The AAF’s biggest blunder in relation to strategic bombing was its failure to get long-range fighters as early as possible. They were desirable not only for escorting the bombers, but for other purposes. The length of amphibious jumps behind the enemy front in the South Pacific and the Mediterranean was determined by the maximum range at which land-based fighters could cover a landing.
The failure to obtain long-range fighters can be broken down into a number of lesser mistakes. First, and best known, was the AAF’s disinterest in the P-51 Mustang, which could have been in action six months or more earlier. But two less well known blunders contributed to the predicament of the Eighth Air Force in 1943. First was the failure to modify the P-38 so it would be better suited to high-altitude combat in Europe, and second, and more important, was the Air Material Command’s sluggishness in developing drop-tanks.
The AAF’s other major blunder was its poor target selection during 1943 and its obsession with the intermediate objective of beating the German air force by directly attacking aircraft production. The aircraft and ball bearings industries were just not vulnerable to attack. But there were several small target systems, manufacturing vital items, that would have been better choices for attack, and the Eighth Air Force’s small bomber force could have smashed them, at least if it had fighter escort to penetrate deep into Germany.
Synthetic rubber was made in just four plants, one small, and there were stocks of rubber for only a few months. As the attack on Huls in 1943 showed, these plants were vulnerable. Of Germany’s explosives and ammunition, 70 percent was made in just seven plants, which proved very vulnerable when hit late in the war. Rebuilding an explosives plant would have taken six to nine months even in the best conditions. Nitrogen production, vital for explosives and fertilizers, was concentrated in a few plants; the two biggest plants produced nearly half of Germany’s nitrogen, and ten plants made 80 percent of the country’s requirements. A reduction of 70-80 percent in nitrogen production would have led to critical shortages of ammunition within nine months to a year. Aluminum production was concentrated in fourteen plants; as the 1943 attack on the plant at Heroya showed, they too were vulnerable. The constituents of ethyl fluid (ethylene dibromide and tetraethyl lead), a vital additive for aviation gasoline, were made in just three plants in Germany and one in France, and attacks on these plants, if successful, would have crippled the Luftwaffe in a short time.
Some of these target were known at the time, although others were only fully disclosed by the Strategic Bombing Survey after the war. Rubber and light metals were recommended targets at the time, and were only eclipsed by what was wrongly thought to be the better target of ball bearings. American analysts knew that nitrogen was important but nevertheless underrated it and believed the Germans’ productive capacity greater than it was. Explosives and ammunition plants were overlooked for a long time, although it should have been obvious that their very nature made them wonderful targets. Some experts suggested attacking the production of ethyl fluid as early as 1942, but unfortunately the location of the biggest German tetraethyl lead plant was unknown until 1944. In the other cases noted above, it was not vital data that was missing but correct interpretation of information that was available.*®
Most of the target systems discussed above were scattered throughout Germany and could not have been smashed without the fighter escort that should have been available, but was not. Synthetic rubber production was a partial exception; it was located largely in western Germany, although one major plant was far to the east at Schkopau.
But two target systems were near England and might have been identified at the time. The three lubricating-oil refineries at Hamburg could have been struck no later than the AAF attack on that city in July 1943. Had the Allies correctly understood the inland waterway system, they could have blocked traffic on the Rhine and the northwest German canals with a few attacks as early as late 1943, overburdening the rail system and slowing freight movement. It was want of correct analyses, not lack of information, that prevented the Allies from recognizing these targets. Had the AAF leaders recognized the impractical nature of deep penetrations and tailored their operations to the limits of the available fighter cover, a review of targets in the accessible area of Germany might have disclosed what was already in their grasp.
There was nothing secret about the inland waterway system, and the crude-oil refineries were well known to foreigners. Many were owned by Western companies and had depended on overseas imports before the war. The Allies cannot be blamed for not knowing, for instance, the extent of German ball bearings stocks (of which the Germans themselves were ignorant), but their failure to understand other aspects of the German economy is hard to understand. Prewar Nazi Germany was not sealed off from the rest of the world by anything resembling the Iron Curtain, and it traded heavily with the Western democracies. Even during the war it was open to Swedish, Swiss, and other neutrals. The allied feats in intelligence during World War II have been well publicized, but the success in code breaking was not paralleled in economic intelligence.
TTie mistaken selection of targets in 1943 was important. Had the Allies chosen more wisely, successful American attacks on one or more of the small target systems mentioned above (and RAF attacks on tank components production at Friedrichshafen) would not have caused the instant collapse of Germany. The Germans were more formidable than that. They probably would have rebuilt rubber plants underground, or built dispersed lubricating-oil refineries in eastern Europe, or in some other way have recovered from these attacks, eventually— as they could not get around the destruction of the whole oil industry or transpor-ration system. But in 1943 almost anything that seriously hurt war production or halted a vital item for months would have made it practically impossible for the Germans to replace the equipment and supplies lost in the defeats of the summer of 1944. The war could not have been prolonged into 1945.
The last price exacted by the mistakes of the combined bomber offensive plan was simply the persistence in it through the early months of 1944. Spaatz and Portal did not realize that the Luftwaffe could be defeated by shifting the attack from aircraft plants to oil production, as the Combined Chiefs of Staff suggested at the time. That, too, helped prolong the war.
World History
