Air University Review, September-October 1979

Out of the recent conflict in Southeast Asia has emerged once again evidence of the subtle but powerful role that substitution plays in the art of warfare. Traditionally, nations under attack--given sufficient time--have effected both product and factor substitution to a degree that in large measure attenuated the economic impact of military strikes against their industrial and logistics sectors. Seldom has a wartime economy been so fully mobilized and fine-tuned that the loss of a single part or function could not in some way be compensated for through the process of substitution. Franklin's "horseshoe nail" dictum, so applicable in time-sensitive, tactical situations, loses much of its relevance over the long-term. This was particularly true of the protracted war in Southeast Asia.

Substitution in warfare, of course, is not a recent phenomenon. History abounds with examples of belligerent nations' taking advantage of this age-old principle. For example, until perhaps this century, the process of converting plowshares into swords was quite characteristic of military preparations for warfare; advancements in peacetime technology were later incorporated into the development of military hardware. John Nef, in his evaluation of warfare and industrialism, concluded that, "Many weapons, from the crossbow to the bayonet, were apparently invented, not for war but for the chase...it was not until the nineteenth century that war replaced sport as the leading stimulus to technical improvements in firearms,"^l and "Saltpeter and gunpowder appear in Western history as by-products of remarkable general progress in knowledge for peaceful purposes."² Gunpowder was initially used during the twelfth century to blast through stone encountered at lead and silver mines. It was not until two centuries later that we find references of its use for military purposes in the tubes of cannon. The technology for producing the cannon themselves was derived from the peaceful endeavor of casting church bells, first noted in the eleventh century.³

As the demands of warfare increased through the seventeenth century and plowshares were increasingly converted into swords, many European nations found themselves short of the vital metals required for military hardware. It therefore became necessary to reduce the more decorative and extravagant uses of this limited resource. The utility of armor, for instance, had by that time been largely undermined by the evolution in firearms-the warrior of the day could no longer be protected at a weight that did not restrict his mobility. Consequently, the last vestiges of armor from the equipment of soldiers were eliminated, and even the manufacture of breastplates was abandoned. The metal thus saved was used to produce the required firearms. Along this same line, Gustavus Adolphus is said to have sponsored several new models of light artillery--one a so-called "leather gun" that consisted of a thin copper or bronze tube strengthened with iron rings and covered with a leather skin.⁴ Although the primary purpose of his innovations may have been to provide the king's infantry units with maneuverable firepower, they also enabled him to conserve more scarce metals. Substitutions such as these let warfare continue, but on an admittedly more limited scale than would have prevailed if the nations of that age had possessed more advanced scientific and administrative skills--factors that in large measure determine the extent to which substitution can be carried.⁵

The art of substitution in warfare, further developed over the centuries, was applied with remarkable success by the more advanced nations during World War II. In one sense this result was contingent on the advent of air power and its application deep behind enemy lines against target systems that were only indirectly and in the long-term related to battlefield success. Given sufficient time, plus some slack in her economy, a nation can normally improvise and adjust for strategic shortages that might be created. Germany and Great Britain, for instance, were particularly adept at compensating for shortages during most of the war.

Let us look at the German experience a bit more closely. Burton Klein, in his classic study of Germany's wartime economy, concluded that for the first five years of World War II the German economy contained considerable slack.⁶ It was not until after the Battle of Stalingrad and the initiation of large-scale raids on her cities at the beginning of 1943 that Germany was shocked into the reality of total war and began to mobilize fully her national resources. From that time until mid-1944, the peak of her war effort, munitions production increased by nearly 50 percent. During the same period, the gradually expanding British and U.S. air effort exacted only a 5 to 10 percent reduction in military output. Beginning in the summer of 1944, however, the tremendous weight of increased Allied air attacks, territorial losses, and manpower problems made it impossible to increase military output further; subsequently, these factors brought about Germany's economic collapse. Still, by December l944 total industrial production was within 15 percent of peak output, and munitions production had fallen by only 18 percent.

