Fair enough...

Like our discussion about the Italian Campaign, this is one that probably has no conclusion. When the men making the plans are working in uncharted waters the way Doolittle, LeMay, and the rest of the Strategic Bomber Command were (both US and British) from '42 onward, its hard to pin down where mistakes were made that warrant blame... only that mistakes were made.

The cost in brave American and British lives to both (A) destroy targets that the Germans were sure to protect with (B) fighters they couldn't afford to lose is unfathomable and very, very real... but it is almost impossible to make the case that it was WRONG to put them at risk in the first place. I know that neither Jambo or Ryan were saying that... and Jambo's final post was very clear.

Ultimately, the blame lies with the Nazi High Command... they planned the war, they fought the war, and they refused to quit fighting the war until Hitler was dead in May of '45. Sad, but painfully true that tens of millions of lives were lost to the whims of a few dozen crack-pot fascists, and that the very face of the entire world was changed in the effort to remove them from power.