# RAF Bomber Command....



## Lucky13 (Sep 15, 2008)

RAF BOMBER COMMAND

RAF BOMBER COMMAND


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## pbfoot (Sep 15, 2008)

Its okay if your a Brit but doesn't really do to much for the colonials , it barely mentions them although almost 25% of BC was Canadian it even fails to mention a VC by Bazalgette that he was a Canadian


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## Lucky13 (Sep 15, 2008)

Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Poles, Czechs and the list goes on...I just found it PB, haven't had a good look yet, just thought that I'd post for interested parties....


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## mhuxt (Sep 15, 2008)

Another good one here:

BC Main Page


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## Heinz (Sep 16, 2008)

All handy for my research project, thanks Jan


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## Oggie2620 (Sep 28, 2010)

Cant find the right thread for this but since its bomber command I thought it might be worth a punt:
Tuesday September 28,2010 
By Paul Callan Have your say(6) 
TODAY the Daily Express launches a crusade to raise almost £2million and ensure that the brave servicemen of Bomber Command are given the fitting monument that they have so far been denied.

Some had barely started shaving – but they had the courage of lions. Night after night they stared defiantly at death as they flew over enemy territory to deliver mortal blows on Hitler’s Germany.

They were the young men of RAF Bomber Command and 55,573 of them would perish before Nazism lay smashed in the rubble of Europe. But such is the cruelty of war – and the hard-heartedness of governments – that the sacrifice of these gallant men has never been officially recognised. There is a variety of reasons why such heroes have been so cruelly snubbed. 

JOIN THE CRUSADE AND DONATE TO BOMBER COMMAND ASSOCIATION HERE 

But time is now running out as age and infirmity catch up on the small number remaining veterans of Bomber Command.



The heroes of Bomber Command deserve a fitting monument 

In May, planning permission was finally given to a long overdue memorial to honour the men from Bomber Command who gave their lives in the Second World War. Three million pounds has already been raised, however another £1.9m is needed by the end of October to comply with strict building and planning regulations that the local authority, Westminster Council, has set. If the entire £4.9million hasn’t been raised by then, the project could be shelved until the end of 2012.

The remaining veterans are running out of time. Approximately 3,000 Bomber Command veterans are still alive,
but they are passing away at a rate of around 70 a month and it has become a race to ensure that the memorial is unveiled while some of them are still alive to see their efforts rewarded.


These guys are heroes – they saved the world and they deserve the best 
Former pop star and member of the Bee Gees Robin Gibb


Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham, is President of the Bomber Command Association. He
says: “We have been striving for many years to have a memorial in central London to recognise the contribution of Bomber Command to victory in World War Two, and the huge sacrifice of the lives of so many of our comrades in achieving it. The memorial has been designed and we now need to go ahead with all speed.”

Former pop star and member of the Bee Gees Robin Gibb is President of the Heritage Foundation and, as something of an amateur historian, has devoted the past few years of his life to ensuring the monument is built.




SEARCH UK NEWS for: 
He says: “I’ve put my heart and soul into being a champion of this cause. I had a vision of this monument becoming a reality and now I want to see it unveiled. These guys are heroes – they saved the world and they deserve the best. The whole world, including Germany, is free today because of Bomber Command’s sacrifice.”

The handsome monument is due to be unveiled late next year and will be built in a high-profile location in London near to Buckingham Palace – if the outstanding cash can be raised. The Daily Express is honoured to support the belated building of this memorial to men who took the destruction of Nazism directly to Germany, wrecking the country’s vital infrastructure and supply lines as well as smashing the morale of the people. 



BeeGees star Robin Gibb is supporting the Bomber Command heroes 

Their wartime losses were greater than that of any other branch of the services during the Second World War, accounting for 10 per cent of all fatalities. Half of those killed have no known grave. All that remains are yellowing photographs and memories of youthful pilots and their crews climbing into their cramped Lancaster bombers, often joking as they went. Behind the devil-may-care jauntiness of these air crews lay a deepseated fear of what might lie ahead.

No sooner had they entered German airspace than the Nazi anti-aircraft guns began pounding. Many an aircraft was caught in the criss-cross of searchlights. Some received direct hits that crippled the aircraft. Pilots struggled to stay in the air as flames blazed around them. Many returned home after successful sorties. Nearly 365,000 such flights were made from 128 airfields and Bomber Command aircraft were operational on almost every one of the 2,076 days of the war in Europe.