After the end of the year, military production rapidly collapsed, and by March, the last month production data were collected, munitions production was 45 percent below the December level. But paradoxically, states Klein, "even in March 1945, Germany's total military output was at a substantially higher rate than when she began her attack on Russia--an attack which was to have brought complete victory by the summer of 1941."⁷

Although Klein gives Hitler's Nazi regime relatively low marks in their economic preparation for war, he still admired the resilience of their economy. "What the Germans really excelled in was in improvising. The measures taken to get around the shortage of ferroalloys were truly ingenious. The kinds of measures taken to restore production after bombing attacks and the speed with which production was restored were remarkable."⁸

From an incisive evaluation of target selection during the Combined Bomber Offensive by Mancur Olson, Jr., we gain further insight into the capability of the German economy to withstand for so long the Allied strategic air campaign.⁹ Two distinct hypotheses were promoted during the bomber offensive. The British advocated area bombing of cities on the premise that the German economy was so fully and efficiently mobilized that any transfer of resources for either civilian or industrial restoration would subtract from the war effort. There is now, however, an impressive array of evidence that area bombing did not decisively affect either industrial production or the German will to resist.

John Kenneth Galbraith, who along with his other accomplishments was a director of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, cites as an example the bombing of Hamburg.¹⁰ For three nights the Royal Air Force Bomber Command subjected the city of Hamburg to devastating attacks. A third of the city was destroyed, and at least 60,000 persons were killed. The industrial plants that were around the edge of the city, however, were not greatly damaged, and after several weeks of adjustment production was back to normal. In fact, many persons previously engaged in nonessential occupations in the destroyed portion of the city turned to the war industries for employment, thus alleviating a former labor shortage. Galbraith concludes that, "In reducing, as nothing else could, the consumption of nonessentials and the employment of men in their supply, there is a distinct possibility that the attacks on Hamburg increased Germany's output of war material and thus her military effectiveness."^ll

The American command favored selective or precision bombing, but these attacks met with only mixed results. Planners first searched for the small single "horseshoe nail" target system, which if destroyed would cause a virtual stoppage of all military production. The selection of the ball bearing industry appeared a logical choice. Attacks on these plants alone were to reduce German armaments production by 30 percent, and, since production was concentrated in relatively few cities, the industry could be easily destroyed. In the subsequent raids, about one-half of the industry floorspace was destroyed and another half severely damaged, yet Germany's capacity to wage war was not impaired. A limited amount of dispersal had already taken place, and losses in output were restored between raids much more quickly than believed possible. Moreover, the Germans were able to manage with fewer ball bearings than anticipated through redesign of equipment and the reduction of excessive and often luxurious uses of bearings.¹²

Olson feels that the economist's fundamental theory of substitution explains the shortcomings of both strategies cited above. In the case of area bombing, the British could not expect to destroy more than a small proportion of a large number of industries. But when only "a small proportion of the productive capacity of an industry is destroyed, this capacity can be spared or replaced particularly easily."¹³ For selective bombing the search for the small but indispensable industry proved illusionary. "The enemy could always afford to replace most of any industry if that industry was small enough. And it matters not how 'essential' an industry might be if the enemy can easily replace that industry once it has been destroyed."¹⁴

Contrast the results against the ball bearing industry, for example, with the success experienced in strikes against the German synthetic oil industry. These raids, coming during the final year of the war, put a tremendous strain on the German economic system. Throughout the war oil had been exceedingly expensive and in short supply. Having been cut off from their primary sources, the Germans had developed a synthetic process for making oil out of coal. The synthetic oil industry was large, extremely costly, and critically important to her war effort. Destruction of this industry, which was already a substitute for a missing source of supply, in the final year of the war foreclosed the opportunity to improvise further. Time had run out, and the limits of substitution had been reached.¹⁵

With the preceding historical survey as background, let us now turn to the more recent conflict in Southeast Asia and investigate the role that substitution played in the ability of North Vietnam to withstand U.S. strategic air attacks. In contrast to Germany, North Vietnam at the start of the air war was essentially an agricultural country with only a rudimentary transportation system and little modern industry of any kind. More than 90 percent of the population lived in primitive villages and earned their living from the soil. Less than 2 percent were engaged in industry, and only the capital city of Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong had populations of more than 100,000 people.

The gradual escalation of the bombing campaign in the north provided the North Vietnamese ample time and opportunity to make appropriate adjustments and institute countermeasures to the destruction rendered from the air. Both the military logistics system and the civilian economy converted to highly dispersed and decentralized methods of storing and handling supplies. Hundreds of miles of highway were constructed as bypasses and alternate routes, and the carrying capacity of the railroad network was improved by conversion to dual gauge. Inland waterways were improved, and bridges were replaced by fords and alternate structures less vulnerable to air attacks. Construction material, equipment, and workers were pre-positioned at advantageous locations along key routes in order to effect quick repairs.

