A Slippery Slope in the Sky: Bombing in Principle and in Practice

Abstract

After the first World War, the American war machine had a vision of the future of war: As one fought from the air. Generals imagined armies in the sky dropping bombs on strategic targets until the enemy on the ground capitulated. Military planners felt this scenario was much preferable to the horrible trench warfare of WWI, with its shelling and gassing of soldiers trapped in wet, muddy encampments. In WWII, the decision to embrace this new aerial warfare strategy caused the nascent United States Army Air Forces and the British Royal Air Forces to take center stage. Along with this attitude of enlightened warfare came the idealism of strategic bombing. Non combatants would be spared from the Royal Air Force's wrath from the sky. In June 1940, a directive "specifically laid down that targets had to be identified and aimed at. Indiscriminate bombing was forbidden." Practical issues became apparent quickly, however. Bombing was far too imprecise for attacks on strategic targets to be effective. One report in August 1941 documented that "only about one bomb in five landed within even a five-mile radius of the designated target." In November, "Bomber Command was instructed simply to aim at the center of a city [...] The aiming points are to be built-up areas, not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories." What caused the Royal Air Force's change of heart was what Michael Walzer called a "supreme emergency". That is, "the decision to bomb cities was made at a time when victory was not in sight and the specter of defeat ever present. And it was made when no other decision seemed possible if there was to be any sort of military offensive against Nazi Germany." Somehow, the immense crisis faced by Britain justified foregoing the idealism from the start of the war. It was imminently impractical to abandon "the only force in the West which could take offensive action ... against Germany, our only means of getting at the enemy in a way that would hurt at all." It would have seemed to the island nation fighting the Nazi beast ridiculous to give up the only advantage they had found since the start of the war.