*** SIMPLY CLICK HERE TO DONATE *** at http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view...sade-Its-time-to-honour-Bomber-Command-heroes

Surprisingly, Bomber Command’s activities became cloaked in controversy and opinion has since been divided on the decisions of its commander, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris. Many claim that “Bomber” Harris (as he was known) instigated an unnecessary and ineffective campaign of bombing cities. It is said these campaigns failed to affect German morale or significantly damage German industry.

Fortunately many realise that Harris carried out a vital job that few others could have achieved. He took over control of Bomber Command in 1942, a time of crisis in the British bombing campaign against Germany. 

Haris, who commanded extraordinary respect and loyalty from those who served under him, followed his city bombing campaign with dogged determination. The policy of bombing industrial centres was planned by Air Ministry boffins and supported by Lord Cherwell,Prime Minister WinstonChurchill’s Chief Scientific Adviser. Churchill agreed the policy was justified and ordered Harris to carry out mass bombing. 

But particularly after the Dresden raid, in which 35,000 people died Churchill, afraid of being branded a war criminal, distanced himself from the campaign. At the end of the war Harris did not receive the recognition he deserved for his role. He was sidelined, received only a knighthood, and eventually went to live in South Africa a disappointed and disillusioned man.

Earlier this month, some politicians in Germany started to criticise the plan to erect a Bomber Command memorial. It was claimed that it would only glorify “war crimes lying on the conscience of Britain”. None of this should call into question the astonishing courage of the Bomber Command air crews and many feel, quite rightly, that a visible and tangible memorial should be built in tribute to the men of that branch of the services. 

Sir Michael Beetham, Chief of the Air Staff during the Falklands War and one of the Second World War’s most decorated bomber pilots, is well qualifi ed to be president of the Bomber Command Association. He said: “If you look around London the fi ghter boys have a marvellous memorial on the Embankment.

"There are memorials to women at war, to all sorts of organisations, including the Commonwealth, quite rightly. “The missing one is Bomber Command who have nothing. If you are going to complete the picture you need such a memorial because of the signifi cant contribution the Command made to victory and the huge losses it suffered.”

Many suffered nightmares long after the war was over. And some even experienced severe guilt feelings for the death that was infl icted on the German population below when their deadly cargo was unleashed. 

Cleansing Europe of the Nazi plague came at a huge cost to the Allies. And the spectacular heroism of the men of RAF Bomber Command, who played such a vital part. 

HOW TO DONATE 

ONLINE: Visit www.bombercommand.com and follow the link to the donation page, which includes an online Gift Aid Form. 

BY POST: Make cheques payable to Bomber Command Memorial Fund and send your donation to Bomber Command Association, RAF Museum, Grahame Park Way, Hendon, London, NW9 5LL.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 28, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> Its okay if your a Brit but doesn't really do to much for the colonials , it barely mentions them although almost 25% of BC was Canadian it even fails to mention a VC by Bazalgette that he was a Canadian


From the quoted web site.
quote
An extraordinary mix of people from all over the world flew with Bomber Command, including Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Poles, Czechs, South Africans, French, Americans, Jamaicans, Rhodesians. Some served in mixed squadrons, some formed their own squadrons. Almost all arrived in wartime Britain with no previous experience of the British way of life.
unquote
Note the Canadians come before Australians and Americans so it is not in alphabetical order it is in approximate order of the number of people who served (Americans and Canadians become confused because many Americans signed up as Canadians, respect to them).

I.W. Bazalgette was born in Canada of English Irish parents he returned to England in 1927 when he was 9 yrs old he will therefore have joined the services as English, he actually first joined the royal artillery. As far as I can see any airman who joined the RAF from Canada like A. Mynarski (or any other nation) is recognised as such. I think it a little unseemly to to argue about the nationality of a V.C. holder. Canadian, British or English he is a V.C. and that comes first. 

I live close to Middleton St George Aerodrome (now Durham Tees Valley) and also Croft, both of which were manned by Canadian squadrons there are several memorials specifically to the sacrifice of the Canadian airmen stationed there especially Andrew Mynarski, he has a statue (see below) and even a bar named after him. Similarly there is a fabulous memorial at Snetterton to the American 96th bomb group (see below). However the most touching memorial I have seen is a mirror in the downstairs of the "Bettys" the classiest cafe in York, signed with a diamond with the names of aircrews of all nations it looks a bit scruffy but no one has removed it. This is to airmen no nationality is ascribed Canadians Americans Brits Poles French and I presume any and every nationality went there the local aerodromes had all nationalities.
http://www.bettys.co.uk/bettys_york.aspx
quote
A few years after Bettys opened its doors in York war broke out, and Bettys – in particular the basement ‘Bettys Bar’ – became a favourite haunt of thousands of airmen stationed around York. ‘Bettys Mirror’, on which many of them engraved their signatures with a diamond pen, remains on display today as a fitting tribute to their bravery.
unquote

Personally the BS about a memorial for Bomber Command gets me narky, no one bothered about French feelings when we put up Nelsons column and Trafalgar square they should have put it up in 1946 it needs to be done before the last of the guys pass on. Right or wrong those guys were doing what everyone wanted them to and took huge casualties doing it.