Harrison Salisbury, the New York Times correspondent who visited Hanoi in December 1966, observed at firsthand many of the repair activities instituted by the North Vietnamese.¹⁶ The highways were rapidly repaired by simply filling in the bomb craters with native clay soil and the railroads with steel rails, ties, and crushed gravel pre-positioned along the full length of the roadbeds. More challenging were the bridges, but on this subject Salisbury cites some impressive examples of North Vietnamese ingenuity:

If the bridge was completely knocked out, a pontoon was put into service. The pontoons could not have been simpler in concept or easier to put into place. They were made by lashing together the required number of shallow flat-bottomed wooden canal boats, of which there were countless numbers available along the canals and streams. These sturdy boats, three feet wide and perhaps sixteen feet long, made an excellent bridge. A surface of cut bamboo poles was laid across them, without even being lashed or nailed in many cases. Or, if available, a surface of bamboo planks. The trucks lumbered over the pontoons with a roar as their wheels hit the loose poles, but the pontoons seemed sturdy enough to bear the heavy traffic.¹⁷

The boats and bamboo were positioned in the vicinity of every bridge and could be put into place in a matter of hours. Moreover, these temporary structures could quickly be removed and hidden in the morning to minimize damage from air raids and reinstalled in the evening to handle the nightly truck traffic.

The problem of keeping the railroads open was more difficult since the trains could not run across pontoons, but here again native ingenuity came into play:

If the rail line was blocked by destruction of a bridge or trackage, bicycle brigades were called up. Five hundred men and women and their bicycles would be sent to the scene of the break. They would unload the stalled freight train, putting the cargo on the bikes. Each bicycle would handle a six-hundred pound load, balanced across the frame with a bar. The bicycles would be wheeled, not ridden, over a pontoon bridge and on the other side of the break a second train would be drawn up. The cargo would be reloaded and moved on south.¹⁸

In addition to the above, Salisbury observed the grand scale to which fuels, supplies, and equipment were dispersed to make them less vulnerable to air attack. "Indeed, in all the time I rode about the countryside I think I was never more than two or three minutes out of sight of some kind of supplies and equipment which had come to rest in the most unlikely setting."¹⁹ Fifty-five gallon drums in which petroleum was stored, repair equipment, and crates containing weapons, munitions, and other hardware were randomly dispersed throughout the fields, rice paddies, and villages. Naturally this dispersal was costly to Hanoi in terms of both manpower and materiel, but it was a price she willingly paid to continue the war effort.

Although only 15 percent of North Vietnam's gross national product was provided by industry, portions of the industrial sector were also dispersed, and many city residents were evacuated to the countryside. In the main, however, North Vietnam depended on imports from the Communist bloc for industrial products. Whereas Germany substituted alternate processes and materials to satisfy her industrial needs, North Vietnam substituted foreign aid to satisfy hers. In one sense the North Vietnamese operated much as the Dutch, who in the sixteenth century defended themselves successfully for more than eighty years against the strongest arms in Europe. Having few natural materials themselves, the Dutch employed their greatest resources, which as Nef cites were "the sea with its inlets, the good harbors and rivers, and the inland waterways which they built...to get from Sweden, northern Germany, England, and Scotland the materials which they needed to defend themselves."²⁰ Both nations substituted foreign production for their own. In this sense, North Vietnam functioned more as a logistics funnel than as a production base for operations in the south.

Some production, of course, did take place, but this was more in the nature of simple consumer essentials improvised by small-scale industry and handicrafts. A Hanoi news report, for instance, claimed that in one province "the population has collected 27 tons of bomb and rocket fragments to be worked on by the local smithies, who turned them into more than 16,000 plowshares."²¹ If true, this is another example of the substitution effected by the North Vietnamese for limited natural resources.

