[drgondog]

Tony - those are well reasoned arguments but lend themselves to post mortems. The clear message is that Harris, like Spaatz had enormous influence for their points of views and the political clout to advance their theories despite heavy losses.

There is no doubt that Transportation was a critical strategic resource, as well as Power, as well as the Petro/Chem industry.

The challenge is that each thesis had to have enough analytics behind them that the argument could a.) be easily grasped and b.) easily presented to Churchill and FDR.. otherwise they depend on the senior officers in charge to make the decisions and be accountable for the results.

To the last point, it was only possible AFTER the war to parse through the German production and logistics and perspectives to gain true insight to the relevance and resources which "could" have been wiser and better choices. Facts were hard to come by during the day to day parsing of bombing results.