Bomber Boys- BBC 1.
Is this where the RAF got the first idea of starting firestorms? Or was that an older idea?
- And even in WW1 the Germans were trying to create fires during their bombing attacks.
Last edited by Load Toad; 9th Feb 2012 at 06:54.
Le May had to resort to bombing 'areas' / cities in Japan I think in part because it proved impossible due to the effect of the jet stream that the B-29's flew in, to bomb accurately with the bombing computers then available.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Some would argue that HE is humane, none could argue that a firestorm
It may be true to say that sudden death from HE is better than a slower death from oxygen starvation. OTOH a slow death from crush injury or being entombed under rubble may be less preferable to sudden incineration from a firestorm.
On the carpet bombing in Japan, I have a vague recollection that they used a lot of cottage industry rather than larger factories for some things so a wide bombing was necessary.
Jane-DoH:-
and your response sounds suspiciously like passing the buck. The modern bomber (as was in 1939/45) existed, it had been invented, it was where technology had got to, it was a fact! The RAF first tried to use it in the way that you would insist upon, used by day to attack pinpoint military targets. It was suicidal, mainly because the modern monoplane cannon equipped fighter also existed. In one raid alone all 11 aircraft were shot down. The solution, as our own fighters lacked the range to escort our bombers to strategic enemy targets, was to fly at night. Immediately there was a problem, pinpoint enemy targets could no longer be located let alone destroyed. The only targets that could be located, ie navigated to, were enemy cities which contained vital communications and production centres. They also of course housed the workers that manned those facilities. Striking at cities would thus disrupt the enemy war effort. Blaming all that on Douhet and/or Trenchard and/or Mitchell is up to you. Personally I see it as a fait accompli, we turned to area bombing because that was the only way to take the war to the enemy. You don't win wars by picking at the periphery, but by going for the jugular. It's crude, it's inhumane, it's war! I was one of the children that you see as victims in that cruel calculation. My mother, alone as most were because their men were at war, moved us from Clacton, where German bombers tended to coast in to follow the Thames to London and to often jettison their bombs there if having to abort their missions, to Bournemouth just in time for the tip and run raids of the Fw190's;-) Again, like many others, her man didn't come back and she had to carry on alone. There are no nice wars, 20 million Russians died in WWII, and unknown millions more Chinese. War is hell, not just for soldiers but for all. In many ways that has been our salvation, that "MAD" kept the peace through the Cold War for fear of the effects of a Hot one! I doubt if our luck will hold forever, and as we know all too well the "limited" wars continue unchecked. No doubt the perspective is different on the otherside of the pond as your homeland was hit by nothing more than paper balloon bombs, but I would remind you that substantially more hardware was being developed in Germany to correct that anomaly. If the Russians had not prevailed at Kursk, if the Western Allies had not got ashore on D-Day, that anomaly would have probably been corrected. Both successes can be attributed to the round the clock bombing of Germany. Ponder upon the thought of a dirty radiation bomb or two dropped on New York and other East Coast cities and perhaps the efficacy of winning the war in Europe ASAP can be better appreciated.
, "the Strategic Bombing of cities happened because it could happen"
Actually that sounds suspiciously similar to my motto which is a variation of Murphy's law: If it can go bad, it will go bad; if it does go bad, it will do so in the worst possible way.
Actually that sounds suspiciously similar to my motto which is a variation of Murphy's law: If it can go bad, it will go bad; if it does go bad, it will do so in the worst possible way.
Last edited by Chugalug2; 9th Feb 2012 at 09:05.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
I agree with Chug and I think Beamer has hit the nub of the matter.
There have been many excellent programmes and indeed series in the past. There is also a genre on the channels such as History that meld the images and old programmes with the recollections of the survivors. Better that than the Brothers Kamarov playing in aircraft.
They showed how inaccurate he was in his timing in a Dakota. Better we had been shown the equipment and techniques actually available in 1943.
The RD Jones (4-fee Jones) programmes on the electronic war would be well worth recovering and adding the human element.
Lancasters dropped window; how did Lancasters drop window?
Lancasters had Fishpond; did Fishpond work? If Fishpond worked it would have detected the schrage musik fighter; were any so detected?
Problem there is you need a trained and skilled researcher to ask the right questions.
