Countervalue

Countervalue is a military targeting doctrine, in which the attacker plans to break enemy morale by attacks on civilian population, and to destroy the enemy industrial capability. Before nuclear weapons, the air campaigns against Britain, Germany, and Japan, in after-the-fact analysis, showed that attacks on population could cause much misery, but did not break morale.

This idea was not unique to the Axis; Marshal of the RAF Sir Arthur Harris, head of Royal Air Force Bomber Command, supported by Lord Cherwell, Winston Churchill's scientific advisor. insisted on "dehousing" targeting against Germany. Part of his reasoning was his bombers carried a heavier bombload that their American counterparts, but lacked the defensive armament to survive in day bombing. British bombers also had even less accurate bombsights than the much-overrated U.S. Norden bombsight, which, in theory, gave the accuracy to attack industry. Some individual RAF units, notably 617 Squadron, could be extremely accurate, but, overall, neither Ally could do anything approaching modern precision attack.

It has been argued that while the dehousing strategy was definitely part of Douhet's thinking, the British use was tied more to their technical capabilities.