The North Vietnamese also seem to have handled their manpower problems quite adequately. With the passage of time, of course, tasks that are novel at first and must be met with untested people become routine. As a result of this alone, by 1966 Hanoi probably had a substantial and valuable investment in learning; practice, and experience.²² Moreover, the quality of the manpower base was further improved through formal training programs provided both in-country and abroad.²³ Whatever technical skills that still remained in short supply were imported from other Communist nations.²⁴

An adequate supply of labor was assured through several programs. Curtailment and suspension of nonessential civilian activities released some workers for the war effort, but it appears that the most common practice was to exact double duty from the laborers. In-country combat tasks were performed on top of, rather than instead of, other employment. Production workers in plants substituted as air defense gunners during air raids. Beside each production position was a rifle, and when the siren sounded, the workers would grab their rifles and take up posts at the windows and on the roof to fire back at U.S. planes. Agricultural workers in the countryside substituted as repair crews when called on by local authorities to assist in repairing bombed-out roads and railroads. Salisbury even cites what would appear to be an extreme example of North Vietnamese Air Force pilots' arising at 4 A.M., working in the rice paddies for three or four hours, and then flying their planes against the Americans.²⁵

This may not be so far-fetched given the specialized and constrained pattern of the U.S. air campaign at that time. In fact, the air strikes, normally conducted near midday, fashioned the whole lifestyle around Hanoi. Commercial activity thrived from 5 to 8 A.M., after which the shops closed and did not open again until late afternoon. By 6 P.M. activity was again at a high level, and the streets, beer parlors, and bars were jammed.²⁶

Salisbury's observations lead one to believe that there was still considerable slack in the North Vietnamese labor force in 1966. Obviously, commercial and recreational pursuits had not been greatly curtailed. He also noted that there had been an increase of from 80,000 to 100,000 high school students and from 35,000 to 46,000 college students in the last year.²⁷ Although these students participated in part-time agricultural and military functions, they were still an untapped labor source for an all-out effort. It is, of course, difficult to determine how many persons were engaged either full or part-time in war-related activities in North Vietnam, but one Rand analyst guessed that it might run from 1 to 1.5 million men and women, including the military. If this is true, only about 10 to 15 percent of the able-bodied adult population was so occupied.²⁸

Most industrial and logistics processes require some combination of labor and capital as inputs. Within limits one can be substituted for the other. As an example, human portering, in many situations, is a viable alternative to rail or truck transport. If capital has been destroyed or is in short supply, a nation with a sufficient manpower base will normally turn to more labor-intensive methods to maintain a given level of output. The bicycle brigades employed to transport supplies past destroyed railroad bridges and the very labor-intensive dispersal techniques cited by Salisbury are two good illustrations. With an apparently abundant labor force, the North Vietnamese were able to effect many such substitutions in their continuing support of the conflict in the south.

There exists a general consensus that the bombing of the north from 1965 until November 1968 failed to alter significantly North Vietnam's ability or will to continue the war in the south.²⁹ What then went wrong? Why was the world's greatest power unable to bomb an essentially second-rate nation into submission? Most experts feel that it was primarily due to three factors. First, North Vietnam supported operations in the south mainly by functioning as a logistics funnel: a majority of the equipment and supplies came from other Communist nations. Second, as indicated above, North Vietnam possessed a manpower base of sufficient size to effect any labor-intensive substitutions that were required for continuation of the war. Finally, the volume of supplies needed in the south was so low that only a small portion of the capacity of North Vietnam's redundant and flexible transportation system was required to maintain the flow.

There also can be no denying that the gradual escalation of the bombing campaign gave the North Vietnamese time to improvise, adjust, and develop the necessary countermeasures that in large measure attenuated the bombing impact. Note, for example, the following excerpt from a 1967 North Vietnamese military analysis on the same subject:

The might of the U.S. Air Force lies in the fact that it has many planes, modern technical means, bombs and bullets, and available airfields in Thailand and South Vietnam, and at sea. It can attack us from many directions on many targets, under different weather conditions, by day and by night. However, given their political isolation and the present balance of international forces, the U.S. Air Force is Compelled to escalate step by step, and cannot attack the North massively and swiftly in strategic, large-scale, surprise bombings. Our North Vietnam can gain the time and circumstances necessary to gradually transform the country to a war footing, to further develop its forces, and to gain experience in order to deal the U.S. Air Force heavier blows.³⁰

Time, then, becomes the essential factor that dilutes the effect of strategic warfare. Only when an economic system is critically strained and time is running out can the type of bombing campaigns described in this article succeed in achieving their affirmed results. This can be illustrated with the three target systems that received the most concentrated attacks in Southeast Asia: the hydroelectric power complexes; petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL) storage facilities; and lines of communication (the transportation system).