There have been many excellent programmes and indeed series in the past. There is also a genre on the channels such as History that meld the images and old programmes with the recollections of the survivors. Better that than the Brothers Kamarov playing in aircraft.
They showed how inaccurate he was in his timing in a Dakota. Better we had been shown the equipment and techniques actually available in 1943.
The RD Jones (4-fee Jones) programmes on the electronic war would be well worth recovering and adding the human element.
Lancasters dropped window; how did Lancasters drop window?
Lancasters had Fishpond; did Fishpond work? If Fishpond worked it would have detected the schrage musik fighter; were any so detected?
Problem there is you need a trained and skilled researcher to ask the right questions.
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Personally, I think that, notwithstanding some of the issues pointed out previously, if it was not for the fact that Ewan McGregor had wanted to make this programme, it would either remain an idea or have been should on BBC4 at 0400 one Wednesday. Because of his participation in this programme, there may be some people who have been made aware of the sacrifices of Bomber Command during WW2. That can't be a bad thing.
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I can recommend the book "the First Blitz"...review below, from the "Mail Online"
1914 bombs over London
THE FIRST BLITZ by Neil Hanson
By Christopher Hudson
Trains in Liverpool Street were blown apart. Buildings toppled into clouds of dust.
Londoners ran frantically through burning streets, seeking shelter in basements and Tube stations, while ambulances collected the dead and dying.
Death came so suddenly. A man in a cafe had his arm blown off as he was raising a cup of tea to his lips; in the same second a caretaker's wife looking out from a nearby window was beheaded by broken glass.
Enlarge
BRITISH MEANS PLUCK: London schoolchildren are taught about the dangers of zeppelins, 1916
A group of people passing the Albion Clothing Store in Aldgate were blown to bits, indistinguishable from the shop-window dummies.
As the German bombers turned back, unloading their remaining cargo, one bomb dropped over a school in the East India Dock Road, plunging through to the kindergarten in the basement, where the class was making paper lanterns.
Weeping parents clawed at the rubble with their bare hands: 18 children were killed, 30 more were seriously injured and scores of others wounded.
More...
The 1940s bombing raids over London have taken such a powerful grip upon our imagination that the existence of an earlier Blitz, in World War I, will come to many readers as a complete surprise. Yet as Neil Hanson, author of The Unknown Soldier, demonstrates in this gripping and well-researched book, it was in many ways more terrifying.
The bi-plane which dropped a bomb on Tommy Terson's cabbage-patch in Dover on Christmas Eve 1914 represented the first attack on mainland Britain for centuries.
Although the German bombers and their bombs were to become enorshortly mously more powerful, Field arshal Haig clung to the belief that reconnaissance could be done 'immeasurably better' by cavalry. The War was nearly over before either Haig or his air chief Trenchard accepted that strategic bombing could win wars.
London and the South-East, therefore, remained almost defenceless against attacks, first by Zeppelin airships and then by bombers.
The Royal Flying Corps's handful of flimsy bi-planes was no match for them, and the anti-aircraft batteries, organised by the monocled, moustachioed Brigadier 'Splash' Ashmore, were of more danger to Londoners from falling shells and shrapnel than they were to enemy aircraft.
These raids were launched, from 1917 onwards, by the England Squadron, whose sole purpose was to reduce London to jelly.
Germany's military commander Ludendorff made its purpose clear: 'The moral intimidation of the British nation and the crippling of the will to fight'. In this, the Squadron — brought to life through some eloquent memoirs — came close to succeeding.
For men, women and children at home, it was as if they had suddenly been drafted into the front line, where death and mutilation were dealt out randomly.
Unaccustomed to high explosives, a number of Londoners caught in bomb raids died of fright; others went mad. Bad weather in 1917 cancelled many raids, but one week in mid-June, known as the Blitz of the Harvest Moon, nearly brought the capital to its knees.
Air raid warnings back then consisted of policemen on bicycles ringing their bells — followed by the rumble and then roar of gun batteries, the whine of shells and the shuddering crump of bombs, while searchlights cut through the darkness in sword-blades of light.
People rushed into Tube stations: on the second night, 120,000 Londoners crammed into the Underground, by then filthy with urine and excrement, taking their bedding, baskets of food, even their pets. Thousands more fled from the city into the fields, or bedded down in parks or factories.
