|
Post by Sir John on Mar 10, 2013 22:23:21 GMT -5
Sorry. but i am going to have to ask for a reference on those claims.
The formation leaders look down from maybe 15,000 feet and assess the damade as such and such, and make a decision to defy USAAF orders and bomb some empty fields. Did tehy hold a conference in the air, who 'chaired' that discussion and what did they decide?
I doubt that VERY much!
SJ
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2013 22:41:17 GMT -5
The only possible target at Dresden that was of any military importance was a railroad track as in all bombing raids the lead bomber sets the target the rest follow the lead . There was a large POW camp at Dresden , Kurt Vannagut in his book Slaughter house five covers that , there were no military targets at Dresden .
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 10, 2013 23:15:03 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 10, 2013 23:25:27 GMT -5
I wonder at the 'morality' of the 8th Air Force on this raid, and the men over Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, and 50 other cities where they bounced the rubble all the way to the 8th May 1945.
And rail marshaling yards ARE a military target, the 8th bombed them all the time.
And the men who burned Tokyo etc etc etc to a crisp, and killed 50,000 in one raid. They even flew lower to make the firestorm destruction that much more effective. .....and the 8th dropped well over ONE MILLION incendiaries over Europe in WW2!
Please. no lectures on comparative morality to me thanks. The 48 never knew a bombing raid in WW2! How would they know what i=t was like.
"Reap the Whirlwind"
And unless I am wrong, which I never am, the Geneva Convention forbids a POW camp in civilian or target area.
....and please don't tell me about the Norden Bomb Sight. The 8th were little better than the RAF at accuracy.
SJ
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 10:37:44 GMT -5
The fact that there was conjecture concerning Dresden indicates there may have been an issue , the Norden bomb sight was so secrect that that most Bomadiers didn't know how to use it , the use of the Atomic Bomb , some say it wasn't nessasary , that Japan was already beaten to a pulp , America had the right man for the job , Harry Truman , he didn't lose any sleep over it .
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 11, 2013 13:17:49 GMT -5
Agree about Truman, I put him in the top 5. He took on that "lying son of a bitch" and won. As for the Norden Bombsight there is some fascinating info in this link:- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight According to that, the Norden bombsight data was passed to the Germans BEFORE WW2. Its accuracy, (CEP) in all but the best weather, and nil opposition, was little better than other devices, including the "Mark.1. Eyeball'. And RAF accuracy at night was very bad until the 'Pathfinders' came into operation. As for the claim that the US commander, (a full Colonel perhaps) defied his orders and dropped his load on the vacant fields, I assume that he would have had a Court Martial waiting for him back home. The author of your book seems to me to be of German heritage, or even a direct German, with an axe to grind on the subject, and his reputation is very fragile. SJ
|
|
|
Post by mcnoch on Mar 11, 2013 14:42:10 GMT -5
"Slaughter House Five" is a satire, not a documentation!
War always bring the darkest forces in us to the surface, it didn't needed Hitler or WW2 to do as every halfway well read military historian will tell you. Since the old Egyptians whole regions were razed to rubble and ten-thausends of humans killed. And this happened always from than on during war. We as humans can do that, humans have the talent to be cruel. It was the romantic over-expression of the good knight/soldier coming in the late 18th centruy into the literature world that ignored the reality and made the knight in shining armour the model, which too many people still take as reality, as it makes it easier for people calling for war to live with the consequences.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 14:45:59 GMT -5
I think when the last American arrived at Dresden he found nothing left to bomb except some railroad tracks that lead no where but it was a target other than that a whole lot of nothing , Dresden will always be a question or questinable , Churchill did agree to it but when bomber harris drew some heat Winnie backed off a bit .
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 11, 2013 15:07:54 GMT -5
From the of Wikipedia site,
"14/15 February.
316 B-17 Flying Fortresses bombed Dresden, dropping 771 tons of bombs.[58][59] The rest misidentified their targets. Sixty bombed Prague, dropping 153 tons of bombs on the Czech city while others bombed Brux and Pilsen.[59] The 379th bombardment group started to bomb Dresden at 12:17 aiming at marshalling yards in the Friedrichstadt district west of the city centre as the area was not obscured by smoke and cloud. The 303rd group arrived over Dresden 2 minutes after the 379th found that the their view was obscured by clouds so they bombed Dresden using H2X radar to target this location. The groups that followed the 303rd, (92nd, 306th, 379th, 384th and 457th) also found Dresden obscured by clouds and they too used H2X to locate the target. H2X aiming caused the groups to bomb inaccurately with a wide dispersal over the Dresden area. The last group to bomb Dresden was the 306th and they had finished by 12:30.[60]"
..............................................................................................................................................
I am a fan of 'Bomber' Harris. For many months RAF Bomber Command was the ONLY way of hitting Hitler with any real effect. He and his men had a job to do, orders to carry out, and they did it without a debate on 'morality', Germany certainly never did either.
He used his Lancaster force as best he could by reducing factory output as much as possible, and that included blowing up the machine, cutting the power supply, stopping the supply of parts, stopping munitions going out, keeping the machine operator awake all night, or killing him in his bed. It mattered not at all which one worked.
By 1945 most German cities had been blasted to rubble, and still they kept fighting and producing, much of it in underground factories operated by slave labour.
It was only about 1945 when people wondered about 'morality', to most Brits it was a enjoyable pay-back for 1940/41. Who can blame them?
SJ
|
|
|
Post by jerryfmcompushaft on Mar 11, 2013 17:01:35 GMT -5
Mrality in War is the original oxymoran. To win a war - quickly - one should not be worried about 'collateal damage. Enough 'collateral damage' and the home front will stop supporting the war and it is over!'
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 11, 2013 17:11:35 GMT -5
AFAIK, Dresden was the only city where people were supposed to worry about mothers and babies. Evey other city in WW2 got the treatment without a whimper.
Most of the 'anti' views on Dresden seem to have been generated by both herr Goebbels and the Russians, both anxious to score points at the expense of the allies.
SJ
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 17:32:44 GMT -5
And then you have Singapore to which this thread is dedecated . Next on the line up will be Tobruk and Crete .
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 11, 2013 17:57:26 GMT -5
I have traced the source of the off topic "deviation", and it is in #24 by a certain member called 'Muleskinner'. It all flowed from there, so the offending party must accept full responsibility for the sin.
Of course, I am easily led into defending King and Country against the rebellious ones. I am expecting recognition with a 'gong' soon.
SJ
|
|
|
Post by Sir John on Mar 11, 2013 18:01:33 GMT -5
Given that we have done 'Tobruk', where the glorious and valiant Australians gave the invincible Rommel a hiding, his first, and the first, of two actually, we can now move onto CRETE!
SJ
|
|
|
Post by Swampy on Mar 11, 2013 18:58:39 GMT -5
Given that we have done 'Tobruk', where the glorious and valiant Australians gave the invincible Rommel a hiding, his first, and the first, of two actually, we can now move onto CRETE! The Aussies were invincible, but the New Zealanders were not so invincible, at least not at Crete. While the Germans took the island, they lost so many paratroopers that Hitler forbade the Wehrmacht from using airborne forces again. I've never been convinced that was correct, at least with the allied air landings in hindsight. Sure, the Germans lost, but they eventually got their objective, which was to take the island. Lidell Hart interviewed the German generals after the war, and they said that Cyprus was spared an invasion because of their losses at Crete. Again, I've never been convinced of that logic.
|
|