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1. Strategic Bombing if Possible, but Possibly not Strategic Bombing: an examination of ends, ways, and means and the use of strategic airpower during the Great War

Author:
Dr. Randall Wakelam
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This paper is an offshoot of research conducted in preparation for the University of Calgary History conference of 2014 focussing on new perspectives of the Great War. My primary intent in that research was to explore the notion that air services were, using the recent educational concept of the Learning Organization, in fact precursors of this concept within a military context. One of the conclusions I came to is that this learning was not just happening within the air services but took place even at the national, or grand strategic, level where decisions had to be made both about how to use this new means of warfare and about the allocation of resources while continuing to support the needs of the army and navy. The former had to do with strategic bombing of enemy targets and the balance of this paper looks at how the concepts and practice of strategic bombing evolved in France, Germany and Britain.
Topic:
Military Strategy, World War I, and Air Force
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, France, and Germany

2. Bomber Harris and Precision Bombing – No Oxymoron Here

Author:
Dr. Randall Wakelam
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Criticisms as to the efficacy or lack thereof of the RAF's strategic bombing campaign against Germany have been fuelled in Canada in recent years first by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's docudrama miniseries, The Valour and the Horror, in the mid 1990s and more recently by a debate over the wording of the Bomber Command panel in the new Canadian War Museum. The essence of these debates centres on the morality of Sir Arthur Harris's apparently bloody-minded city busting tactics compared to the US Army Air Forces' ethical and restrained precision bombing of military and strategic target systems.
Political Geography:
Germany