Six raids in the space of eight days left 69 people killed and nearly 400 seriously injured.
Winston Churchill predicted that up to four million people would leave the capital under another such onslaught. A worried government promised reprisal raids against the enemy, but the attitude of Haig and Trenchard meant that scarcely any British aircraft capable of strategic bombing existed.
The English Squadron had what it called The Fire Plan. By dropping incendiary bombs it would create firestorms across London, triggering mass panic which would force the British to sue for peace. The problem was that its incendiaries were too primitive to have this effect.
Not until late 1918 did German scientists perfect what they called the Elektron bomb, a magnesium bomb which burned in air and water alike with a ferociously hot flame.
Tiny enough to be dropped in their thousands, they were able to penetrate attic roofs; a single bomber could turn the whole of
London into an inferno. Hanson provides a last-minute ending which shows how close we came to disaster. If a single bomber was to penetrate London's much improved defences it could have changed the course of the War.
Thirty-six bombers were prepared for what their pilots knew would be a suicide mission.
In August and early September, orders to launch the Fire Plan were twice issued and twice countermanded by commanders who feared British retribution now that they could see the war was lost. Britain's wettest September followed, and on the 28th Ludendorff sued for peace.
A quarter of a century later, Elektron bombs would be used in a British Fire Plan, against the people who invented them.
1914 bombs over London
THE FIRST BLITZ by Neil Hanson
By Christopher Hudson
Trains in Liverpool Street were blown apart. Buildings toppled into clouds of dust.
Londoners ran frantically through burning streets, seeking shelter in basements and Tube stations, while ambulances collected the dead and dying.
Death came so suddenly. A man in a cafe had his arm blown off as he was raising a cup of tea to his lips; in the same second a caretaker's wife looking out from a nearby window was beheaded by broken glass.
Enlarge
BRITISH MEANS PLUCK: London schoolchildren are taught about the dangers of zeppelins, 1916
A group of people passing the Albion Clothing Store in Aldgate were blown to bits, indistinguishable from the shop-window dummies.
As the German bombers turned back, unloading their remaining cargo, one bomb dropped over a school in the East India Dock Road, plunging through to the kindergarten in the basement, where the class was making paper lanterns.
Weeping parents clawed at the rubble with their bare hands: 18 children were killed, 30 more were seriously injured and scores of others wounded.
More...
The 1940s bombing raids over London have taken such a powerful grip upon our imagination that the existence of an earlier Blitz, in World War I, will come to many readers as a complete surprise. Yet as Neil Hanson, author of The Unknown Soldier, demonstrates in this gripping and well-researched book, it was in many ways more terrifying.
The bi-plane which dropped a bomb on Tommy Terson's cabbage-patch in Dover on Christmas Eve 1914 represented the first attack on mainland Britain for centuries.
Although the German bombers and their bombs were to become enorshortly mously more powerful, Field arshal Haig clung to the belief that reconnaissance could be done 'immeasurably better' by cavalry. The War was nearly over before either Haig or his air chief Trenchard accepted that strategic bombing could win wars.
London and the South-East, therefore, remained almost defenceless against attacks, first by Zeppelin airships and then by bombers.
The Royal Flying Corps's handful of flimsy bi-planes was no match for them, and the anti-aircraft batteries, organised by the monocled, moustachioed Brigadier 'Splash' Ashmore, were of more danger to Londoners from falling shells and shrapnel than they were to enemy aircraft.
These raids were launched, from 1917 onwards, by the England Squadron, whose sole purpose was to reduce London to jelly.
Germany's military commander Ludendorff made its purpose clear: 'The moral intimidation of the British nation and the crippling of the will to fight'. In this, the Squadron — brought to life through some eloquent memoirs — came close to succeeding.
For men, women and children at home, it was as if they had suddenly been drafted into the front line, where death and mutilation were dealt out randomly.
Unaccustomed to high explosives, a number of Londoners caught in bomb raids died of fright; others went mad. Bad weather in 1917 cancelled many raids, but one week in mid-June, known as the Blitz of the Harvest Moon, nearly brought the capital to its knees.
Air raid warnings back then consisted of policemen on bicycles ringing their bells — followed by the rumble and then roar of gun batteries, the whine of shells and the shuddering crump of bombs, while searchlights cut through the darkness in sword-blades of light.
