RansS9
Apologises never having been in the military I get easily confused between my tacticals and stratigicals and as I age even my tes**cals !
That was the best line ever!
On a more serious note the tactical bombing entails attacking military targets such as runway, ships, tanks, soldiers
Strategic bombing entails attacking industrial targets, which provide supply of equipment to the front lines, and methods of which transport said goods to the front lines such as factories, oil-refineries, ship-yards, railroads, and airfields (yes there's an overlap with tactical bombing there), other strategic targets would include communications sites.
Disturbingly, many strategic bombing proponents were also whole-heartedly in support of directly attacking civilian populations (such as Giulio Douhet, Hugh Trenchard, Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Curtis LeMay, and so forth) as to demoralize the troops or even to terrorize the population to such an extent that they either: demand the government sue for peace, or rise up and rebel against the government
.
This part often doesn't work too well: It's very easy for a government to get it's people to rally around them when being attacked by an enemy (even easier when that enemy is blowing up innocent people who are incapable of defending themselves); plus most dictators tend to be oppressive, ruthless, power hungry monsters who are only concerned with power (who's people are terrified of them and won't rise up); in the event that they are seriously concerned about defeat, they'll whip out their most horrific weapons even if those weapons would also devastate their own country too (They know that if they lose the war, they'll be either: Killed on sight by the enemy; captured by the enemy, put on a show trial, then executed; or handed over to their own people to do with as they please which will often be gruesome -- if they're going down, they might not care if they take everybody with them) -- by in large this strategy just ends up leaving a whole bunch of devastation behind.
TBM-Legend
Dedicated CAS aircraft a la the A-10 are truly sub-sonic with great manoeuvrability.
Yup -- it's kind of sad that the USAF took so long to realize CAS was actually important. At first they figured "forget about close air support, we won't have to occupy the enemy; with nuclear weapons we'll just annihilate them (Ironically, even after we nuked Japan, we still occupied them)", and figured that if CAS ever was needed they'd just use some surplus WW2 fighters for it -- regardless, training in performing the task effectively was virtually nonexistant and during the Korean War they did such a lousy job that General McArthur actually had the Marines provide CAS instead. After Korea, you'd figure that they'd have learned that CAS was important, yet it would seem they didn't learn a thing. In the 1960's it was recommended to develop some dedicated jet-powered CAS planes -- oh how they howled, kicked, and screamed (The USAF hated CAS because it tied them to the Army), regardless by 1972 the A-10 was flying, and by 1977 it was in service. Still, the USAF barely used them until 1991.
The Harrier of course was a product of the time to be able to operate sans airfield or avec smallish sea platform.
Correct. The USAF and USN actually over the years looked into V/STOL designs. Many of the VTOL designs weren't as well thought out as the Harrier