Originally Posted by
tdracer
Things are always clearer with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. There is considerable evidence that the strategic bombing campaign was not an efficient use of resources - but few knew or even suspected that during the war.
Revisionist history is just that - applying modern standard to historical events gives a distorted view of what happened and why. Similar revisionist history has been applied to the US dropping the A-bombs on Japan ('Japan wasn't a threat, they were about to surrender anyway, etc.'). Given that my dad was training for the invasion of Japan when the dropped the bombs - he was going to be a platoon leader on the second wave of the initial landings and had been told to expect 80% casualties - I remain unconvinced that we didn't need to drop the bombs. In fact a pretty good argument can be made that dropping the bombs and preventing the need for an invasion of the mainland saved move lives - both Japanese and Americans - than any single act in history.
Precisely, to many fall into a hindsight trap failing to understand the wing of bombers back then, is the single F-15E of today. You can't go back and do-over that war with todays tech. We have F-15Es because we learned from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm. And because of F-15Es and the like, you don't need the Nukes of today, we hope.