which are subject to heavy bombing by the RAF should remember that they give their life for final victory.”

Nothing is more certain than that the Nazi High Command thirstily awaits that moment when it can summon back from Russia the main force of its Luftwaffe. Over the German radio Colonel Gertz, of the Nazi Air Force, threatened that in the next all-out air campaign against Great Britain “extensive raids on an unprecedented scale will be launched . . . by heavy new bombers.” A few days later it was “officially confirmed” in London that the new Heinkel 177, which has been used in experimental raids over England, is equipped to carry “the heaviest load of any bomber ever to fly over England.” Thus there is absolutely no doubt that the Germans are looking ahead to the day when, so they are told, the Luftwaffe can knock England out of the war. They are already copying our type of production, stressing the big Heinkel bombers instead of the ground attack planes used against Russia. We must not take lightly General Quade’s threat: “When we are finished in the East, thousands of bombers will be freed for operation over Britain.”

Even if they don’t succeed in an actual knock-out of England, the island may be crippled. This is a grim prospect, involving as it does the indefinite prolongation of the entire war. This and her own peril drive Russia to cry out for a second major front in Europe while there is still time. The United Nations High Command is aware of the vital importance of this European front. It would indeed like nothing better than to be able to strike a crushing blow against the German citadel. But it is also grimly aware, as the general public apparently is not, of the plain arithmetic of supply and transportation.

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A transportation system is a huge artery. From the heart — the factories — the artery leads off full-size. Within the United States our arteries continue full-size until they reach our coastlines, rendering us invulnerable to invasion: all of our war machine can be brought to bear against an enemy at any continental point, while he is obliged to transport his war machine in a slender thread of ships.

But the moment we transfer our men and machines to ships, this same limitation begins to work against us. For every slow and dangerous mile that ships steam away from our shores our arteries contract proportionately. On every trip a percentage will be lost to the enemy, contracting the artery still more. Our shortest and strongest artery is the one that supplies England, 3000 miles away. But to take a ship there, unload her, and bring her back takes over a month. Supplying the Mediterranean battle fronts involves a round trip of some 10,000 miles. Every mile represents a progressive contraction of the arteries, until, by the time our supplies have approached the farthest fronts, they have shrunk so much that the heart back home is pounding furiously to get anything through at all. Thus we have the arteriosclerosis of war.

The Nazis, on the other hand, have only to man their Channel defenses, some 300 miles from their central factories — a job for which von Rundstedt maintains a million men and ample equipment. To back an invasion of Europe from the United States, we shall have to pump many men and an enormous tonnage of equipment through 3000 miles of sea-lane arteries.

Now, in the light of these fundamental realities, let us examine the case for a second front in the air. We find: —

(1) A fortified working base (England).

(2) Essential weapons (our heavy bombers), all self-transportable from factory to foe.

(3) Surface-transported equipment so small by comparison to that of land offensives that it can be moved and sustained without undue strain through our shortest and strongest artery.

(4) An attack that can be brought to bear directly against the actual heart of the enemy on which his own arteries depend.

All that is needed to launch our air offensive against Germany, in brief, is the command to assemble the necessary material.

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The destruction of Germany from the air is essentially a trucking job. A bomber’s business is to lift its cargo off the ground, truck it into Germany, and hurry back for another load. Its cargoes consist of explosives. They are packed in thin casings containing ten times more explosive than will go into an artillery shell of equal weight.

A bomber, in brief, implements in every respect the basic purpose of all modern warfare, which is the destruction of men and machines by explosive power. Although it is the newest of all agencies of destruction, a bomber is also the most crushingly effective and the most economical. It can inflict damage out of all proportion to its size and cost. A single heavy bomb can raze an entire city block, wrecking the surrounding area besides. The entire cargo of a bomber, whether or not it strikes its primary objective, lands inevitably on the enemy. Even if a bomber is shot down, the result must be the same. There is no possible way — barring explosion in mid-air — in which can prevent complete delivery of the cargo of death, once it is over his territory.

Furthermore, in mass raids the combat loss-rate has been brought down from 10 per cent to 4 per cent. The RAF commander of the Cologne raid reported: “There was little or no opposition over the target, I think because there were so many aircraft that the ground defenses could not cope with them.”

