Okay, here's the problem. Now, my background is journalism. I spent 35 years in news, shooting it, writing it, editing, producing and teaching it. This is why I have a problem with this and regardless of what people think of journalists, I make no apologies for it. I have yet to see anything that presents Arnold's side of the story and very little that presents anyone else's. I've seen some pretty outlandish comments from some authors, such as this from Vlaun:
"To COA members, whose organization's survival was by then all but assured for the remainder of the war, securing support for their research was a matter of pride. An opportunity [...] to attack grinding-wheel plants would also reinforce the agenda [...] to seek out catastrophic raids; if successful, quick victory would be attributed to the COA's collective genius along with [General] Arnold's omniscient view from Washington. The committee found the expert they sought, and he provided the opinion they expected. Unfortunately, as with ball bearings, the analysts' push to attack grinding wheels would perpetuate the tendency in Washington to overestimate the bomber's ability to attack such targets ant to underestimate the Germans' ability to cope." ("Selling Schweinfurt: Targeting Assessment, and Marketing in the Air Campaign Against Germany", Maxwell AFB, 2017, p.473)
Now, to be fair, this was quoted by someone else for whom I usually have pretty high regard but with no clear attempt to be even remotely even handed, I simply refuse to accept it. Certainly not at face value. This is why I'm asking these questions: not because I'm trying to rehabilitate Arnold's reputation but because that is no way to write history. Did anyone ever ask Arnold about these things? The only reports of him commenting on the 1943 missions over Germany relate to the commanders not being aggressive enough. Okay, what else did he say?
I don't believe Vlaun at face value because he has given me no reason to believe him. He's very confident about his incredibly partisan claim and that's all.
Where did this come from? The reason I ask is that I'm looking for a reasonably brief volume on the Eighth's campaign, from say 17 August, 1942 to the end of the war. I'm not looking for a blow-by-blow, mission-by-mission account. I already have a couple of books like that. I'm looking for something that discusses the strategy. My earlier comments should give you some idea of what I'm looking for.
In the meantime though, what you have said sounds like what I suspected: that the right arm didn't know what the left arm was doing. But that's true of any organisation and doesn't prove any malfeasance, incompetence, or agenda.
I'm trying to be polite here and I'd appreciate the same in return, thanks.
If you have a reference, I'd appreciate you simply pointing me to a reliable one, preferably in print because clearly, I have never seen this, otherwise I would not have asked. I'm not a big fan of having to wade through endless and mind-numbing online sources to find out which are good and which are pulp. As I said earlier, my copy of Bill's book arrived only yesterday and I have not had much of a chance to flip through it.
Nothing I have seen suggests that the ferry tank could get anywhere near operational height.
Then I am calling this claim of "doctrine" into question.
When I see a quote or two from a senior USAAF commander - like Arnold - that says something like, "We have to keep going with this to prove that our bomber theory works and we will do that by bombing targets and never mind the casualties as long as we are proven right", then I'll believe it's doctrine. But the silence is deafening. All the people involved have been presented as "faceless men". Un-personed. What's also deafening is the noise made by people like Vlaun and Greg, who can speak so confidently about this without presenting any sort of balance. The idea that "doctrine" was prioritised over operational or mission objectives is so incredible to me that they might as well be accused of spreading communism. That's how it comes across.
I'm afraid that the list that went with this quote really didn't tell me anything, other than um... a list of targets and tonnages dropped.
I'm not here - despite what it may seem - to have an argument. I'm here to attempt to unearth something approaching a fair representation of what happened. It seems to me that the mainstream boilerplate picture of this is incredibly one-sided. I outlined my reasons and my concerns in the first part of this post.
My reasons for believing that the P-47 drop tanks issue is just noise remain in tact. I think too many people have made too many assumptions of what might have been - or worse, what "would have happened", all without much understanding of what did happen. I'm trying to find out the latter, rather than accepting a technical argument as a substitute for a historical one. Many people have done this.