In the almost four-year bombing campaign, over 80 percent of the central electric generating capacity of North Vietnam was either destroyed or rendered inoperable; yet there was sufficient redundancy in the system to permit the most essential operations to be continued. Possessing only a limited industrial base, North Vietnam, of course, did not require a huge amount of their military and governmental agencies had alternative means of generating electricity. Even during the large B-52 raids in December 1972, when all of Hanoi’s major power sources were rendered inoperable and the capacity available from the national power grid was reduced by some 75 percent, electricity continued to be supplied to priority users, such as selected government buildings, important industrial installations, and foreign embassies.³¹ In summary, then, the essential requirements for electric power did not put an overbearing strain on the remaining capacity, and the redundancy in the system permitted the North Vietnamese to substitute for destroyed and damaged power elements.

The results against POL storage facilities were similar although the underlying substitution mechanism was quite different. North Vietnam had no capability to generate additional POL internally; however, she could obtain the required stocks elsewhere. This is illustrated in the assessment of the concentrated POL strikes conducted in 1,966. Although the intelligence community estimated that 70 percent of North Vietnamese storage capacity had been destroyed, it concluded, "There is no evidence yet of any shortage of POL in North Vietnam, and stocks on hand, with recent imports, have been adequate to sustain necessary operations,"³² The North Vietnamese were able to supplement their reduced reserves immediately with imports of more POL products. Outside aid was substituted for a missing source of supply, and operations were continued.

Contrast these results with those achieved against the German synthetic oil industry by Allied air strikes during World War II. Coming as they did in the last year of the war, when POL was critically needed by the Germans in their effort to halt advancing Allied ground forces, these strikes severely crippled the German war machine. The oil industry was large and costly, and there was insufficient time to develop an alternate source of supply. Consequently, the German war effort rapidly collapsed.

The third target system, lines of communication, received by far the greatest weight of effort during the war in Southeast Asia. Strikes against lines of communication were conducted not only around Hanoi and Haiphong, the general area on which the previous discussion has concentrated, but also in the lower panhandle of North Vietnam above the demilitarized zone and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail of southern Laos, where strikes were concentrated after the November 1968 bombing halt in North Vietnam. Although the strikes against the industrial base and energy sources already described might more appropriately be termed strategic bombardment, strikes against lines of communication fell into the interdiction category. These strikes took two forms: attacks of delay against the railroad and road network itself and attacks of destruction against vehicles and supplies on the network. The purpose of these strikes was to reduce the flow of men and materiel to a level below that at which offensive operations in the south could be maintained.

Since the initiation of air interdiction missions during World War II, these strikes have been the most controversial of all. Unless they are executed concurrent with major ground operations in which the enemy is forced into a high expenditure rate, it is difficult to prove that they significantly influence the outcome of a battle. Notable successes were registered during World War II and the first year of the Korean conflict, but with the advent of protracted war in which there is no clear outcome, it has been virtually impossible to establish a positive payoff for these strikes. Guerrilla warfare requires only a minimum of supplies, and since the option to fight or withdraw remains open, the volume and timing of replacements are not vital to success.

Although the true impact of interdiction in Southeast Asia may never be known with certainty, I feel that it was within the range of North Vietnamese tolerance.³³ Admittedly, political restraints against a full-scale interdiction effort, including naval blockade, mitigated somewhat the impact of the U.S. effort. Yet, Communist needs in South Vietnam were not great--not more than 50 tons a day were required from the Ho Chi Minh Trail--and they could easily make whatever adjustments were necessary within their logistics system to keep this amount flowing and accumulate a surplus for future operations.

To be sure, the North Vietnamese were fighting a protracted war, and a protracted war implies time. With time, substitution becomes a viable option. Temporary structures replace destroyed bridges, bypasses circumnavigate interdicted route segments, and men and materiel are diverted from less essential to more critical functions. The operations and repair activities observed by Harrison Salisbury were characteristic of North Vietnam's efforts along these lines. The North Vietnamese transportation capacity was more than adequate for the type of war they were fighting, and time was not a critical factor. This set of circumstances was quite different from the one in which the Germans found themselves during the final year of World War II. According to Olson:

The German railroad industry was strained to the maximum near the end of the war by the demands at the front and the extra transport required because of the dispersal of factories subject to the bombing attack. Thus, when this industry was bombed repeatedly and mercilessly, the Germans had nothing to turn to but canal transport, truck transport, and air transport. But by this time the Nazi beast had been cornered: the canals were breached at the same time, while trucks could not run for lack of oil and the allies had control of the air.³⁴

As with the German oil industry, time had run out, and the opportunity of substitution had been foreclosed.