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## Markus (Sep 29, 2010)

What a rubbish!



> These guys are heroes – they saved the world .



Yes to the former, ha, ha ha to the latter. BC was a resource hog, it denied Costal Command the badly needed long range ASW-planes and some english authors even go so far to say that BC hurt the UK´s war effort more than it hurt Germany´s. 




> Fortunately many realise that Harris carried out a vital job that few others could have achieved.



Like getting 55k of his men killed for almost nothing.




> The policy of bombing industrial centres



My arse! They targeted residential areas and not just because they could not hit the broadside of a barn! 

This stuff is even worse than the BBC docu about the BoB. Quite the achivement.


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## BombTaxi (Sep 29, 2010)

Markus

There are a lot of people who disagree to various degrees with the idea that BC had a massive positive effect on the war - in fact, I am one of them. However, it would help if you took an adult tone instead of insulting the contribution these guys made. And before you start on the rant about BC being evil for area boming, lets recall that the LW did the same during the Blitz, and the USAAF did the same to Japan. That doesn't make it right, but it does mean people should see the BC campaign in context, instead of portraying Harris and his aircrews as butchers. They might not have saved the world, but that doesn't mean you can mock them and belittle their efforts.


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## Markus (Sep 29, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> Markus
> However, it would help if you took an adult tone instead of insulting the contribution these guys made.



Read carefully what I wrote. I did critizise BC and it´s CO, while I agreed that the crews certainly deserve to be called heroes.




> And before you start on the rant about BC being evil for area boming, lets recall that the LW did the same during the Blitz, and the USAAF did the same to Japan.



I´m ranting about the media sugarcoating it, to put it mildly. 




> That doesn't make it right, but it does mean people should see the BC campaign in context, instead of portraying Harris



Harris was a butcher, after all killing as many German civilians as possible was what his government had ordered him to do. "Area bombing directive" anyone?


And last but not least, here is an interesting bit on alternate uses of heavy bombers.




> Anyway found this in ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’ by Donald MacIntyre.
> 
> Professor Blackett was able to show, as he recorded in an article in Brassey’s Annual for 1953, that:
> 
> ...


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## tail end charlie (Sep 29, 2010)

Marcus 

one of the quotes that has wound you up is by a member of the Bee Gees who is contributing to raising money, why not give the guy some credit. Regardless of the rights and wrongs now BC were doing what everyone wanted.


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## BombTaxi (Sep 29, 2010)

Oh please. If you criticise BC and Harris, you are tarring his crews with the same brush.After all, the 'Just following orders' argument was discredited as soon as the war ended. Or does that rule only hold for the SS? I am not for a second equating BC with the SS, just pointing out that logically your argument is completely inconsistent.

Yes, Harris was out to kill German civilians. So was the LW during the Blitz. So were the USAAF during the campaign against Japan. So was the German Imperial Air service during the 1917 Blitz. Douhet and his disciples advocated the killing of civilians as a primary function of strategic bombing. So let's not pretend BC were the only ones doing this. If you want to throw mud, throw at all the deserving parties, not just one. 

Going on from this point, measuring the effectiveness of the BC campaign solely in terms of buildings destroyed and civilians killed is both foolish and pointless. The resource devoted to countering the raids and cleaning up after them was drawn from an ultimately finite pool available to the Third Recih. Every worker killed was one less that could not be replaced. Every fireman needed to put out the fires was another man not available for combat. The morale effect of constant bombing and the disruption caused by the raids impacted productivity, just as German raids did in 1940-41. 

I wpuld agree with you that British media, on the right at least, has not taken the time to look at the carnage caused by the BC campaign, or whether it was truly effective. This should come as no surprise. You are not going to catch any right-wing media outlet criticising it's own nation's military. If you expect the Daily Express to admit that the campaign was wrong, then you are either very naive or very foolish. 

I would also agree that some of the heavies would have been better used in ASW roles. But the RAF was a bombing force from Day One (eg the Independent Force), and embraced the philosophy of Douhet et al from a very early stage. Harris presided over a Command whose ideology was deeply entrenched within the institutional mindset of the RAF, so he was always going to win his arguments. 

