Target: Hitler's Oil (2010) By Ronald C. Cooke & Roy Conyers Nesbit
 
The strategic thinking and efforts behind attacking the oil supplies of the Third Reich. It starts out with short discussions of the development of synthetic oil production in Germany in the 1930s and oil production in the Russian Caucasus, which became a major source of oil to Germany after the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the two countries.
 
There is also a short discussion of Sydney Cotton's air reconnaissance flights over Baku and Grozny in March of 1940. This was part of a somewhat hare-brained scheme on the part of the British and French governments to bomb the Soviet oil production sites with the idea of eliminating the oil supplies to Germany. The fact that this would very likely have resulted in war with the USSR didn't seem to penetrate their thinking.

After that, there are descriptions of the American "Tidalwave" attack on the Ploesti oil fields and refineries in Romania in August of 1943 and the air attacks on the synthetic oil refinery sites in Germany starting in early 1944.

Much of the book focuses on the debate over the area bombing policy of Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the head of Bomber Command, starting in early 1942. Harris was obstinate in his refusal to consider anything other than burning down German apartment buildings, movie theatres, restaurants, and department stores in the centres of major German cities. Chapters VII and IX evaluate the effects of Harris' policy. They conclude that the RAF's area bombing contributed almost nothing to reducing German military-industrial output. Britain devoted an immense industrial and military effort to creating and maintaining Bomber Command. Chapter IX considers alternative uses of this effort that might have been much more effective in prosecuting the war.
 
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
223 Pages
In Good Condition