High-Altitude Daylight Precision Bombardment

In this chapter the operational requirements for conducting high-altitude daylight precision bombing are examined in “Practical Bombing Probabilities.” In this lecture, given at the conclusion of the ACTS Bombardment Course, Laurence Kuter examines the lessons learned from the bombing probability problems assigned during class. In doing so he reviews the detailed planning required to determine the number of bombers and bombs to assign to a target in order to be reasonably confident of success. The key factors that determine the likelihood of hitting the target are the number of aircraft flown/bombs dropped, the altitude of weapons delivery, and the accuracy of the bombsight. Kuter argues that improvement in bombsight accuracy is where the greatest gains in accuracy can be achieved.

The Bomber Always Gets Through

In this chapter, to support the assertion that air power is inherently offensive, Kenneth Walker, in “Driving Home the Bombardment Attack,” argues that in the air, offense dominates defense, and a well-armed and well-flown massed bomber formation can defend against any air-to-air attack. In “Tactical Offense and Tactical Defense,” Frederick Hopkins takes an inductive approach to the question of whether the bomber will always get through. In World War I, only when German defenders concentrated their fighters to British bombers at a ratio of 1.5 to 1 did British attrition rates become too great for sustained operations. Hopkins considers it unlikely such ratios would be achieved in the future given the defender’s dilemma of having to defend everywhere yet also mass forces against an offensive force that could choose the time and location of attack.

Introduction

This introduction describes the strategic bombing mission of the US Army Air Forces’ Eighth Air Force against the Fock-Wulfe plant at Bremen, Germany, on April 17, 1943, assessing the use of high-altitude daylight precision bombing,. The introduction then reviews American strategic bombing theory from its origins in World War I to the thinking of three great interwar air power theorists―the Italian Giulio Douhet, the Briton Hugh Trenchard, and the American Billy Mitchell―to the founding of the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), the development of the Norden bombsight and B-17 bomber, and the genesis of HADPB theory at the Air Corps Tactical School.