Okay, so most people on this site agree that things like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were immoral because they deliberately targeted civilians and used an “ends justify the means” mentality. My question is would the strategic bombings of factories during WWII also count as immoral or would they be considered acceptable?
Keep in mind I’m not talking about bombing civilian houses, just factories that make weapons/steel/fuel for the enemy. Obviously these factories would have civilians in them, but the desired effect is to destroy the factories, not kill the civilians, and the collateral damage would be kept to a minimum. Nevertheless, civilians would die in the bombings. Would it be moral or immoral?
A little background if I may. The German used fake outer walls on most of their factories. That way, if a bomb fell close enough, depending on its size (500 lb, 1,000 lb, 2,000 lb), the concussion and shrapnel from the blast would be taken mostly or partly by the fake outer wall. The problem was, all bombs were gravity bombs. That means they just fell out of the plane to earth. The person aiming the bombs, the Bombardier, had to take into account altitude, wind direction, and the speed of the aircraft. If the bombs were falling from 30,000 feet (or about 5 miles up to avoid enemy anti-aircraft guns), the distance by which the bombs could hit or miss was called “Circular Error Probable.” Early in the war, bombs missed their targets by 2 miles on average. As the war progressed, the CEP was reduced to 1,000 yards or about three quarters of a mile. So yes, a large bomb could not hit its target and hit something else too often. The Germans would even pile debris on the roofs of factory buildings so that aircraft that were later sent to photograph the area to determine how much of the target was destroyed would return photos that showed the target was moderately to severely damaged when, in fact, it was hardly damaged at all and returned to full production the following day.
The other thing to consider was as the war progressed, the Germans began to disperse their factories aboveground to remote locations and buildings that looked residential, and they also went underground. Very large bombs were dropped to get at underground installations. Camouflaged, one-story buildings were also used in wooded areas.
It would be appropriate to break the target areas down into three categories: cities, towns and shops located on farmland. The potential for civilian casualties generally dropped as bombers went after targets further away from cities. But, take D-Day for example. Due to unexpected intermittent cloud cover, the bombers missed their target area by two miles and “the result was a lot of dead French cows.” And one more thing. Even on clear days, and depending on the direction of the wind, containers containing substances that would produce smoke were lit on the ground to obscure the target, making it more difficult to bomb it accurately.
Except in those cases where bombers or fighter-bombers flew a lot lower, and usually got shot down in greater numbers, the only hope for civilians was bomb shelters once the warning had been issued.
I don’t have the number of civilian casualties due to bombing at hand.
To answer your question, yes, it was moral to bomb factories that produced weapons, including steel mills, trains that carried munitions and oil refineries and storage facilities, with the latter sometimes being protected by an outer concrete blast wall around each storage tank.
The stated goal was to deprive the enemy of the weapons and fuel he needed to keep fighting, shortening the war.
Ed
