"Civilians" benefit more than soldiers from the effects of war. It stands to reason, that beating the hell out of soldiers doesn't do much to resolve whatever problems caused the war in the first place. It's like a boxing match, where you're only allowed to hit your opponent's fists. If you want to win, you go for the head. That's why I find the idea of rules of engagement cynical in the extreme. It just prolongs the misery, resulting in more damage in the end.
Earle
Okay, so it has f*ck-all to do with jeeps. Still...
I think that you may be asking too broad a question. Without having thought too deeply about it and considered all the possibilities, it seems to me that the difference you are looking at is the difference between formal war between governments -- Clausewitz's war as an extension of politics -- and informal guerilla war as a extension of philosophy.
In a formal war you have a physical goal: Defeat the enemy in battle, disarm him, displace the government, occupy and control the territory. At the government level the reason for the war is generally wealth of some sort (territory, resources, prestige, &c.)
In a guerilla war there is no such physical goal: There are no pitched battles to win, no large weapons to confiscate, there is no recognizable governing body to displace, you often already occupy the territory but lack the means to effectively control it. It is a deadly game of Whack-A-Mole. At the top level the reason for the war is that they hate you.
The strategic bombing program in Germany was certainly a disruption and forced the government to divert scant resources away from the battlefield. The "dehousing" program (as the British so quaintly termed it) no doubt was demoralizing, but the industrial bombing program never achieved its strategic goal. At the end of the war, Germany's industrial warfare output was higher than at the start -- what it lacked was the trained manpower to operate its weapons (once it was denied oil fields it lost the fuel to train pilots.)
Strategic bombing of Japan didn't begin until late in 1944, when Japan was already on the ropes, having lost much of the Pacific island territory it had gained. Japan had planned on a "short war" to satisfy its territorial ambitions and never fully mobilized its economy on a war footing. Having incorrectly assumed that the US wouldn't engage them, they were unprepared for what became, for them, a war of attrition. Because of the structure of their military they were unable to replace pilots, because they were denied raw materials they were unable to effectively replace planes and carriers.
And then there was Vietnam. Bombing programs there had tactical effects, but never really a strategic effect and didn't result in a favorable (to western eyes) outcome, in spite of bombing the hell out of them. An USAF navigator that I knew used to point out that his B-52 payload was larger than the fully-laden takeoff-weight of the B-17 that he used to navigate.
So why bomb civilians in a formal war? To demoralize them, get them to stop supporting their government. But to be effective you have to wait until the war is a couple of years old and beginning to stink, otherwise you'll just piss them off -- like the Germans did with the English. In a guerilla war, if you are the conventional force, you'll just piss the population off and get them to support the guerrillas. If you are the guerilla force, you bomb civilians and blame the other guy to get the same effect. If you are both guerilla forces you bomb civilians to terrorize the population and make them pliant.
-- "I defer to your plainly more vivid memories of topless women with whips....r" R. H. Draney recalls AFU in the Good Old Days.
messagenews:GSblh.22673$ snipped-for-privacy@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
Le, I didn't mean to start a long OT thread here, but you oversimplify the effects of air power in all your instances. Dad flew 52 missions in B-17's with the Eighth AF (25 as a Bombardier, 27 as a retrained pilot) so I got an ear full of commentary on this. In Europe, the major effect was not on the manufacturing sources but the tactical destruction of the transportation network. In the Pacific, the same held true except that the transport element was much more critical. The one strategic master stroke was an anemic strike by Dolittle on Tokyo. Small damage to ground targets, but it caused the Imperial Forces to hold a substantial force in place at home that could well have been decisive if deployed as originally planned. Most military analysis of the nuclear strikes conclude that they were far more effective as political events than strictly military.
Don't get me started on Vietnam: any resemblance between our actions there and a military campaign were accidents - the politicians ran that show with little regard for military effectiveness.
Dave, there is a reason why tactical airstrikes are normally managed by specially trained personnel. Even then, I can recall being asked to make dive bomb runs perpendicular to a 600 ft cliff or straffing runs into a blind canyon or hot napalm releases over the heads of friendly troops. It's amazing how many details go into dropping one little bomb .
When will you start paying for WWI?
In article , The Merg wrote: #from one of the Annapolis guys that the enlisted guys "really get #screwed" because of the low pay coupled with the deductions.
I don't know about housing, but I know the Navy does deduct money for the uniforms they issue you.
/herb
Herb Leong proclaimed:
In the Army the initial set of uniforms was free. After that you got a monthly uniform allowance and were responsible for replacing any part of your uniform as required and keeping them serviceable. When you left the service, any piece of your uniform that was missing, altered beyond limits, etc. was deducted from your pay at prices from the quartermaster store.
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