Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [13]
Whatever the sight’s virtues, interwar tests led to unjustified optimism about the accuracy of high-level bombing. Most of the experiments prompting unrealistic expectations had involved optimum scenarios: clear weather, no time pressure (certainly no flak or fighters), and bombers mostly flown at 10,000 feet or less. But flying straight and level at “angels ten” in the face of a well-defended target proved tantamount to suicide.
During the war, U.S. Army commanders would describe their operations as precision attacks, which in a manner of speaking fell within bounds. Flying in daylight, seeking specific aim points, the American method of strategic bombing was demonstrably more accurate than the RAF’s nocturnal area attacks. But in 1942–43 the Americans fared only slightly better. The vaunted “pickle barrel” accuracy of the Norden sight mated to the B-17 and B-24 usually failed to match the brochure under combat conditions.
Nevertheless, no bombers were useful without accurate bombsights, and Norden’s invention filled a void, becoming the world standard in its lethally esoteric trade.
Morality of Bombing
Douhet and many other airpower theorists espoused a seeming contradiction: by ruthlessly bombing civilian production centers a greater good would be realized in shortening a war, reducing the carnage among soldiers. That dichotomy appeared rational in light of the World War I experience, but inevitably it would clash with later concerns about the morality of unrestricted bombing.
Morality was a constant factor in criticism of strategic airpower, and Britain especially rejected terror bombing, having been on the receiving end in 1915–1918. In 1938 RAF doctrine stated, “A direct attack upon an enemy civil population . . . is a course of action which no British air staff would recommend and no British cabinet would sanction.”
In World War II, the Allies’ moral objection to urban bombing emerged mostly in Britain, where some 60,000 civilians died under German bombs and rockets. The bishop of Chichester was a particularly vocal opponent of strategic bombardment, though he supported tactical air operations. He and a handful of others insisted that Britain—and, by extension, America—would lose “the moral high ground” by bombing cities.
Such philosophical concerns collided head-on with two unbending realities. First, cities were where German weapons were forged, in factories operated almost entirely by civilians, who lived in urban areas surrounding the plants. Therefore, a halt to strategic air operations on moral or any other grounds would have produced a unilateral Allied cease-fire until Anglo-American armies were landed in France. But D-Day could not have been achieved absent Allied air superiority, which was gained only by round-the-clock bombing and daylight air battles that eroded the Luftwaffe’s strength.
Second, despite some airmen’s assertions to the contrary, there was seldom such a thing as precision bombing. The British government was flat-out duplicitous on the matter, insisting to the end that Bomber Command only attacked military targets (amid occasional admissions that declining enemy morale was a desirable by-product). But for much of the war, the RAF could not reliably put more than one-fifth of its tonnage within damaging distance of any factory, hence the resort to area bombing. In the words of British historian Max Hastings, “It was preferable to attack anything in Germany than to attack nothing.”
The airmen of all nations faced a moral and pragmatic contradiction. While few but Douhet openly advocated terror bombing, none could admit that 1940s technology and tactics mostly limited them to area attacks. It was one