People rushed into Tube stations: on the second night, 120,000 Londoners crammed into the Underground, by then filthy with urine and excrement, taking their bedding, baskets of food, even their pets. Thousands more fled from the city into the fields, or bedded down in parks or factories.
Six raids in the space of eight days left 69 people killed and nearly 400 seriously injured.
Winston Churchill predicted that up to four million people would leave the capital under another such onslaught. A worried government promised reprisal raids against the enemy, but the attitude of Haig and Trenchard meant that scarcely any British aircraft capable of strategic bombing existed.
The English Squadron had what it called The Fire Plan. By dropping incendiary bombs it would create firestorms across London, triggering mass panic which would force the British to sue for peace. The problem was that its incendiaries were too primitive to have this effect.
Not until late 1918 did German scientists perfect what they called the Elektron bomb, a magnesium bomb which burned in air and water alike with a ferociously hot flame.
Tiny enough to be dropped in their thousands, they were able to penetrate attic roofs; a single bomber could turn the whole of
London into an inferno. Hanson provides a last-minute ending which shows how close we came to disaster. If a single bomber was to penetrate London's much improved defences it could have changed the course of the War.
Thirty-six bombers were prepared for what their pilots knew would be a suicide mission.
In August and early September, orders to launch the Fire Plan were twice issued and twice countermanded by commanders who feared British retribution now that they could see the war was lost. Britain's wettest September followed, and on the 28th Ludendorff sued for peace.
A quarter of a century later, Elektron bombs would be used in a British Fire Plan, against the people who invented them.
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Not sure if anyone else has seen this program.
A British TV series is being shown here about the various effects of WW11 bombs on houses etc.
They built two rows of houses and over the series detonated the equivalent of the various bombs nearby to show the effects. As the bombs got larger, the buildings gradually fell apart.
They also showed how the inccendary bombs worked, getting caught in the roof and setting fore to the beams etc.
All in all, I thought it was quite informative.
A British TV series is being shown here about the various effects of WW11 bombs on houses etc.
They built two rows of houses and over the series detonated the equivalent of the various bombs nearby to show the effects. As the bombs got larger, the buildings gradually fell apart.
They also showed how the inccendary bombs worked, getting caught in the roof and setting fore to the beams etc.
All in all, I thought it was quite informative.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
500N, not that I am aware of. However I had seen a training film of the 60s that showed the stength of the Victorian terrace houses and shops and their potential for surviving levels of nuclear blast.
The main strength of the shop was the iron columns supporting the upper floors. The strength of the house lay in the bedroom floor construction. In both cases the frint could be blown out but the building would hold together. Obviously this only applied to blast and not to a direct hit.
The main strength of the shop was the iron columns supporting the upper floors. The strength of the house lay in the bedroom floor construction. In both cases the frint could be blown out but the building would hold together. Obviously this only applied to blast and not to a direct hit.
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Found it. It's called the Blitz Street TV Series
Must have been Ch 4 in the UK
About , Series & Episode, Pictures and Articles can be found on the following link
Blitz Street - Series 1 - Episode 1 - Blitz Street - Channel 4
More Video, photos and information here
Blitz Street TV Show - National Geographic Channel - UK
Blitz Street tells the story of the Blitz as it has never been told before. This two-hour special aims to highlight the true horrors of the ferocious and constant bombardment of the Blitz, and to explain why, ultimately, it failed.
Blitz Street itself is a row of terraced houses, specially built on a remote military base. The 'Street' will be subjected to a frightening range of large-scale high explosive bombs and devices similar to those used by the Luftwaffe. With precise measurements of the supersonic blast waves and flying shrapnel, this programme reveals the devastating impact of real explosives on bricks and mortar, allowing scientists to study the awesome power and anatomy of Second...
Must have been Ch 4 in the UK
About , Series & Episode, Pictures and Articles can be found on the following link
Blitz Street - Series 1 - Episode 1 - Blitz Street - Channel 4
More Video, photos and information here
Blitz Street TV Show - National Geographic Channel - UK
Blitz Street tells the story of the Blitz as it has never been told before. This two-hour special aims to highlight the true horrors of the ferocious and constant bombardment of the Blitz, and to explain why, ultimately, it failed.
