What Price Bombing?

By day U.S. Fortresses and Liberators precisely planted bombs in Wilhelmshaven and Brest. By night R.A.F. Sterlings and Lancasters pattern-bombed Cologne and St. Nazaire. German targets were getting around-the-clock pounding such as they had never had before.

The why of round-the-clock raids, instead of more massive but sporadic attacks, had been best set forth by Major General Ira C. Eaker, commander of the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Britain. His reasons: 1) to inflict maximum damage; 2) to keep enemy defenses on a 24-hour alert; 3) to force maintenance of both day & night fighters in Western Europe.

Necessity also lay behind such reasoning. U.S. heavy bombers, with high speed, great defensive firepower and small bomb capacity (two and four tons), are best suited to daylight precision bombing. British bombers, slower, with less armament and greater bomb capacity (eight and nine tons), are best suited to night operations.

On these facts the U.S. and Britain had agreed. Each had tried, the other's methods. Each had found them unfitted to its own aircraft. That was settled, but the total record of air operations raised a far more important question: had large-scale bombing really proved its worth?

Slowdown for Knockout. A substantial section of the Luftwaffe has been pinned in Western Europe. The catalogue of German factories, shipyards, railway centers and power plants smashed by the R.A.F. is impressive. Damage to morale in such often-visited cities as Hamburg, Bremen and Cologne must have been severe. Still Germany fights on.

To disable a factory permanently, bombs must usually score a direct hit on irreplaceable machinery. Otherwise a few weeks' reconstruction may bring a vital plant back into service. Oft-bombed Duesseldorf, after a one month's work stoppage, is again a manufacturing center. The R.A.F's return last week to Cologne, as thoroughly blitzed as any German city, implied acknowledgement either that reconstruction had been effective or that worthwhile targets remained intact. Net conclusion: a general slowdown of Germany's total war effort was as much as could be credited to heavy bombing, and it was probably worth the effort expended. To expect more, from the number of planes allocated to European bombing, was to expect too much.

Round-the-clock preoccupation with Cologne (submarine engines and parts), Wilhelmshaven, St. Nazaire and Brest (U-boat bases) bore out reports that one major Casablanca decision was to interrupt or abandon indiscriminate bombing of industrial targets. The chosen alternative: concentrate on submarine building centers and ports, thus easing the U-boat strain from United Nations supply lines.

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