Talk:United States Strategic Bombing Survey

Who formed the USSBS?

This article is confusing in that it stats the USSBS was created by Hap Arnold in one paragraph, and in the very next it stats it was created by Henry Stimson of the War Department at the request of President Roosevelt, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxq32 (talk • contribs) 10:25, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

"decisive" or wasteful?

Can someone please provide a reference for the claim that "the contributions of Allied strategic bombing towards victory" were "decisive"?

Some references probably described it as such, but John Kenneth Galbraith insisted the opposite, and the war might have ended sooner if the money spent on strategic bombing had instead been spent on air support of ground operations or on ground and naval operations.

I'm researching this now for another project, and I want to understand better the available evidence -- and to reconcile the discrepancies between this claim and the description in the Wikipedia article on John Kenneth Galbraith#World War II of "the survey's unconventional conclusion about general ineffectiveness of strategic bombing in stopping the war production in Germany, which went up instead. The conclusion created a controversy". I plan to do more with this soon. As of 2022-10-18 there are only 12 notes, with many claims not supported by citations. Any help with relevant references and otherwise improving the tone of the article would be appreciated.

I also plan to add a section on "More recent research", to summarize related work that I've encountered in recent years that discuss this issue (and generally support Galbraith's position). Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:07, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I just added a new section on "Survey officers and controversy". I think this reduces the discrepancy between this article and the article on John Kenneth Galbraith.

FYI, my primary reference for this was David R. Henderson (1 December 2006). "John Kenneth Galbraith: A Criticism and an Appreciation". Foundation for Economic Education. Foundation for Economic Education. Wikidata Q114796509., and David R. Henderson is a "research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution" -- politically very different from Galbraith, but still willing to read what Galbraith wrote, and consider it even if he didn't always agree with Galbraith's descriptions of economics, politics, etc.

Next: I plan to add another section on "More recent research", because I think that's important for placing the USSBS in context. Then I plan to make comparable edits to the Wikipedia article on Galbraith.

I hope you will agree that this addition improves the balance and tone of this article and reduces the discrepancy I perceived between this article and John Kenneth Galbraith#World War II. DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I just added a section on "More recent research", as I said I planned to. I hope you like it ... and if you don't I hope you can provide references to contradict my claims. No literature search is every complete. No one can ever know everything there is not know. Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:15, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

That German war production went up does not mean that bombing had no effect on German production. The counterfactual is "what would German production have been if the Combined bomber Offensive had not taken place?"

The output of German industry changed. Though the the number of armoured vehicles went up, the type of vehicle changed. German AFV output included larger numbers of Sturmgeschütz III and other self-propelled guns as they were cheaper to build than tanks. Germany built more Stug IIIs than it built Panzer IV (the main German tank).

German was producing large numbers of single engined fighters, but lacked pilots to fly them. The German Luftwaffe was drastically reduced by Big Week in early 1944. It had insufficient fuel or time for new pilots to be adequately trained before they entered combat flying against the USAAF bomber formations and the numerous fighter escorts that accompanied them. Training losses represented a large number of casualties.

While Germany could man anti-aircraft defences with those unfit to be infantry (women, children and so on) the guns and ammunition used in the Defence of the Reich from bombers could not be used to defend the Reich from the Red Army on the ground. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:23, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Cite Q

@GraemeLeggett: Why did you replace:

<!--D'Olier et al. (1987) The United States Bombing Surveys, (European War) (Pacific War) -->{{cite Q|Q114782241}}, which expandes to:

Franklin D'Olier; Henry C. Alexander; George Ball; et al. (October 1987), The United States Bombing Surveys, (European War) (Pacific War) (PDF), Air University, Wikidata Q114782241

with

{{Citation |author-link1=Franklin D'Olier |author-link11=Theodore Paul Wright |author-link12=Charles Codman Cabot |author-link13=Monroe Spaght |author-link2=Henry C. Alexander |author-link3=George Ball (diplomat) |author-link5=John Kenneth Galbraith |author-link6=Rensis Likert |author-link8=Paul Nitze |author1=Franklin D'Olier |author10=Fred Searls, Jr. |author11=Theodore Paul Wright |author12=Charles Codman Cabot |author13=Monroe Spaght |author14=Louis R. Thompson |author15=Walter Wilds |author2=Henry C. Alexander |author3=George Ball |author4=Harry L. Bowman |author5=John Kenneth Galbraith |author6=Rensis Likert |author7=Frank A. McNamee, Jr. |author8=Paul Nitze |author9=Robert P. Russell |display-authors=3 |language=en |publication-date=October 1987 |publisher=Air University |title=The United States Bombing Surveys, (European War) (Pacific War) |url=https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0020_SPANGRUD_STRATEGIC_BOMBING_SURVEYS.pdf}}, which appears as:

