So do you avoid factories, rail yards and other vital infrastructure if there happens to be homes nearby (which was quite common) and what if the factory had shifts on the clock, plan only for holidays when workers would be gone?
I fully recognize that what the Americans today call "Collateral damage" is inevitable, however, as I pointed out upthread, there is a big difference between killing a few hundred civilians in a strike on a railyard or a factory vs dropping blockbuster bombs to blow the roofs off of entire city blocks followed by incendiary cannisters which set the air on fire, killing tens of thousands of civilians in a single night. I just don't see how the latter really helps the war effort very much, if at all.
The basic point of warfare is to defeat your enemy.
Warfare has always, going back to pre-history, included significant degrees of moderation. We tend to be aware of the atrocities but forget or gloss over the steps taken the ameliorate the savagery of war. 600 years ago at the Battle of Grunwald, after a bitter series of wars with the (mostly) German Teutonic Order, the Poles and Lithuanians won a great victory, smashing their army. In the aftermath of that event,
King Jogaila of Poland had 14,000 prisoners. He could have killed them all, like the English did their French prisoners after Agincourt 5 years later, and perhaps saved himself further headaches. He could have very easily sold them to the Mongols or Ottomans into a life of permanent slavery.
Instead he 'paroled' them, after making each one swear an oath not to go to war against Poland (knowing full well it was an oath many of them would later break). Later on, Germans from several cities in Prussia rebelled against the permanently belligerant Teutonic Order and joined with Poland instead, under much better terms. Over the years, even though they continued to fight with them, the Poles even found that they needed the Teutonic Knights as allies against the Mongols or the Muscovites. So the decision after Grunwald paid dividends.
Even during WW2, we had rules in place between some of the combatants. If a British or American airman was captured by the Germans, or a German airman by the British, some of them were killed of course, but most were put into POW camps, were they were fed and kept out of the elements and taken care of, more or less, albeit not in any luxury or comfort. Many many of them, something like 90,000 Americans alone. Again, they could have been killed, but then the other side would have done the same thing. So what is the point? Did Japan benefit by their much harsher policies toward POW's? I would say no. Did the Germans benefit, ultimately, from their harsh, cruel policies against the Soviets? Obviously they didn't.
I think the pre-war theories of Douhet etc. which influenced the terror bombing were similarly crazy and bloody minded mistakes, to put it frankly. I can understand their logic - they were hoping through increased violence to avoid the grinding horrors of the extended industrial stalemate of WWI, but as Dan Carlin put it, in their logic they were insane. And unfortunately I think there are echoes of their thinking still around.
We live in an age where "smart" munitions can pinpoint the ventilation duct in a bunker and spare collateral damage, but 80 years ago, heavy bombing was the solution.
I don't believe that is true, but even if you accept that notion, they still debated during the war between the degrees and nature of heavy bombing. At night with incendiaries or during the day with (not very effective) gyrostabilized bomb sights. Ultimately the latter proved to be the more effective policy if only because the Americans were eventually able to escort their bombers with long range fighters.
P-47s and Mosquitoes provided a valuable service during the war, but Germany and Japan refused to see the writing on the wall and heavy bombing was the only way to bring the war to an end.
I don't think we actually know that. I don't for example think there was any chance that Germany was going to be able to stop the Red Army after say, 1944, probably much earlier than that.
As sad as it is that German and Japanese civilians perished, their numbers pale in comparison to the Russian and Chinese lives taken during those two nation's days of conquest.
As I said above, I don't think the atrocities by the Axis forces did them any favors. And I think while the Italians were not exactly gentle, their somewhat lesser reputation for gratuitous cruelty probably saved some of their lives.