Of the primary target systems struck in Germany during World War II, the most notable successes were scored against the synthetic oil and transportation industries. Both of these industries were large and costly, making them difficult to replace. Perhaps even more important is that the weight of effort against these industries came in the final year of the war when the German economic system was severely strained. Following the successful Allied invasion of Normandy, German forces were heavily committed on two fronts, and the resulting demands placed on the German war machine were tremendous. There was insufficient time remaining to create substitutes for these industries even if the capability existed. The situation was quite similar to that in which Japan found herself at the end of World War II. Faced with a highly compressed, intensive bombing campaign against her industrial base and an impending Allied invasion which she no longer had the means to repel, Japan soon capitulated.

Primary elements in the conduct of warfare, then, must be both the time and ability to effect successful substitutions. Given these two factors, a nation can go a long way toward mitigating the impact of the most devastating bombing attacks. And so it was with the North Vietnamese. Only in the latter part of 1972, after strikes against the north were resumed and the flow of imports was restricted, was there any evidence of a reduction in the North Vietnamese ability or will to continue the fight. But by that time the North Vietnamese Army had suffered severe losses in an imprudent invasion of the south.

As Olson makes quite clear in his evaluation of target selection during the Combined Bomber Offensive, "it was not that air power could not destroy what it set out to destroy: the problem was rather that what it destroyed was not after all indispensable. The fault was not one of airmanship, it was one of economics."³⁵ Given time, a resource they possessed in abundance, the North Vietnamese were able to make those substitutions necessary to their continued participation in the conflict. Surely, the cost of operations increased as one type of labor, good, or process was continually substituted for another, thus giving rise to the law of diminishing returns. Yet, for the most part, labor was plentiful, and materiel needs could be satisfied through increased imports. Whatever costs were incurred could be paid by cutting down on nonessential production and consumption.

History is replete with examples such as those described. Most industrial and logistics systems were far more resilient than originally assumed. Prewar assessments on substitutability have been predicated almost entirely on the availability of materials and processes existing in peacetime economies. Only when wartime necessity forces their discovery do many substitution possibilities become known.³⁶ Equally important, however, is that most assessments have also failed to make adequate allowance for the mitigating effect of time. Consequently, strategic plans based on these assessments have not succeeded, at least to the degree originally conceived.

What is called for is a return to the concept of the blitzkrieg. The blitzkrieg model would appear to be the logical foundation on which to base U.S. conventional war strategy. The greatest successes of both air and ground forces in modern times have come in short, intense combined arms campaigns: the German blitzkriegs of World War II, the Normandy invasion, and the Six-Day War in the Mideast, to name a few. This suggests that military doctrine should be structured so that air power is used in conjunction with other forces in fast and dramatic moves which give no opportunity for the principle of substitution to come into play. It was with such a strategy that Hitler quickly conquered almost the whole of Europe. And it was when he deviated from this strategy that he began to fail.

This lesson does not appear to have been lost on the Russians. Most experts now agree that Soviet forces in Europe are structured to fight a very short, intense war. The high concentration of armor in the Soviet force structure, the high ratio of combat-to-support units, a military doctrine that emphasizes rapid advance into enemy territory--all lend credence to this assessment. Moreover, recent qualitative and quantitative improvements have added to the Soviet's quick-strike offensive capability.

It is imperative that NATO forces be structured and positioned to halt the kind of blitzkrieg that the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces are designed to fight. Otherwise we may have insufficient time to bring in reinforcements and make the substitutions necessary for continued combat operations in the event of an invasion of Western Europe. As Senator Sam Nunn has stated, "There is no point in being able to bring full defensive weight to bear in 60 days if a force cannot survive the first 20."³⁸ This means that the blitzkrieg should form the cornerstone of our defensive, as well as offensive, strategy. Not only must our forces be able to launch blitzkrieg offensives, they also must be able to repel them.

Notes

1. John U. Nef, War and Human Progress (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 129.

2. Ibid., p. 27.

3. Ibid., pp. 26-28.

4. Ibid., p. 239.

5. Mancur Olson, Jr., "American Materials Policy and the 'Physiocratic Fallacy,' "Orbis, Winter 1963, pp. 682-83; hereafter cited as "American Materials Policy."

