FIGHTING THE LAST WAR : The Wonders of Modern Technology Were Above; Victory Was on the Ground
The one certain thing about war, as a wealth of experience avows, is its uncertainty. Yet there are some things we can know. One is the history that bears on the military venture in the Persian Gulf. It tells of a terrible tendency to exaggerate the role of technology in war, and especially in its extreme manifestation, which is air power.
In the closing months of World War II, I became a director of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. It was established on the instruction of Franklin D. Roosevelt through the secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson. Much had been made during the war of the achievements of the great bombing raids on German, Italian and Japanese targets. All or nearly all that was known, however, was from photographic and visual observations from the sky. There was no tendency to understate accomplishment.
I was in charge of, perhaps, the most diversely talented group of economists and statisticians ever assembled for a single task. Among them were Nicholas (later Lord) Kaldor, the noted Hungarian-British economist; E. F. Schumacher, who later gave “Small is Beautiful” to the world, and Paul Baran, one of the leading Marxist scholars of his time. George W. Ball, later undersecretary of state and ambassador to the United Nations, and Paul H. Nitze, longtime arms-control authority and negotiator, were colleagues in charge of other parts of the enterprise.
My assignment and that of my economists was to ascertain from the plentiful surviving records what the air attacks on German industry, cities and transportation had, in fact, accomplished. Did they arrest industrial production, notably that of weapons and munitions? Did they paralyze transportation? Did they, in consequence, win the war or substantially advance the day of victory?
Alas, they did not. No great wartime enterprise could, in fact, have been more disappointing, leading to sad moments of reflection on the lives lost in the effort. The physical destruction was, indeed, frightful. But Germany’s industrial production--weapons and munitions, in particular--continued to increase, with no visible halt until nearly the end of the war, when ground forces and their more immediate tactical air support had victory substantially in hand.
Sometimes, the bombing actually increased production. In late February, 1943, with good intelligence, 90% of all German fighter-aircraft plants were attacked; 75% were destroyed. January production had been 1,525 planes; after the raids, it was 2,166 in March. The Germans had rallied to the task of restoring production with more than compensating effect; similarly, if less dramatically, the repair and recovery in transportation and other industry. Temporary shortfalls were covered by diversion from civilian use.
There was much reference in World War II to our technological excellence in the air--to precision bombing and the greatly publicized Norden bombsight that made it possible. In practice, precision bombing was precise only within the range of around a quarter of a mile.
Success, on occasion, was the child of unfavoring circumstance imaginatively adjusted to a better result. A major on our staff had been an intelligence officer with the U.S. 15th Air Force in Italy, and he told me one day of the discovery of a great German supply dump far behind enemy lines. Masses of rectangular boxes. The bombers were unleashed. A couple of raids later it was learned that the presumed boxes of supplies were great blocks of marble from the quarries of Carrara. I remember asking him the obvious question: “What happened? Was there a severe rebuke?”
“Certainly not,” he said, “Marble became a strategic commodity.”
World War II was won not by the strategic air forces. Nor was it appreciably shortened thereby. It was won by ground troops suffering all the misery of ground war and taking heavy casualties as they moved across France and Germany, up through Italy and with the greatest casualties of all across the Russian plain.
Japan was defeated by island-to-island fighting northward across the Pacific. The bombing of Japanese cities wrought terrible human and physical destruction. Japanese factories were more vulnerable than Germany’s. Production was less rapidly restored. But again the bombing did not shorten the war. The wonders of modern technology were in the air. Victory was on the islands and on the distant sea. And the story does not end.
So it was a few years later in Korea, where the United States, on behalf of U.N. forces, had total command of the air and once even thought of isolating North Korea by eliminating the bridges over the Yalu. The war was brought to its eventual stalemate by the ground forces.
Similarly in Vietnam, where the technical excellence in the air was especially celebrated. The great B-52 would go far to ensure victory below; a clearing of the jungle foliage would greatly help. A heavier weight of bombs was dropped than in all of World War II. Vietnam was also fought (and lost) on the ground.
In more recent times, in Libya, Grenada and Panama, there were aerial exploits reflecting the highest in technical achievement. They either missed their targets or, sadly, as in Grenada, damaged a hospital by mistake.
The history continues. The first days of the Persian Gulf War were marked by a wave of optimism. A new and decisive range of technological wonders was being brought to bear. Missile-launching sites, enemy airfields and aircraft communications and command posts were all being destroyed or had been destroyed. The war, as a result, would quickly be over. Casualties would be small. Politicians and military men spoke of a few days; technology had made war a clean, ascetic event, except perhaps for those under the bombs.
Three weeks later, the mood has changed. That we have command of the skies is not seriously in doubt; that this will win the war is now subject to the gravest doubts. President Bush, Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others warn that ground action, as before, will be necessary. Ground troops operating against strong defenses will have to take their losses. The losses, as we all know, will not be evenly distributed across the American social scene.
The past promise of aerial warfare and weapons technology, as well as the human cost of a ground war against the battle-hardened forces of Iraq, were much on my mind when I testified before Congress and urged that sanctions and the oil embargo be allowed their full effect. I still hope that ground war may be long postponed.
And, perhaps, this war is different--perhaps technology has now made that difference. But the ultimate penalty, if it can be avoided, should not be imposed on those whose fate is to fight in the tanks and on the sand.
