Bomber Boys- BBC 1.

[orca]

PS 617 (actual Dambusters, probable/ possible Tirpitz killers) fly the Tornado. Well, half of them do, the other half just watch from the back. The Typhoon isn't doing Shows of Force over anyone. Outside Lincolnshire.

The show of force is used more as a way of showing the enemy that the friendlies have air available and is used when collateral considerations, ID criteria or commander's intent preclude kinetics.

If drawn right back to LOAC basics one could argue that there was no necessity for an attack if non-kinetics could achieve the same aim. Saves a lot of paperwork too, although it's not quite such a rush.

[500N]

pontifex

My apologise for questioning you.

Re the Tip and run raids, After the Stuka that shot up my grand mother + aunt,
she said they ran home (it wasn't far) and not long after the phone rang and it was someone calling to tell her that the Stuka that shot at them had been shot down.
It flew over the AA gun that was at the top of the hill in the park / golf course.
I can't remember the name.

[Danny42C]

Chugalug2 (#125) is absolutely right. He's said it all.

Of course, "Jaw, Jaw" is better than "War, War". (Churchill), and we had far too much of that during the thirties.

But there comes a time when:

"Talking time was ended
And fighting time was come". (Kipling)

And Shakespeare warned:

"Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in
Bear it that the opposed may beware of Thee!"

When it is forced upon you, War is War. You have to hit your enemy as hard as you can with everything you've got. Harris had a Club (what a brilliant analogy!). He would have liked a Rapier (think of the crews that would save). But he didn't have a Rapier. There were no rapiers then. There were tales of a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 ft (with the new US Norden bombsight). Some folk believed in fairies too. Harris simply did his best with what he had, and you can't blame him for that. That he has subsequently vilified for doing so is a national disgrace.

War is War, and it's not nice. When the scrap metal starts flying about, innocent people, men women and children, are going to get hurt as well as the combatants. That is sad, but it is so, and always will be so. In the night bombing attacks on German cities, it was a miracle if a bomber crew could find the target city, never mind pick out "military targets". What does a "military target" look like on a dark night? How about a black cat in a coalcellar at midnight? Really, the debate over whether "area bombing" was moral or not was pointless: it was the only possible kind at night. (Are the Germans exercised with any guilt over their "area bombing" of London and twenty other places?)

And how about the Far East. Was Truman justified in authorising the use of the Bomb? Or Colonel Tibbets in dropping it? Think of the appalling suffering that entailed. Yet I and many others were profoundly grateful for it. The alternative would almost certainly been an invasion of the Japanese islands, and that was a fearsome prospect, given what was known about the fanatical capability of the Japanese soldier in defence. It was soberly estimated that such an operation would cost a million Allied lives. The majority of these would be American (Jane-Doh to note). I would probably have been one of the British. The Home Army would fight to the last man and the last round. Civilian casualties would be horrendous, as experience in Okinawa had shown.

Three years before, Harris had declared: "People say that aerial bombing alone cannot win a war. I would say that it has not been tried yet, and we shall see". Now we saw. The War was over. Were Truman, Colonel Tibbets and (by extension) Harris, all wrong?

[orca]

Danny. I completely agree with you. Collateral damage is inevitable (to a greater or lesser degree, mitigated by the targeting process) when attacking the military.

We appear to disagree only on one fundemental point. The combined bomber offensive did not kill civilians as a by product of attack on military targets. They were the target. Let's be big enough to say so.

[Chugalug2]

Orca:

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.

You know, you took the very words out of my mouth! I couldn't have put it better myself! Of course bombing and burning cities kills civilians. It also wins wars, well it did that one anyway. I truly and firmly believe that, and I think that is where we pros and cons differ. If we could have won the war within the same timescale, or even quicker, without doing it then it was wrong practically, never mind LOAC. I do not think that we could though. Indeed I believe that either the Swastika or the Hammer and Sickle would have been worn on arm bands from here to Siberia to this day. If I am right, then it was of "Necessity, Humanity, Proportion and Distinction" so to do. The RAF used to be of the same opinion, well the bit that ran it did anyway. Now it doesn't. Why?
It seems to me that you could apply LOAC to any weapon system that fundamentally changes the practise of war, the submarine, the machine gun, the rifled barrel, gun powder....I believe that the Admiralty had an attitude about the first, but they were all absorbed into the various military manuals in turn as have bombers of course. Now I know that the point is not the weapon but what use is made of it, and that will always be whatever wins wars. So submarines were used by all sides to sink merchant ships and their civilian crews, the machine gun to swing the balance to the defensive and prolong the butchery of WW1, the rifled barrel to do likewise previously, and gun powder to break down city walls leading to the rape and pillage that followed. You see where I'm going with this? I'm afraid I see LOAC as a thing of its time. When you have all the hi-tech gizmos of course you can afford to be picky about what you use and how you use it. When you have a World War that you MUST win then you have to use everything that will enable you to do so. Had BC not done so and we had not won, then it would have violated LOAC, not only for its own population but for every other one that remained unliberated. How it applies to wars that you want to win but can bear losing I don't know, but then justice goes to the victors of course (unless they be Brits it would seem).
Thank you for explaining modern thinking, oh and please forgive my confusing the Typhoon with the Tornado. Perhaps on reflection that is the one thing I will not be forgiven though;-)

