Oh, hell yes, Borys. The gains are tens of thousands of extremely high quality men, too. The cream of the recruitment crop went to BC.

The rough equivalency in manpower quality was that technical = technical at top level (so a maintainer on a bomber can maintain ANY other system at all in the other services), non-commissioned aircrew = good quality junior officer in the Army/navy, commissioned aircrew = top-quality junior officer.

Just the release of , say, 20,000 aircrew to the british Army will drastically improve the quality of the officer corps, and seriously increase the combat capability of the British Army.

Look, the 'Thousand Bomber Raid' was a propaganda stunt. They had to strip the OCU and training schools to do it and even Coastal Command Wellingtons were dragged in to make up the numbers. In APOD the propaganda equivalent will be the 'thousand ton raid' (which 300-500 bombers can do).

We need to recognise that 1000 tons of carefully selected and selectively dropped ordnance used accurately and evenly against a target circle of no more than 1.5 miles across is the damage equivalent of a single 5 kiloton nuclear strike.

The Ruhr (as you say) could have been wrecked without such stunts as the 1000 bomber raid and in APOD this is exactly what has happened.

Essentially, Bomber Command was given two major strategic tasks in APOD, plus the resources to do it.

Task 1

1A. Wreck the Ruhr in 1943.
1B. Keep it wrecked for the duration with 'maintenance' attacks after 1943
1C. use a combination of VHA pinpoint attacks and ACCURATE larger-scale attacks to cripple specific industrial complexes and specific German transport nodes (like 'take important German railway bridge over big river and add Grand Slams to wreck the abutments') to prevent them from replacing the Ruhr's military output.

Task 2

2A. Establish BCME to attack German oil supplies in Rumania
2B. Merge this bombing campaign with USAAF daylight and specific RAF VHA daylight attacks to extend the disruption of teh German fuel supply system

Ancillary Tasks
Quite a few. One example - pass older types of bomber to other services for second-theatre bombing use. Another example - place BC Operations training Squadrons (using older types) to operational command of Coastal Command, to conduct mining operations in support of BC strategic taskings

We did it this way because these are strategic tasks of great value, and they are startegic tasks both other services will support 100%.

Who is going to object to Bomber Command's main strategic task - "smash the Ruhr and KEEP it smashed?"

So BC has its own strategic task that everyone supports, and when they achieve it they will also prove their strategic value, and earn nothing but praise, and fully justify the resources alotted to them.

it also prevents the unconstrained use of resources by BC.

Cheers: mark