Re: (was B_5 Aft Arc)Bombers/raiders

On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 05:43 AM, Matt Tope wrote:

> In regard to bombers...nope. Bombers only made fairly effective
raiders
> (specfying a raider as an aircraft or vessel whose purpose it to 
> attack and
> destroy   economic (ie: Merchant vessels) targets rather than 
> naval/military
> units) at sea until the advent of escort carriers. During the whole of

> WW2
> bombers were pretty crap at hitting specefic targets, ie: facilities
in
> production centres, hence area bombing was employed, which whilst 
> great at
> killing people did not achieve much else (German production rates 
> increased
> dramatically during 42-45 even whilst being plastered by the RAF by 
> night
> and the USAF by day). Even the raid by 617 squadron on the dams did 
> little
> long term, or even short term, production harm. With modern weapons 
> its a
> whole different story but then with modern weapons wars are so quick 
> that
> production during wartime is not quite the key factor it was 60 years 
> ago.

Interesting!  I had heard some large missions weren't nearly as 
effective as first thought, but I hadn't realized the effectiveness was 
so much less (so much for the documentaries I've seen).  :)  I'll have 
to dig up some time and investigate.

Kevin Walker