6. Burton H. Klein, Germany's Economic Preparations for War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959). See pages 225-38 for a fuller treatment of material cited herein.

7. Ibid., p. 229.

8. Ibid., p. 116.

9. Mancur Olson, Jr., "The Economics of Target Selection for the Combined Bomber Offensive," The Royal United Service Institution Journal, November 1962; hereafter cited as "The Economics of Target Selection" I am indebted to Olson for much of the discussion that follows.

10. John K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: The New World Library, 1958), pp. 131-33.

11. Ibid., p. 132.

12. As with ball bearings, the Germans were able to alleviate many shortages by improvising and substituting plentiful for scarce resources. Copper was saved by substituting iron radiators for copper radiators in motor vehicles and by cutting the amount of copper used In U-boats and locomotives by 50 and 90 percent, respectively. Alloys using scarce metals, such as nickel and molybdenum, were replaced with alloys using plentiful metals, such as vanadium, in critical products like gun tubes. For other substitutions, see Olson, "American Materials Policy," and Edward S. Mason, "American Security and Access to Raw Materials," World Politics, January 1949.

13. Olson, "The Economics of Target Selection," p. 313.

14. Ibid., p. 132.

15. Albert Speer believes that the campaign against the ball bearing industry would also have been successful if it were not for the long pauses between the major raids of August 1943, October 1943, and February-March 1944 in which some production was restored. This is, however, but another example of time's role in strategic successes and failures. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 339-41.

16. Harrison E. Salisbury, Behind the Lines-Hanoi (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 86-91.

17. Ibid., p. 88.

18. Ibid., p. 89. Although railroad repair was more difficult than road repair, the North Vietnamese maintained the railroads in case gasoline and oil imports were cut off. Locomotives were fueled with local coal and wood.

19. Ibid., p. 91.

20. Nef, p. 117.

21. Quoted in Oleg Hoeffding, Bombing North Vietnam: An Appraisal of Economic and Political Effects (Santa Monica, California: The Rand Corporation, RM-5213, December 1988), footnote, p. 29.

22. Ibid., p. 15.

23. North Vietnamese sources claimed that nearly 80,000 technical workers and cadres were graduated in North Vietnam in 1965 and that 5000 North Vietnamese were being trained in Communist countries, Ibid., footnotes on pages 8 and 16.

24. An estimated 40,000 Chinese engineers and construction workers, for example, were employed on the railroads. Ibid., footnote, p. 8.

25. Salisbury, p. 145.

26. Ibid, pp. 113-14.

27. Ibid., pp. 129-30.

28. Hoeffding, p 7.

29. The Pentagon Papers: The Senator Gravel Edition, vol. IV (Boston: Beacon Press; 1971).

30. Quoted in Patrick J. McGarvey, Visions of Victory: Selected Vietnamese Military Writings, 1964-1968 (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1959), p. 156.

31. Herman L. Gilster and Robert E. M. Frady, Linebacker II USAF Bombing Survey (Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, April 1973), pp. 12-14.

32. Pentagon Papers, vol. IV, p. 111.

33. Herman L. Gilster, "Air Interdiction in Protracted War: An Economic Evaluation," Air University Review, May-June 1977.

34. Olson, "The Economics of Target Selection," p. 313.

35. Ibid., p. 310.

36. Carl Kaysen, Notes on the Strategic Air Intelligence in World War II (ETO), (Santa Monica, California: The Rand Corporation, R-165, October 1949), pp. 14-15.

37. Henry Owen and Charles L Schultz, editors, Setting National Priorities: The Next Ten Years (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1976), pp. 63-70.

38. Reported in the Baltimore Sun, November 2, 1976, p. 6.

Herman L. Gilster, Colonel (USAF, Ret), (USMA; Ph.D., Harvard University) was director of International Economic Affairs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, on his retirement, July 1979. Other assignments have been as B-47 commander, Strategic Air Command; Associate Professor of Economics, USAFA; Air Force Research Associate, Brookings Institution; and in operations research at Hq Seventh Air Force, PACAF, and USAF. He has been a frequent contributor to the Review, and his articles have been published in other professional journals. Dr. Gilster is presently employed by the Boeing Aerospace Company, Seattle, Washington.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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