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Old 18th November 2010, 13:06
Laurent Rizzotti Laurent Rizzotti is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Paris, France
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Laurent Rizzotti will become famous soon enough
Re: The momentous cost of Bomber Command.

Hi,

To be complete, you have to estimate the cost of BC and fighting against BC for Germans:
_ direct military losses (at least 3000 NJG aircraft lost, and 3000 aircrew killed, thousand more of soldiers killed in strategic raids).
_ military resources used against BC (thousand of guns, millions of shells, etc...)
_ manpower hours lost, or used to repair railyards/factories hit by raids.
_ production lost during the dispersion of factories.

I agree that until the summer of 1943, Bomber Command was not able to really hit hard Germany economy, but starting from there, it was able to devastate cities (starting with Hamburg) on an increasing rate. I guess that the devastation of Hamburg had a net impact on German war production.
But before 1943, having thousand more tanks will be of little use for Britain too.