Blitz Street itself is a row of terraced houses, specially built on a remote military base. The 'Street' will be subjected to a frightening range of large-scale high explosive bombs and devices similar to those used by the Luftwaffe. With precise measurements of the supersonic blast waves and flying shrapnel, this programme reveals the devastating impact of real explosives on bricks and mortar, allowing scientists to study the awesome power and anatomy of Second...
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Yes, it has been shown here - quite a while ago now. In SOME ways it was true in others it was wrong. They did, in fact, miss the point and did not cater for blast in the way it ACTUALLY happened. They missed out badly.
Depending on the type of bomb used, incendiary, HE, butterfly, or aerial mines they each had their own power. I recall one instance a couple of hundred yards away. A HE fell on a house, which fell in on itself from the explosion while a part of each house either side was damaged - there was no loss of life.
I saw many incendiaries 'laying around' as were butterfly bombs, designed to explode as people and children picked them up - usually with severe injury to hands and face. This was indiscriminate bombing of the populace living in newly built property for the overspill of eastenders. It took some time for the penny to drop that we were NOT the target but merely the victims of bomb disposal by German crews who were happier to go home than to engage night fighters, though there was precious few of those at the time.
The blitz on London was entirely another matter. That was sheer deliberate murder at the hands of Goering and Hitler. It was that that made youngsters like me, wished like no other wish, that the RAF knocked nine skittles out of Germany, and its people got the same as we did - 10 fold, 100 fold the more the better. The RAF and our bomber boys did us proud and with no small measure they did themselves proud too. It is tough enough today to remember that ONE THIRD of BOMBER COMMAND crews were killed. Its bringing tears to my eyes just to think of it. What makes it even more gratifying is that each one of them was a VOLUNTEER. They did what they did for this country of ours and for ME.
I hope there are a lot of ME people in Green Park at the dedication of the memorial to join these wonderful and brave men. It will be sad that not ALL of them will be there - simply because this memorial is very very late in coming. BUT........it will be there for people to visit and remember the Bomber Boys long after we have gone.
God bless every single one of them.
Depending on the type of bomb used, incendiary, HE, butterfly, or aerial mines they each had their own power. I recall one instance a couple of hundred yards away. A HE fell on a house, which fell in on itself from the explosion while a part of each house either side was damaged - there was no loss of life.
I saw many incendiaries 'laying around' as were butterfly bombs, designed to explode as people and children picked them up - usually with severe injury to hands and face. This was indiscriminate bombing of the populace living in newly built property for the overspill of eastenders. It took some time for the penny to drop that we were NOT the target but merely the victims of bomb disposal by German crews who were happier to go home than to engage night fighters, though there was precious few of those at the time.
The blitz on London was entirely another matter. That was sheer deliberate murder at the hands of Goering and Hitler. It was that that made youngsters like me, wished like no other wish, that the RAF knocked nine skittles out of Germany, and its people got the same as we did - 10 fold, 100 fold the more the better. The RAF and our bomber boys did us proud and with no small measure they did themselves proud too. It is tough enough today to remember that ONE THIRD of BOMBER COMMAND crews were killed. Its bringing tears to my eyes just to think of it. What makes it even more gratifying is that each one of them was a VOLUNTEER. They did what they did for this country of ours and for ME.
I hope there are a lot of ME people in Green Park at the dedication of the memorial to join these wonderful and brave men. It will be sad that not ALL of them will be there - simply because this memorial is very very late in coming. BUT........it will be there for people to visit and remember the Bomber Boys long after we have gone.
God bless every single one of them.
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PPruNe
Thanks for the insight. I can only compare it to what my Grand Parents street was like (Croydon), a hell of a lot wider than the one in the show with trees and a whole load of other things to affect / deflect the blast.
I thought that the way they detonated the bombs, height, distance, way it was packed etc was sometimes iffy, however of course they wanted the buildings to still be standing for the next episode so that probably made TV production hard and of course they didn't have real bombs.
My grand parents said that lots of kids were injured picking up bits and pieces of bomb casings that turned out to be small bombs and things.
All in all, it was quite interesting and the slow motion replay of the explosion / shockwaves were good.
Thanks for the insight. I can only compare it to what my Grand Parents street was like (Croydon), a hell of a lot wider than the one in the show with trees and a whole load of other things to affect / deflect the blast.