As Orca says he cannot speak for the modern RAF vis a vis its attitude to the WWII Bombing Offensive, is there anyone who can? I suspect that Danny42C would share my interest in that. He's a bit of a new kid on the block, a bit wet behind the ears as it were, but as he speaks with direct knowledge of events back then we might all learn something if we pay attention to him.

Danny, great to see you posting here as well as on the WWII Pilots Brevet thread. Thank you for your kind words and the pithy way you tell it as it is. For what it's worth I much prefer that approach than the jargon and sound bites that wrap up everything these days, but as Orca says we shouldn't skirt issues but tackle them head on. So lets get on and do so.....

[Jane-DoH]

orca

A point that many miss is that Mr Churchill could point to the offensive as proof that we were pulling our weight when Russia and the USA were making incredible sacrifices.

The United States was making large sacrifices because were fighting in two theaters (Atlantic/Europe, and Pacific).

The Soviet Union was taking the greatest beating from the Germans. They were sneak-attacked, and then you had SS units exterminating everybody in mass-graves. Then you have Stalin himself who mobilized the whole population to fight, and had his snipers shoot any soldiers who attempted to retreat (in battle it is sometimes necessary to retreat, and then regroup)

I also believe that both during the war and to the present day a high proportion of people have struggled with certain fundementals of the campaign.

Of course, it was aimed almost squarely at civilians. Sure, there was a desire to gut German industry, but there was definitely a desire to basically pound the snot out of civilians.

"The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive and the part which Bomber Command is required by agreed British-US strategy to play in it, should be unambiguously and publicly stated. That aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilised community life throughout Germany.

It should be emphasised that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."
-- Air Marshall Arthur T. Harris

Technically the whole claim of "de-housing the working population" was basically a pretext to engage in all-out attacks against the civilian population whether they be worker or not. Winston Churchill effectively admitted to it whether he intended to or not.

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror though under other pretexts should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of allied bombing. I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives rather than the mere acts of terror and mass destruction, however impressive."

It was, however, when viewed as the only offensive weapon we had at the time, arguably, necessary.

One could argue that at first at least, but for that to hold water, Bomber Command would have had to have started switching to specific targets once improved navigation and targeting systems were developed. That generally didn't seem to be the case; instead most of these things were simply employed to make area-bombing attacks more devastating.

We deliberately targeted civilians.

Which is a war-crime under the Hague conventions which existed at the time.


500N

I see Le May was mentioned. His strategy of fire bombing Japanese cities was the equivalent of Dresden.

Actually, there were some significant differences

DRESDEN

• Weather was clear on the night of 2/13/45 and the early morning hours of 2/14/45 and target area was clearly seen.
• There were industrial sites located on the outskirts of town
• There was a railway marshaling yard, it was outside the target area
• There was a railway bridge of which destroying could have been halted traffic for months
• The industrial sites were not on the bomber-crew's maps
• The railway marshaling yard was outside the RAF target-area
• The railway bridge was outside the target area of the RAF, and probably the USAAF
• Dresden was targeted for incendiary attack from the get-go.
• The RAF aiming point was a large stadium which was known to have large amounts of wood in it's construction and it was believed (correctly) that it would burn well.
• The USAAF was sent to attack the center of the city (though evidently some crews were told they were to attack the railway yards)*
• The B-17's were were carrying an unusually high load of incendiaries (40%) which was typically used by the RAF for fire-bombing (The USAAF generally used a much higher percentage of HE); the bombs were set to land 250-feet apart, effectively resulting in a scattering, rather than a salvo release (which would be consistent with hitting a specific target).

