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?
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.