I thought that the way they detonated the bombs, height, distance, way it was packed etc was sometimes iffy, however of course they wanted the buildings to still be standing for the next episode so that probably made TV production hard and of course they didn't have real bombs.
My grand parents said that lots of kids were injured picking up bits and pieces of bomb casings that turned out to be small bombs and things.
All in all, it was quite interesting and the slow motion replay of the explosion / shockwaves were good.
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PN,
Humanity is a fundemental of LOAC. You seem to disagree. Would you say that there was no difference morally from using a clinical weapon e.g. bullet to temple and one that caused a painful death e.g. lowering you into a meat grinder? I would say that the difference was clear. So does the law.
Examples deliberately chosen to be left and right of arc.
The point stands. Both in practice and in law one weapon system is indeed more, or less, humane than the next.
I think your point is that to kill is to kill, which is valid to a degree.
Humanity is a fundemental of LOAC. You seem to disagree. Would you say that there was no difference morally from using a clinical weapon e.g. bullet to temple and one that caused a painful death e.g. lowering you into a meat grinder? I would say that the difference was clear. So does the law.
Examples deliberately chosen to be left and right of arc.
The point stands. Both in practice and in law one weapon system is indeed more, or less, humane than the next.
I think your point is that to kill is to kill, which is valid to a degree.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
orca, you misunderstood. I expressed no preference for HE or Incendiary and I would agree that a bullet to the brain is more humane than a meat grinder but we were not talking about bullets and meat grinders or clean kill over messy kill.
A bullet may indeed kill instantly if it hits the brain. If OTOH is causes a debilitating wound with death from bleeding or later perhaps from gangrene you could not then argue that a bullet is a clean kill.
My point was that HE is by no means a clean kill any more than death by incendiary is necessarily messy. Both HE and Incendiary may achieve an instant kill but equally both may result in a prolonged and agonising death. Now do you see my point?
A bullet may indeed kill instantly if it hits the brain. If OTOH is causes a debilitating wound with death from bleeding or later perhaps from gangrene you could not then argue that a bullet is a clean kill.
My point was that HE is by no means a clean kill any more than death by incendiary is necessarily messy. Both HE and Incendiary may achieve an instant kill but equally both may result in a prolonged and agonising death. Now do you see my point?
Last edited by Pontius Navigator; 9th Feb 2012 at 15:45.
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Yes, I was only 2or3 duringthe BoB but you may remember that the war lasted a few more years. I cannot, at this remove, remember exactly when the Anderson shelter incident ocurred but getting shot at was probably at the time of the tip and run raids. I was a bit too young to actually identify the aircraft. All I know is that it came over the hill and all the adults dispersed sharpish so I did too and just heard a few bangs and then it was all over. Caught the bus too. To put things in perspective, I can remember going out with my mate from over the road the morning after a raid looking for shrapnel. Never actually found any! Mate's name was Geoff Baldock - anyone remember him?
Yes, I was only 2or3 duringthe BoB but you may remember that the war lasted a few more years. I cannot, at this remove, remember exactly when the Anderson shelter incident ocurred but getting shot at was probably at the time of the tip and run raids. I was a bit too young to actually identify the aircraft. All I know is that it came over the hill and all the adults dispersed sharpish so I did too and just heard a few bangs and then it was all over. Caught the bus too. To put things in perspective, I can remember going out with my mate from over the road the morning after a raid looking for shrapnel. Never actually found any! Mate's name was Geoff Baldock - anyone remember him?
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Le May had to resort to bombing 'areas' / cities in Japan I think in part because it proved impossible due to the effect of the jet stream that the B-29's flew in, to bomb accurately with the bombing computers then available.
The latter section of the book deals with Morgan's return to combat, flying B-29's in the PTO. The subject of Le May and the firebombing raids does come up, as do the difficulties of high level bombing in the jet stream over Japan.
A change of tactics to low-mid level bombing was required to improve accuracy, but the fire bombing was not begun as a counter to inaccurate bombing, but because a couple of hundred B-29's dropping incendiary bombs on cities built primarily from wood could completely and utterly raize anything from 5-25 square miles of a city, with damage spreading much further.
Japanese cities tended not to have industrial and residential districts either, with industrial targets often literally right next door to densely populated residential areas.
