You are kind of getting at my point. Like it or not, the first goal of any politician is to stay in power, if they don’t they WILL be deposed and at the mercy of those who will do whatever it takes to stay in power. This is why systems and checks and balances are so important, the perverse incentive to stay in power no matter what affects everyone though, in different ways, it’s been said Marcus Arelius knew Commodus was a monster but couldn’t bear to name an adoptive heir because it would be signing the death warrant of his son due to Rome’s snake pit factional system would use Commudous as a rallying point even if Commodus protested otherwise, which had always happened to other claimants during the Year of the Four Emperors. And much to my horror as I was pondering why I was so troubled about the story of Samuel turning on King Saul, I realized that whatever Saul did AFTER Samuel (and supposedly God) rejected him, I realized that Saul was backed into a corner trying to defy divine prophesy and thus God himself because the end of Saul’s house ruling Israel put his entire immediate family in danger and almost certainly meant the death of his sons especially Johnathan.
Now that sounds like a tangent, but I assure you it presses home the peril of losing power, especially in perilous times. Power is the only thing that protects and looking impotent is the fastest way to lose the greatest power a government has: legitimacy. Not doing SOMETHING major with Bomber command in 1942 was politically dangerous in both domestic and foreign affairs because the British government had nothing but disasters on its hands since the breaking of the first siege of Tobruk.
Strategic Bombing can be done in a non/less war crimey way, even in World War II contexts, when focusing on logistics, smashing train lines, shooting up trains, and paralyzing logistics, that was ultimately the way German Industry was FINALLY broken in very late 44 and 45, but clearly the tech for that kind of precision bombing, especially at night didn’t exist, not even to hit usually well out of the way oil refineries.
BUT those Gulags and concentration Camps COULD have been run much less evil, as maximum work camps and not as happy fun torture centers. Still not great by our standards, big improvement for the those enduring them. Same thing with Stat bombers. They are designed as strat bombers but they are planes, so they can be retrofitted to do other things.
If Stalin weren’t the worst, and this is all on him, retrofitting them as long-range recon planes to give the Soviets long-range intel on German troop movements, but that would require Stalin not to be a treacherous POS and he’d already doublecrossed the Americans and stole the planes from the Doolittle Raid that landed in Vladivolstok. He did return the crews but seriously Fuck That Ingrate.
They could have flown high priority cargo runs but again, Stalin was a treacherous weasel who would have stolen the planes and specs.
They could have been useful in taking Crete or Norway to bomb Ploesti or secure Lend-Lease Lines IF the British had the Manpower, but they didn’t, and I don’t think they could have been used as bailout Kamakazies to crack the Sub pens in France, although if they did that would be flipping awesome and might have ended the war a lot sooner.
Then again that peens had concrete sheets 10-15 meters thick of solid concrete. MAYBE if you filled the planes with N-STOFF and the planes had retrofitted ejector seats with parachutes and commandos were ready to pick them up in little rubber boats and the French resistance was on standby in case they got blown inland, and that’s total James Bond territory but real-life WW2 Spec Force Malarky included Mad Jack Churchill Christopher Lee so I think they totally could have pulled it off. I’m just not sure even a Lancaster stuffed to the gills with N-Stoff, even if the British knew about the stuff could destroy a Sub Pen in Occupied France