Were the Schweinfurt raids worth it?

Setting aside the obvious grief and loss for the family and friends of the aircrew lost on these missions, and the German soldiers and civilians killed....

The First Schweinfurt raid was unequivocally a disaster and didn't do much for the war effort. But it did teach the 8th Air Force some important lessons that led to changes in tactics and procedures aboard the aircraft that helped people stay alive in later missions.

Subsequent missions to Schweinfurt resulted in more destruction. However, most historians now believe that the strategic bombing campaign as a whole was extremely effective in reducing the German war effort only when the synthetic oil plants and aircraft manufacturing facilities were bombed in approximately the final year of the war, and when the allied fighter aircraft began shooting down and strafing German aircraft in larger numbers as their range and capabilities increased. And even then, aircraft production in Germany was maintained at steady levels until the final months of the war, as the German command had dispersed the aircraft manufacturing facilities and split them up into smaller, discrete manufacturing units that limited damage to the production of aircraft overall when one facility was bombed.

However, from a wider perspective, strategic bombing did help the allied war effort in important ways throughout the war: in addition to severely reducing the all-important supply of fuel for the German war effort in the final year or so, it also required the German forces to keep aircraft, big guns, and manpower in the west dedicated to air defense and fighter squadrons that could have been used for offensive purposes in the east and in the west otherwise, and also it caused the fast attrition of German aircraft and trained German pilots and aircrews, as the allies' fighter aircraft and the gunners on the bombers destroyed German aircraft.

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