Combined with the projected casualties of an Allied invasion of the mainland (1 million+), and the knowledge that more or less the entire population would sacrifice themselves in the defence of the homelands, firebombing was seen as the most effective strategy for the bombing campaign over Japan.
As others have stated, applying 21st century morality to 1940's warfare is neither fair nor right. As I was born over 30 years after the end of WW2, I shall leave the "right or wrong" debate to those who were there.
Orca:
Sorry old chap, didn't quite catch your lingo. Using Google I see that LOAC can stand for "Law of Armed Conflict". This seems to fit into the context. Is that what you meant? In your exchange with PN you seemed to infer that raising a Firestorm, whether intentional or not, by use of incendiaries would be contrary to that "law". Is that what you meant? Did that law exist in WWII? Does it exist now? Is that why Typhoons of 617 Squadron now make low passes to "intimidate" the enemy instead of killing them? Is that what they should have done in WWII? Or is this all a fluffy new way to exercise airpower when the enemy has none, and how long would it last if he did? Was this the point that Colin McGregor was making in his chat with his brother one hour into the prog? Was it indeed he and not Ewan who was "on message" throughout? I am genuinely mystified by the arm's length that the modern RAF seems to keep from its WWII Bombing Campaign. Is LOAC the reason why?
Humanity is a fundemental of LOAC.
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Chugalug,
Yes indeed, Law Of Armed Conflict is what I meant. The basic building blocks of which are Necessity, Humanity, Proportion and Distinction.
One must make the distinction between military and civil targets, one mustn't use inhuman methods to kill (killing in itself is fine), one must be proportional and attack sensible targets, not wipe a race off the planet when only a few would do. One must only attack those things that are actually necessary to achieve the aim.
Now, this is of course modern thinking. I have no idea what the guys were briefed at the time, or what the law was. I only offer the above as that is what I was briefed and what I adhered to when it was my turn to employ HE on Her Majesty's foes.
I cannot speak for the RAF as I am not a part of it, but in my opinion, when measured against this contemporary yardstick, the combined RAF/ USAAF bombing campaign falls short on three out of four counts. That would, in my opinion and in today's environment, make the campaign a war crime, pure and simple. I still support what they did. They didn't do it today, they did it in a time of incredible evil and absolute necessity.
I honestly believe the problem has always been one of honesty. Attacking civilians because you can't accurately target anything more meaningful, or targeting civilians knowingly as part of taking on a target set within a city is, quite simply, attacking civilians. We shouldn't try to skirt the issue with handy catch alls like 'Total War'. We should be bold enough to commemorate and appreciate what the boys did, because in the (fairly exceptional) circumstances, they did the right thing.
PN,
Yes I do get your point and you make it well. I think my personal distinction is that using a HE warhead to kill people with blast and fragmentation is a different proposition to deliberately using HE/ incendiaries to start a firestorm. Just my opinion.
Yes indeed, Law Of Armed Conflict is what I meant. The basic building blocks of which are Necessity, Humanity, Proportion and Distinction.
One must make the distinction between military and civil targets, one mustn't use inhuman methods to kill (killing in itself is fine), one must be proportional and attack sensible targets, not wipe a race off the planet when only a few would do. One must only attack those things that are actually necessary to achieve the aim.
Now, this is of course modern thinking. I have no idea what the guys were briefed at the time, or what the law was. I only offer the above as that is what I was briefed and what I adhered to when it was my turn to employ HE on Her Majesty's foes.
I cannot speak for the RAF as I am not a part of it, but in my opinion, when measured against this contemporary yardstick, the combined RAF/ USAAF bombing campaign falls short on three out of four counts. That would, in my opinion and in today's environment, make the campaign a war crime, pure and simple. I still support what they did. They didn't do it today, they did it in a time of incredible evil and absolute necessity.
I honestly believe the problem has always been one of honesty. Attacking civilians because you can't accurately target anything more meaningful, or targeting civilians knowingly as part of taking on a target set within a city is, quite simply, attacking civilians. We shouldn't try to skirt the issue with handy catch alls like 'Total War'. We should be bold enough to commemorate and appreciate what the boys did, because in the (fairly exceptional) circumstances, they did the right thing.
PN,
Yes I do get your point and you make it well. I think my personal distinction is that using a HE warhead to kill people with blast and fragmentation is a different proposition to deliberately using HE/ incendiaries to start a firestorm. Just my opinion.