Airpower's Prophecies After Ww2

World War II (WWII) lasted longer and killed more people than the Great War. There was not a fast victory conquered by bombers hitting the heart of the enemy. Airpower’s contribution to the allied victory did not represented the ultimate fulfillment of the predictions of interwar theorists. Even though airpower had an important role, and many lessons and doctrines emerged after this period, the visions of Douhet, Mitchell and others did not materialized. In this paper, I will discuss three of the main prophecies: the miscalculated effectiveness of the strategic bombing, the inability of airpower to replace the ground and sea forces, and the successful use of the airpower in the defense of territory.

Strategic bombing was the main theory

Even if the impact were not accurate, it would also scare the people in the proximity of the target. Consequently, the effectiveness of a mission could be measured by the amount of bombs dropped only. In contrast, Germany assessed the effects of bombing in the Spanish Civil War, where the moral effect could not be verified. In the case of the allies, this conflict was discarded because of a perception skewed by race that the people from different countries reacts in different way. On the one hand, this difference in the metric had the outcome of fruitless bombing raids and a high number of bomber lost in the first years of the war for the allies. On the other hand, for the German airpower attacking in support of the ground force was easier to assess the effectiveness. Only when the Battle of Britain showed that the invasion of the island was difficult, Hitler ordered terror bombing to the cities. Besides, this was more a retaliation act than of a deliberate operation to affect the production of weapons. However, there is one case where moral effect can be considered as the cause of

However, this idea assumed that will always be impossible to detect the airplanes in flight, and then the surprise favors always the attack. Again, this was as a very optimistic perspective at the time to make the prediction, and assumed that the enemy would be unable to oppose to bombing raids. It was obvious for great powers that a technology to detect early air attacks would be necessary. Because of this, Britain and German developed their own versions of radar. In addition, other solutions included the development of signal intelligence to gather information from the radio and the deployment of ground observers to support the detection. With early information, it was possible to keep the fighters in alert and send them to intercept the enemy, using efficiently the resources to protect