Tokyo

• Initial attacks against Tokyo (and other cities in Japan) were done from high-altitude using the Norden bombsight.
• There was generally a stiff jet-stream over Japan resulting in aircraft achieving either extremely high ground-speeds (faster than the bombsight could keep up), or extremely slow ground-speeds
• Weather was frequently cloudy over Japan making it hard to spot targets
• High altitudes typically employed by B-29's effectively reduced the effectiveness of the Norden bombsight as it was not particularly effective above 20,000 feet.
• Tokyo was known to have a large, decentralized industrial base which would have made traditional bombing difficult (though there were some large factories IIRC)
• Flying at low-altitude at night was effective because the AAA fuses set for those altitudes, and the Japanese didn't have many night-fighters
• Incendiaries were used because the city was largely constructed out of wood, paper and so forth, and burned very easily.

Load Toad

I swear to god that that I saw a book in Page One a while back about the German raids during WW1 and the experiments they carried out making various incendiary devices eventually developing the thermite / magnesium firebomb - that was the same type later used by the British during WW2.

So incendiary attacks predated WW2 by a long-shot.


Chugalug2

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.

Actually there were people in the United States and probably Great Britain that felt that fighters were useful. The problem was

• There was a commonly held attitude that a fighter with sufficient range to escort a bomber would cease to be a fighter. This was clearly wrong, and knowledge of the day existed to show it. It was called the Breguet Range Equation. The greater the fuel fraction, the greater range provided specific fuel consumption, L/D ratio, and thrust/weight ratio remain the same. One could also carry drop-tanks to further augment range. Drop-tanks can also be carried to augment-range
• There were some people who simply felt the bomber would always get through and could defend itself without any trouble. There were a few who realized otherwise. They were either too low of a rank to influence things in a direct fashion, or got themselves into trouble (Billy Mitchell for example got demoted for rocking the boat too much, then court-martialled when he shot his mouth off after an airship crashed).

The RAF had other problems however in that their bombsights weren't as good as ours and even if they had a fighter-escort they couldn't have put the bombs as effectively on target. Eventually, they would develop SABS, which was similar to our Norden bombsight, but by this point there was no desire to bomb accurately and maximizing civilian deaths was the primary objective.

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 would hardly consider MAD to be peace. What MAD did was maintain a balance of terror. I don't even know how many people went to bed praying to whatever god they believed in for the Russians not to nuke us.


Molemot

Germany's military commander Ludendorff made its purpose clear: 'The moral intimidation of the British nation and the crippling of the will to fight'.

Which is a warcrime under the 1907 Hague Conventions. I'm surprised nobody moved to try him for war-crimes and get him hanged?


orca

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'.

Agreed, just admit what was done

We appear to disagree only on one fundemental point. The combined bomber offensive did not kill civilians as a by product of attack on military targets. They were the target. Let's be big enough to say so.

Especially since nobody's going to be tried for it.


R.C.

* According to a B-17 pilot, they were told they were to attack the railway yards; according to the 1st Bombardment Division Commander they were to bomb the center of the city (wikipedia).

[RUCAWO]

The United States was making large sacrifices because were fighting in two theaters (Atlantic/Europe, and Pacific

And the British weren't?

Just how many US cities were bombed with 3-400 plane raids and how many US citizens were killed in these raids?

The Germans started with bombing cities with a mix of HE and incendieries in WW1 , they continued at Guernica, then Rotterdam etc in WW2 then the blitz attacks on London, Coventry, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow , Belfast etc even neutral Dublin ,possibly a mistake but a 100mile navagation error

Nazi germany got everthing it deserved, if the war in Europe had continued a couple of German cities would have been turned into glass carparks ,possibly by B-29s flying from Northern Ireland.

[500N]

Jane-DoH
I meant in terms of huge numbers of people / civilians killed,
not how the bombing was carried out.

[Chugalug2]

Jane DoH:

The RAF had other problems however in that their bombsights weren't as good as ours and even if they had a fighter-escort they couldn't have put the bombs as effectively on target. Eventually, they would develop SABS, which was similar to our Norden bombsight, but by this point there was no desire to bomb accurately and maximizing civilian deaths was the primary objective.

My turn to hand my homework in it seems. I think that the best I can do here is to quote a veteran, Danny42C:-

There were tales of a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 ft (with the new US Norden bombsight). Some folk believed in fairies too.

