"panacea target"

[Mullins, Bill]

The term means a target, which if attacked, the destruction of which is
a panacea.  From a defunct link on the Philippines Air Force site:

panacea target. An opprobrious term applied to anyplaces recommended for
bombing because of their alleged keystone character in the industrial or
military structure of the enemy.  The ball-bearing factories, for
example, were 'panacea targets' to those who minimized their importance.

As the above implies, it has a sarcastic quality.  It seems to have
originated with Bomber Harris in WWII, who apparently didn't believe in
such -- if he had gone after German Oil early in the war, rather than
late, it may well have made a difference (despite his belief to the
contrary, the oil fields were in fact panacea targets).



>
> Reading Gerald Posner's /Secrets of the Kingdom/ I kept
> coming across the odd expression, "panacea target," which I
> took to be a bit of military jargon, but the contexts were
> varied enough that I wasn't sure of its meaning. *Broadly
> effective*?  *Solving a number of different problems at one
> time*?  Bill Mullins, can you help?
> A. Murie
>