There are some very good studies of the BR vs AM strategies if you’re interested.
The Germans helped shape that strategy with their attacks on British cities. And the US participated in the strikes against Dresden and Hamburg.
The bombing of Dresden was an Anglo/American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, that took place during the Second World War in the European Theatre. Germany would be forced to surrender three months later. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 722 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed over 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre.[2] An estimated 22,700[3] to 25,000[4] people were killed. Three more USAAF air raids followed, two occurring on 2 March aimed at the city's railroad marshaling yard and one small raid on 17 April aimed at industrial areas.
Over the course of ten days, the RAF and the 8th Air Force devastate Hamburg with heavy bombing. The attack, named “Operation Gomorrah,” will leave more than 13 square miles destroyed and kill more civilians than the Germans’ entire Blitz over Great Britain in April 1942. The British conducted night raids and the USAAF daylight raids.
Operation Gomorrah killed 42,600 people, left 37,000 wounded and caused some one million German civilians to flee the city. The city's labour force was reduced by ten percent. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs were dropped and over 250,000 homes and houses were destroyed.
No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed and there is some indication from later Allied interrogations of Nazi officials that Hitler stated that further raids of similar weight would force Germany out of the war. The industrial losses were severe, Hamburg never recovered to full production, only doing so in essential armaments industries (in which maximum effort was made). Figures given by German sources indicate that 183 large factories were destroyed out of 524 in the city and 4,118 smaller factories out of 9,068 were destroyed. Other losses included damage to or destruction of 580 industrial concerns and armaments works, 299 of which were important enough to be listed by name. Local transport systems were completely disrupted and did not return to normal for some time. Dwellings destroyed amounted to 214,350 out of 414,500.
On the night of 9–10 March ("Operation Meetinghouse"), 334 B-29s took off to raid with 279 of them dropping 1,665 tons of bombs on Tokyo. The bombs were mostly the 500-pound (230 kg) E-46 cluster bomb which released 38 napalm-carrying M-69 incendiary bomblets at an altitude of 2,000–2,500 ft (610–760 m). The M-69s punched through thin roofing material or landed on the ground; in either case they ignited 3–5 seconds later, throwing out a jet of flaming napalm globs. A lesser number of M-47 incendiaries was also dropped: the M-47 was a 100-pound (45 kg) jelled-gasoline and white phosphorus bomb which ignited upon impact.
In the first two hours of the raid, 226 of the attacking aircraft unloaded their bombs to overwhelm the city's fire defenses. The first B-29s to arrive dropped bombs in a large X pattern centered in Tokyo's densely populated working class district near the docks in both Koto and Chuo city wards on the water; later aircraft simply aimed near this flaming X. The individual fires caused by the bombs joined to create a general conflagration, which would have been classified as a firestorm but for prevailing winds gusting at 17 to 28 mph (27 to 45 km/h). Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of the city was destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died. A grand total of 282 of the 339 B-29s launched for "Meetinghouse" made it to the target, 27 of which failed to return due to enemy action, mechanical failure, or being caught in updrafts caused by the massive fires.
What a read! Thanks. I’m not an informed person when it comes to history.
You can stop with the massive history. It does NOT make it official strategy. Yes US participated in Dresden. But the official strategy was never civilian bombing but “strategic bombing” against industry. Again, this is found in any number of official USAAF sources as well as all the secondary literature.
The real problem was even with the Norden bombsight our bombers were so inaccurate that our own troops called the Eighth Air Force the “Eighth Luftwaffe.” Bitter battles were fought between US officers who did NOT want to use blanket civilian bombing and the British who did.
Citing ANYTHING in Japan is meaningless because LeMay concluded that all Japanese industry ad been dispersed through the cities and there was no other way to get at it. But even in Tokyo, we went out of the way to avoid hitting the imperial palace. All a-bomb targets, unless you are named Lou Ayers or Howard Zinn, were prioritized on the basis of military value, not numbers of civilians killed. For the second time, I can give you any number of sources. Start with Michael Sherry.