"Awesome & Frightful"

When the Army Air Forces suggested (and Franklin Roosevelt ordered) a survey to determine once and for all how effective air power had been against Germany, the U.S. was still at war. Laymen (not airmen) were put in charge. Prudential Insurance's president, 68-year-old Franklin D'Olier, was made chairman. The board (eleven men) with 1,150 civilian employes, Army officers and enlisted men, based in London, went to work.

The result was a 200-volume library which will be, for a long time to come, the definitive source on man's inhumanity to man, pre-atomic style. This week the War Department released a capsule summary of the report.

The Verdict. Allied air power, the board found, brought German economy to "virtual collapse." It made possible the success of the Normandy invasion. It left an imprint on the German nation which "will be lasting."

Allied bombers destroyed or badly damaged 3,600,000 German dwelling units, made 7,500,000 people homeless, killed some 300,000 and wounded 780,000. The price the Allies paid: 79,265 U.S. and 79,281 British airmen dead; more than 18,000 U.S. and 22,000 British planes destroyed.

The biggest jolt to German morale (which was only kept from going to pieces by the Nazis' iron fist) was delivered by the R.A.F. in three "city attacks" on Hamburg in the summer of 1943. There was "some indication . . . that Hitler thought that further attacks of similar weight might force Germany out of the war."

City attacks "left the German people with a solid lesson in the disadvantages of war" and grievously hurt the German economy, but it was the campaign against specific industries which brought the temple down. The most effective attacks were the U.S. assaults against synthetic oil plants, which the Germans viewed as catastrophic and which profoundly affected synthetic rubber production, synthetic nitrogen and methanol (necessary for explosives). Attacks on railways and waterways were the decisive blow.

Errors in Strategy. Allied air strategists made mistakes, according to the D'Olier board. One was the attempt to penetrate the depths of Germany with unescorted bombers, the costliest example of which was the Oct. 14, 1943 raid on the Schweinfurt ballbearing plants. General Henry Arnold claimed at the time that the results were worth the cost (60 heavy bombers destroyed, many damaged beyond repair), but the survey found "no evidence that the attacks on the ballbearing industry had any measurable effect on essential war production."

Another error was the decision not to go after German electric power, believed too highly developed to knock out. Destruction of 95 plants of 50,000 kw. capacity could have knocked out 50% of the country's generating capacity.

Way to Win a War. Not only for the attacker, but for those likely to be attacked there were also lessons to be drawn, which could be applied to the future. Example: "Even a first class military power--rugged and resilient as Germany was--cannot live long under full-scale and free exploitation of air weapons over the heart of its territory." The Germans put some industries underground. They built concrete shelters able to withstand direct hits. One shelter in Hamburg, named the "Holy Ghost," housed 60,000 people. But all such efforts were in vain.

The great lesson, said the board: "The best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring. . . . The combination of the atomic bomb with remote-control projectiles of ocean-spanning range stands as a possibility which is awesome and frightful to contemplate."

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