Harris wins

What if Harris had not lost the argument that his planes could bomb railways, he said they couldn't and was proven wrong, if he had won the argument the french transport network may well not have been destroyed and still be intact for d-day (what does that mean anyway? does the d stand for something?) What effect would this have had?

Michael said:

(what does that mean anyway? does the d stand for something?)

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I heard somewhere that the "D" was used kind of like "x" and "y" in algebra; "D" day meant whatever day the allies landed their invasion force. "D" = the date of invasion.

D day as planning aid.

You had to plan for the sequencing of cargo. So you had D Day minus one month, or week, or day, or hour, or plus one hour, or day, or week, etc. Sort of like T minus five and counting for launching a rocket, with fueling saved for last. If the day changes you don't have to worry about changing all the dates. Just change one date and the others change automatically as far as planning is concerned.
The attack aircraft pretty much shut down the railroads anyway. Bombers aren't worth shit for point targets. Even Dresden had the railroads running in four days.

wkwillis said:

You had to plan for the sequencing of cargo. So you had D Day minus one month, or week, or day, or hour, or plus one hour, or day, or week, etc. Sort of like T minus five and counting for launching a rocket, with fueling saved for last. If the day changes you don't have to worry about changing all the dates. Just change one date and the others change automatically as far as planning is concerned.

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Same as H hour indicates hour of start.

Michael said:

What if Harris had not lost the argument that his planes could bomb railways, he said they couldn't and was proven wrong, if he had won the argument the french transport network may well not have been destroyed and still be intact for d-day (...) What effect would this have had?

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The Germans could have reinforced faster and more heavily, but in the end I don't think the situation would have changed much. The breakthroughs might have happened a few days later, Caen might have held for another week and a few thousands more would die in Normandy, but nothing really major.

I've read somewhere that the Allies should have concentrated their bombing effert on infrastructure from the beginning, not wasting as much time on bombing cities and factories. What really mattered to the Germans were rails, rivers and power-plants. Bomb them and it's pretty much over for an industrialized nation.

It's actually rather strange, I think, that every time one reads about the bombing campaign over Germany during the war each and every writer has his own view of what was wrong and what could have been done better. Seen in retro-spective it does seem like there were made a lot of wrong calls. Why bomb cities and industrial complexes at all, where the casualties would be great (on both sides), when targets like power-plants, rail-links, dock-yards and what not where there, just waiting to be bombed into oblivion?

Likewise I always wondered why the rails leading to the KZ-camp wasn't bombed either...

Best regards!

- Mr.Bluenote.