United States Strategic Bombing Survey

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) was a written report created by a board of experts assembled to produce an impartial assessment of the effects of the Anglo-American strategic bombing of Nazi Germany during the European theatre of World War II. After publishing the report in 1945, the Survey members then turned their attention to the war efforts against Imperial Japan during the Pacific War, including a separate section on the recent use of the atomic bomb in attacks on two Japanese cities.

In total, the reports contained 208 volumes for Europe and another 108 for the Pacific, comprising thousands of pages. The reports' conclusions were generally favorable about the contributions of Allied strategic bombing towards victory.

The survey said of Allied airpower that it "was decisive in the war in Western Europe. Hindsight inevitably suggests that it might have been employed differently or better in some respects. Nevertheless, it was decisive. In the air, its victory was complete. At sea, its contribution, combined with naval power, brought an end to the enemy's greatest naval threat-the U-boat; on land, it helped turn the tide overwhelmingly in favor of Allied ground forces"^[1]

A majority of the Survey's members were civilians in positions of influence on the various committees of the survey. Only one position of some influence was given to a prominent military officer, USAAF General Orvil A. Anderson (who had been in the Air War Plans Division ) and that only in an advisory capacity. Anderson was the only one on the survey board who knew about procedures of strategic bombing as Jimmy Doolittle's former deputy commander of operations. While the Board was not associated with any branch of the military, it was established by General Hap Arnold (chief of the USAF) along with Carl Spaatz (commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe). Failing to obtain the prominent public figure he had hoped for, Arnold settled for Franklin D'Olier.^[2]