The more frequently deliveries can be made and the heavier the load, the more destructive is the effect, the fewer the losses, and the less the enemy’s chances of recovery. To bomb Germany completely out of the war, beginning now, involves one basic requirement: the trucking of enough tons to do the job.

it is even possible for us to calculate just how much it would take to do this. From actual experience we know how many tons of explosives it requires to annihilate a square mile of buildings, allowing for the misses. When the war started, we knew the exact location of most of the important plants in Germany and we have received considerable information since. We know how many tons of bombs it will take to destroy these plants. We also know how many tons the Nazis dropped on Coventry and on London, what was the resultant damage, and why they could not keep it up. Finally, we know that we are now ready to truck between twelve and twenty times that tonnage of bombs to Germany every night and to keep it up indefinitely.

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The extent of our present bombing power, if it were concentrated, is staggering. For example, if we should take half our production for the next few months and fly it to bases already prepared in Britain, we could team in with the British and form a Joint Task Force of 3000 medium and long-range bombers. The bombers can carry from three to eight tons of bombs apiece, across the length and breadth of Germany.

Summarized, this is what the Joint Task Force could do: —

Total force available 3000 bombers

Average force used per bombing night (balance kept in reserve for the next night, etc.) 1000 bombers

Average number of bombing nights per month permitted by weather (RAF experience) 10 nights

Tons of bombs per flying night 3000 5000 tons

Tons of bombs per month 30,000-50,000 tons

Now let us compare this performance with the famous blitz that almost defeated Britain. The worst Nazi raids were on Coventry and on London, and this is the tonnage comparison of bombs: —

Coventry raid (duringtwonights) 400 tons

Proposed Joint Task Force (during two nights) 0000 10,000 tons

Heaviest Nazi tonnage in one month (on London, during September, 1940) 3000 tons

Joint Task Force, one month 30,000-50,000 tons

Mark these figures well. They contain the essential elements of victory. They comprise no airy-fairy dream of what we might be able to do in 1944. They show what we can do now.

To make the present air offensive decisive, it is necessary to step it up and to keep it up. To keep it up, at a rate of 30,000 to 50,000 tons a month, at the present combat lossrate of about 4 per cent per raid, involves replacements of about 600 bombers and crews per month. This is well below the joint British-American rate of production.

The Joint Task Force, in the first six months, could hurl some 300,000 tons of bombs into the heart of Germany. This would be the equivalent of over two million 15-inch demolition shells, the firing of which from guns would entail the bloody advance of millions of men through hundreds of miles over perhaps years of time. There are about thirty key cities which together make up so much of the German war effort that without them the Nazi armies could not function for long. In a six months’ air offensive, the industry of those cities could be shattered by 10,000 tons of bombs apiece, against Coventry’s 400 tons.

The conclusions I have presented are not the outpourings of fanaticism or bias. All of them derive from facts. They have been attested by the ranking air commanders of the United States and Great Britain. If these conclusions can be refuted, they must be refuted with facts, not rhetoric.

If they are true, then it is true also that we are gazing upon the very face of Victory. If we can knock Germany out of the war, there will be open to the American, British, and Russian air forces an uninterrupted land bridge to within 1000 miles of Japan. What had been done to Germany could be done to Japan. Once the Japanese citadel is destroyed by Allied Air Power, the whole Japanese Pacific empire must collapse.

If we ignore our present opportunity for an all-out air offensive, we have no other course open but to await the outcome of the great land offensives, to prepare to meet their heartbreak, their extortionate cost. In the First World War the total casualties were 37,000,000 — 58 per cent of those engaged. It is said that our own army is to number 10,000,000 men: Rear Admiral Percy W. Foote recently expressed as his personal opinion that “half of them would be casualties.”Five million casualties! By comparison, our share in the cost of a six months’ air offensive by the Joint Task Force could not exceed 50,000 to 100,000 men in crews and ground forces.

The whole of the Nazi war economy in Germany lies naked beneath the skies at the mercy of our newborn Air Power — the most vital target the world has ever known.