It was essential for the air war. The air war beat Japan, even though the air war didn't beat Germany.
It is true the air war didn't beat Germany but both strategic and tac air played a very large role.
I think the war in Europe would have looked very much different post D-Day without the cumulative drubbing the Germans took from the air before and after the landing.
While the outcome would probably have been the same, I believe the cost would have been very much higher.
The Germans lost tremendous amounts of material and heavy equipment not to mention men whenever they moved. Logistics was simply a nightmare.
Monty might still be trying to take Caen without the 2000 bombers that supported the British operation Goodwood.
It was not until after the war in Europe ceased that we really learned how good a job we'd done on the Germans, but not in the way most folks think. You have to understand that German civilian morale was exceedingly high until very late in the war. We kept bombing the snot out of the big cities, and the folks kept shaking their fists at the sky. However, the effect was cumulative. Eventually, the population turned. It was the strategic bombing that did it.
I read an assessment of the situation a few years ago. Basically, you had Helga, your average big-city factory worker. She'd hop the tram from her partially bombed apartment to her partially bombed factory through partially bombed streets day after day. She'd spend her nights in the shelter. She'd take the news of her father and mother dying in a raid, the loss of her brothers at the front-- you name it. She would take it in stride and go to work no matter what, because she was a proud German and it was the right thing to do. One day, probably after a raid, she gave up and stopped going into work. This is what caused the war in Europe to end. It happened to all the Helgas and Marias and Klauses almost overnight. This is why we were eventually able to roll into Germany in the end without partisan sniping and harassment.
Also, understand that no one at the top levels understood what strategic bombing was doing. They had their goals, and those goals were somewhat of a flop. Industrial output kept increasing. The Germans kept innovating and every bombed out factory was replaced with a better one either hidden in the countryside or buried underground. The success of strategic bombing was not really known until after hostilities had stopped and the post-action assessments were made.
One other thing: we got all pussified after the war about bombing the cities. The truth of the matter was that Germany had a very centralized transportation system for both road and rail. It was an integral part of the city. You didn't have ring roads or train bypasses. Everything went right into the heart of the big cities and came back out again. That meant men and materiel were also having to go through the center of town. Answer: Bomb the center of town.
