I think it was partially the effect of the (relatively tiny) Zeppelin/Gotha raids on the UK in WW1, and the somewhat exaggerated stories from Guernica.
cities and industry proved much more resilient to bombing than anyone had a right to suspect.
While this may be true, I don’t think this is relevant for ICBMs replacing bombers. ICBMs are effective because of nukes (compact high power). Compare how many bombers were used in the last half century with how many ICBMs were used. Without nukes (and other game-breaking things like that), ICBMs would not be at all useful. With nukes, the resilience of cities is mostly irrelevant (once a single nuke gets there, it doesn’t matter how).
(It’s hard to build a good example scenario, since the nukes changed strategy completely and we’d probably have many more and different kinds of wars than we do now without them. But I think if nukes weren’t discovered/possible the bomber would still be “the king”.)
(ETA: I’m not arguing against your post, just pointing out that it would be a bit stronger without that line.)
I think it was partially the effect of the (relatively tiny) Zeppelin/Gotha raids on the UK in WW1, and the somewhat exaggerated stories from Guernica.
While this may be true, I don’t think this is relevant for ICBMs replacing bombers. ICBMs are effective because of nukes (compact high power). Compare how many bombers were used in the last half century with how many ICBMs were used. Without nukes (and other game-breaking things like that), ICBMs would not be at all useful. With nukes, the resilience of cities is mostly irrelevant (once a single nuke gets there, it doesn’t matter how).
(It’s hard to build a good example scenario, since the nukes changed strategy completely and we’d probably have many more and different kinds of wars than we do now without them. But I think if nukes weren’t discovered/possible the bomber would still be “the king”.)
(ETA: I’m not arguing against your post, just pointing out that it would be a bit stronger without that line.)