USAAF bombing was more accurate than BC's it is true. Our average error was 5 miles, theirs 2.5 miles. Both had aiming points, or targets if you will, and neither was told to simply bomb anywhere within a city. The difference wasn't the bomb sight, the difference was day versus night. I understand that the bulk of USAAF bombs were released by "Toggleteers" who had no bombsight but released on cue from the lead bomber that did, with inevitable "creep back".
All that aside, I take it that you consider the USAAF as guilty of the war crimes that you accuse BC of, or do you perhaps not?
MAD kept the peace in my book, for I am content with defining it simply as the absence of war!

[500N]

RUCAWO

Re "Nazi germany got everthing it deserved, if the war in Europe had continued a couple of German cities would have been turned into glass carparks ,possibly by B-29s flying from Northern Ireland."

Question is, why "from Northern Ireland" and not from one of the airfields in the UK ?

[Pontius Navigator]

targeting civilians knowingly as part of taking on a target set within a city is, quite simply, attacking civilians

In the cold war one target set was counter-value - Leningrad for Birmingham. Even where the target was very clearly a city with the DPI in the centre it was always stated that the target was 'the HQ of the Western TVD' or some such military target which we all knew was as good as naming Soboran Barracks in Lincoln as justifciation for bombing Lincoln.

We all knew the military would not be there by the time we bombed the place and it was known that collateral damage was the bonus.

I guess it was written that way even then as legal justification. Even in WW2 the target for tonight might have been 'Cologne' but this would have immediately been amplified to identify the military importance of the target.

Turning to Jane,

The best the pathfinder force achieved was 400 yards and that was similar to the Vs in the 60s. The main force would then bomb the marked target. The main force just did not have the expertise of the pathfnders as many crews would be on their first missions and creep back remained an issue until the end.

If you look at contemporary film of B17 raids you will see that they were not attempting pinpoint accuracy either. The master bomber might be leading the run but the formation would drop on command with the formation spread spreading the load.

[Tankertrashnav]

I was thinking about replying to Jane - Doh's latest post, but I started losing the will to live about half way through

Instead

PS 617 (actual Dambusters, probable/ possible Tirpitz killers) fly the Tornado.Well, half of them do, the other half just watch from the back.

You mean the man/woman in the front drives the aeroplane to where it is needed then the one down the back takes over and does the tricky stuff?

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by Tankertrashnav

You mean the woman in the front drives the aeroplane to where it is needed then

did the strafe. I watched in admiration as she continued her 'day' strafe long after we could not see the strafe panels. I imagine the GIB had her eyes locked on the altimeter.

[RUCAWO]

Question is, why "from Northern Ireland" and not from one of the airfields in the UK ?

The airfield identified to me was Millisle ,it had not been completed and was to be a USAAF replacement crew training unit, it had an exceptionally long runway and the whole area could be sealed off by closing six roads . Also most of the mainland airfields were rather crowded and busy, thankfully it never came to that but with the main NI fighter station eight miles down the road it is the perfect spot.

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

Originally Posted by Tankertrashnav

You mean the man/woman in the front drives the aeroplane to where it is needed then the one down the back takes over and does the tricky stuff?

That cannot be right, surely the fact that the guy/girl in the back had proved conclusively during the selection process he/she was not good enough to sit up front proves that the really tricky stuff is in fact done by drivers airframes

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by Seldomfitforpurpose

That cannot be right, surely the fact that the guy/girl in the back had proved conclusively during the selection process he/she was not good enough to sit up front proves that the really tricky stuff is in fact done by drivers airframes

B*ll*cks, some of us opted for nav. Your statement is only true of those that were chopped pilot.

[Tankertrashnav]

Question is, why "from Northern Ireland" and not from one of the airfields in the UK ?

Small point, but last time I looked, Northern Ireland was part of the UK!

[500N]

PN

Good point !

I am sure you know what I meant.

[hval]

Total War

Jane,

The United Kingdom, Commonwealth nations and other allies were fighting in Europe (on multiple fronts), providing support to the Russians, fighting in Africa, The Middle East, Asia, Australasia. I have probably forgotten some theatre of operations.

WW II was a Total War. This means the destruction of all assets. It also means that there aren't really any civilians as all are assets are mobilised with the aim of winning the war. All sides at the time understood this.

For those interested in why Bomber Command used some of the tactics that they did might I suggest a bit of reading up on the Operational Research department.

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

Originally Posted by Pontius Navigator

B*ll*cks, some of us opted for nav. Your statement is only true of those that were chopped pilot.

Yeah right, opted for Nav