History Hunters on Yesterday Grp Capt Peter Casement

[WB627]

Not happy that yet again a programme maker referred to the RAF "switching bombing tactics from military targets to cities"

Both my father and father in law were RAF pilots during WW2 and were never happy with the post war criticism of Bomber Command. My FIL's brother was accredited Battle of Britain aircrew, Blenheim air gunner. My dad's home in London was bombed in 1940 and the family lost everything they owned. None of them are still alive, so I think I have the right to take up this argument on their behalf.

So lets ask a few questions ......
1/ Who started the war?
2/ Were the cities bombed by the RAF or for that matter the USAAF, any less military targets than the cities bombed by the Nazis, London, Liverpool, Hull, Bristol, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Cardiff, Swansea, Birmingham, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield, Lowestoft and the Medway Towns?
3/ What were our options at that time, to take the war to the Nazis in Europe?

For the record, we bombed Dresden at the request of Stalin, a direct order given to Air Marshall Harris by Churchill, who subsequently, to his everlasting shame, distance himself from that order. Fire bombing, we learnt that tactic from the Nazis, London & Coventry 1940.

Grp Capt Peter Casement, one of the Bomber Command heros that took the war to the Nazis and one of the few to survive.