Effectiveness of targeting power plants

perseus

perseus

Active member
Any thoughts on this claim. I've always wondered why both sides didn't focus on power plants or at least areas of cities with power plants far more. Would specialist squadrons equipped with short wave radar have been suitable?

Germany’s power grid was much more vulnerable than realized. One estimate is that if just 1% of the bombs dropped on German industry had instead been dropped on power plants, German industry would have collapsed.
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http://www.world-war-2.info/facts/

Every time something like this comes up, a conspiracy theory emerges in my head. Did the Western Allies really want to destroy Germany due to Russia being the chief beneficiary before D day?
 
perseus said:
Any thoughts on this claim. I've always wondered why both sides didn't focus on power plants or at least areas of cities with power plants far more. Would specialist squadrons equipped with short wave radar have been suitable?



http://www.world-war-2.info/facts/

Every time something like this comes up, a conspiracy theory emerges in my head. Did the Western Allies really want to destroy Germany due to Russia being the chief beneficiary before D day?
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I thought that was the idea of the Dambusters raid, not only to cause damage by flooding but also cutting off water used in the manufacture of steel.
 
What and do you think the Japanese conspired to lose in the Pacifc by not knocking out the US Navy's fuel depot in the Hawaiian islands?
 
the_13th_redneck said:
What and do you think the Japanese conspired to lose in the Pacifc by not knocking out the US Navy's fuel depot in the Hawaiian islands?
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Are you really that stupid? You can't even read the title of the topic?

Effectiveness of targeting power plants.

The US Navy's fuel depot was to supply fuel for the fleet and was a legitimate military target.

As for the topic:

Destroying infrastructure for the civilian population was nominally not a high priority target.
It is like saying why didn't they bomb every bridge. The military may have wanted them available for future use.

Hitting the factories even with the civilian workers had a higher military value.
 
The military may have wanted them available for future use.
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I can see this after D-day but in 1943 when Britain was desperate to make a significant impact and pressure from Russia to do something it seems like a good idea. Of course one could say the same about heavy industry, not destroying it would make Germany pay for itself. Surely it is easier to build a rebuild a power plant than all the industry it feeds, although perhaps this might answer my question!

The Dambusters raid I suppose was an exception to the rule, a consequence of pressure from an inventor (Barnes Wallis) with a reputation in the aircraft industry, and not wholeheartedly supported by Bomber Harris when first confronted with it.
 
power generation on the scale we have today is relatively new; it actually required the widespread destruction of World War 2 to bring it about. Krupp, from memory, had its own supplies on site and i would imagine that a lot of the really big complexes would be the same- a lot of electricity gets lost, even now, simply via the distribution process so it might prove more economical for large plants to have their own supply. Several of the smelting plants in Australia operate their own electricity supply as a by-product of the smelting process- though i don't know how common that might have been in 1940.
plus it would be fair to say that the plants of the 1940's were far less automated than they are today so the demand for electricity was a lot less.
 
I read somewhere about a German plan to bomb the power plants supplying the Aluminum plants in Washington State, with the hopes that cooling metal would ruin production for an extended time.
 
Chukpike said:
Are you really that stupid? You can't even read the title of the topic?
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perseus said:
Every time something like this comes up, a conspiracy theory emerges in my head. Did the Western Allies really want to destroy Germany due to Russia being the chief beneficiary before D day?
Click to expand...


That is what I was replying to, dumbass.

Let me walk you through it since you obviously need help.

Step 1: Perseus claimed that the German power network was more vulnerable than thought.
Step 2: Targetting the power network instead of the power plants may have been far more effective in disrupting the German war industry.
Step 3: Therefore, he suspects a conspiracy that this might have been deliberate.
Step 4: I suggest that it may not have been because the Japanese also had a juicy target in the form of the US Navy's oil supply.
Step 5: (A picture of an oil storage tank)
news_tank280.jpg

Step 6: And destroying these fuel tanks could have crippled the US Navy even further than simply taking out the warships. And if they could take out the warships, odds are that hitting these fuel tanks couldn't have been that much more difficult.
Step 7: Therefore the Allies not successfully hitting most of Germany's power grids may have had another explanation other than it was part of a conspiracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
The part on "possible third wave" explains how a Japanese chance to target them was missed.
Also confirms that the fuel tanks were not targetted during the two attacks.
Confirms that the US Navy had fuel tanks in Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attack.
Confirms that Hawaii existed during the Pearl Harbor attack.
Confirms that there are Japanese people.
 
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Well, somebody with a lot of influence obviously didnt want the power plants to be bombed. And what if the Germans had power plants the Allies didnt know about? The known power plants would be destroyed, but if power plants the Allies didnt know about still existed, then the who point of destroying those power plants would have been pointless and much time would be wasted.
 
GreatestAlive said:
Well, somebody with a lot of influence obviously didnt want the power plants to be bombed. And what if the Germans had power plants the Allies didnt know about? The known power plants would be destroyed, but if power plants the Allies didnt know about still existed, then the who point of destroying those power plants would have been pointless and much time would be wasted.
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I disagree, Perseus actually answered his own question... "Germany’s power grid was much more vulnerable than realized" clearly the Allies felt it was far less vulnerable than it actually was and therefore felt resources were better spent elsewhere.

If you look at the Dam Busters raids you will see that that despite the immediate damage and industrial disruption production was back up and running very quickly, this probably led the Allies to believe that the power grid was more robust than it was.

There is also the fact that large numbers of Germany's crucial factories had there own power supply and while taking down the grid may have had an effect in the short term production could still continue.
 
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