Franklin D'Olier; Henry C. Alexander; George Ball; et al. (October 1987), The United States Bombing Surveys, (European War) (Pacific War) (PDF), Air University

??? I like {{cite Q|...}}</nowki> for multiple reasons: :# If there's a problem with the citation and it's used in multiple places, fixing it in Wikidata fixes it for all uses. :# Wikidata makes it easy to distinguish between different people with the same names. :# For a citation that is used in multiple places, I think that entering the information into Wikidata is actually less work while also producing a higher quality citation. In addition, I routinely see others adding new information to Wikidata entries that I'm "watching" like links to various databases of authors that are not easily available via the <nowiki>{{citatation ...}} citation format you used.

??? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:27, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I've found editing wikidata particulary clumsy and undocumented. And if wikidata is wrong or incomplete, then that's wikidata's problem, while I know how to fix it in Enwiki. And use of citeQ is not editor friendly. GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:11, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@GraemeLeggett: Thanks for your reply.

Can you share with me what about Wikidata you find "particularly clumsy and undocumented", the Wikidata problems you've found difficult to fix, and how Template:Cite Q has been for you "not editor friendly"?

I may be able to help you get past those problems, if you are willing to consider using Wikidata and Cite Q again.

I, too, have had frustrations with Wikidata. I've gotten help at a couple of Wikimedia Foundation conferences plus Wikidata:Project chat (most recently Wikidata:Project chat#Responding to hostility to Cite Q?).

1. The most important thing for me with Wikidata is just to do something that seems sensible and not worry about the warnings that something else is needed, if I cannot figure out how to fix the problem that Wikidata flags. If it's important, someone else will likely fix it.
2. Second, I was taught to click "add statement" until I could not find any more information items to enter on the list presented -- or others that I wanted to enter and could guess a name of an item that was an official option but wasn't displayed.
3. After I create a Wikidata item with "Label" and a brief "Description" (and maybe "Also known as"), I enter "instance of" either "news", "book", "human", "website", "web page", "technical report", "working paper", or maybe something else.
4. However, I need to enter more than just "Label" and "instance of", or the item will likely be deleted. "Title" is usually the second thing I enter unless it's a human. If it's a document available on the web, I enter the URL as "full work available at URL". If it's a human, I'll enter "described at URL". For humans, I'll enter "given name" and "family name" but never "sex or gender" unless the latter is clear from the URL I enter as "described at URL". [With many people today preferring "they / them / their" pronouns, I prefer to leave that blank. I've seen edit wars when someone tried to add a gender on a Wikidata item I was "watching" ;-)] For a book, if I do not have a URL, I will typically enter an ISBN unless it's so old it doesn't have one. With an ISBN, I will never enter any "-"; it seems that I can never get that right, and Wikidata has a bot that will automatically fix that if I've actually entered the exact number of digits for either ISBN-10 or ISBN-13. If I find it in the Library of Congress catalog (loc.gov), I can enter LCCL (Library of Congress Control Number): A Wikidata editor who tried to delete a Wikidata item on a book told me that an ISBN would have said that the item was legitimate. If it's an older book that doesn't have an ISBN, I believe an LCCN number should work quite as well ;-)
5. When I've received an email complaining that a certain Wikidata item I'm "watching" has been deleted, I immediately complain, because I do not know what has been deleted, and I could be using that in Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons or Wikiversity or ... . Such items have then typically been restored. Then I can tell if it's worth saving.
6. If I want an "author" to display when using {{cite Q|...}} when the item doesn't have an author, e.g., a news item or it's a book with editors and I want to cite the entire book, I've found that e.g., {{cite Q|...|author = New York Times}} or {{cite Q|...|author = John Schnodgrass and Linda Peculiar, eds.}} seemed to have accomplished what I wanted, as suggested in template:Cite Q.

I may be able to answer other questions for you; I've logged over 20,000 edits on Wikidata ;-) DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)