Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
COL Gentile, can you be more specific about this? I'm not a huge student of the air war in the Pacific, but I find it hard to characterize any change in '45 as constituting anything near the strategic shift that occurred with the embracing of the Sunni tribal/insurgent alliance, which has truly altered the dynamics on the ground. Japan's naval power had already been gutted by then and it had no hope of strategic victory on any level.
Hey Tequila:

Sure, a good book to read on American strategic bombing in the Pacific in World War II is Con Crane's classic "Bombs, Cities and Civilians." Crane highlights the operational shift that LeMay brought about. Prior to his taking command the Army Air Forces had stuck with their method of daylight, high-altitude precision bombing that had worked pretty well in the European theater. MG Haywood Hansell had tried in late 44 and early 45 to apply that same method against the Japanese home islands. For many reasons and conditions it was not having the desired effect. LeMay enters the picture and takes command, assesses the situation, and decides to change the operational method from high altitude precision bombing to low level fire bombing of Japanese cities. This was not an easy decision for LeMay to make; to so quickly discard an operational method that the army air force had based its existence on; it was dangerous institutionally for the airmen and tactically for the airmen flying the missions. But LeMay made it and at least operationally in terms of effects on Japanese war production it worked. I am leaving aside here many issues of course. So it is in this regard that I make the comparison to General Patraeus and his bold decision to arm and co-opt our former enemy the non-alqueda sunni insurgent. It is the decision and vision of the operational commander in which I make this comparison albeit tempered with the qualification that we still do not have the temporal distance and wisdom of history on our side for the latter.

Hope this clarifies.

gian