And I do take exception to you describing the 55000 BC casualties as being worthless. That is an insult to those guys, pure and simple. If you dont't want to be called on what you say, don't say it.


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## parsifal (Sep 29, 2010)

Ive not read the article yet, but BC made its contribution to the allied victory like all the other arms. It wasnt just an area bombing tool, though that was one of its policies. It didnt just target residential areas. it targetted whole cities and got very good at destroying them, as the raids over hamburg amply illustrate.

It did cost a lot of lives, but it also produced great results. In conjunction with the Americans, the bomber offensive curtailed German production by more than 40% over what it might have done. It soaked up an enormous amount of German resources....something like 56% of remaining production capacity was devoted to producing fighters, which, in the end, failed to defend their homel;and adequately. Over 80% of german artillery production was for AA weaponary...so mearly by existing and attacking, the bombers made a crucial contribution to winning the war.

As for saying BC or its leadership were butchers......what commands during the war were not. People often hold up Dresden as a some sort of warcrime...I agree, but not by the British. The German leadership were guilty of continuing to fight long afte it was stupid to continue resistance. They are the villains in this debacle, not the British, not even Harris. Whilst resistance continued, there were no safe cities, and no quarter should be expected. And the germans had proven themselves no less ruthless in their vasrious attacks on cities, as the resdients of Coventry, Warsaw, Rotterdam stc can tell you.

Harris was a controversail figure, that has to be conceded....but he was not all bad. he took over BC when it was a force all but defeated. Up until Hamburg, his direction and leadership of the force was actually pretty successful, at times even brilliant. His big mistake, and the one that caused many casualties, was the decisiion after hamburg to target Berlin as the primary goal for BC. It was simply a target too far away, and too well defended to be realistically defeated in the same way as Hamburgs defences were


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## Markus (Sep 29, 2010)

> Going on from this point, measuring the effectiveness of the BC campaign solely in terms of buildings destroyed and civilians killed is both foolish and pointless. The resource devoted to countering the raids and cleaning up after them was drawn from an ultimately finite pool available to the Third Recih. Every worker killed was one less that could not be replaced. Every fireman needed to put out the fires was another man not available for combat. The morale effect of constant bombing and the disruption caused by the raids impacted productivity, just as German raids did in 1940-41.



The standard way of sugarcoating the fact that they failed to accomplish their mission. And it wasn´t like the UK didn´t have a huuuge price to pay for these dubious gains:

BC was loosing 55k of first rate manpower, god-knows-how-many heavy bombers and indirectly merchant ships and their cargos. Lot´s of men and material that could have been used to hurt the Axis war effort in other, more cost-efficient ways. All because BC had a priority based on vague theories that had been sort-of disproven as early as 1940.

Ohh, and if I ever come across an article that says LeMay did not firebomb japanese towns, I promise I´ll fire away at that one too. But that is not the topic here. Bye!


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## BombTaxi (Sep 29, 2010)

No-one is denying that the BC campaign happened. So the LeMay comment is as useful as it is relevant  

As for sugarcoating... the 'standard argument' I'm posting is standard because it is correct. BC's contribution was to divert vital resources from the front lines and impair production capabilities through the destruction of physical plant and assets including the workforce. Please post what BC's 'failed' mission was, and how they failed it... if you actually have such a thing.


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## Nikademus (Sep 29, 2010)

Harris was following the policy established by Portal. Like LeMay, he was given a task and did his best to fillfill it within the parameters that were set for him. If Harris is a butcher, then so are Lemay, Spaatz and Eiker. By the end-game, both airforces were "Area Bombing" I like how Neillands put it in the introduction to his book on BC....that you had to consider the attitude of the people living during that time, which was different than nowadays. Its because of their attitudes then that we can safely have our attitudes now. Both AF's made their contributions. If the original goal (success in lieu of costly ground operations) failed it did at least absorb a huge amount of German resources and caused fatal attrition to the Luftwaffe.


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## Milosh (Sep 29, 2010)

BC losses were 47,130 (KIA. MIA) on operations.

Markus, the Americans also did area bombing in Europe. Don't be deceived by '_precision bombing_".

The *Area Bombing Directive* (General Directive No.5 (S.46368/D.C.A.S)) was a 14 February 1942 order from the British Air Ministry directing RAF Bomber Command "...that the primary objective of your operations should be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers". The directive listed a number of targets including the Ruhr area industrial cities of Cologne, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and Essen as priorities.

The Area Bombing Directive was superseded by the *Casablanca Directive* (C.S. 16536 S.46368 A.C.A.S. Ops). It was approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at their 65th meeting on 21 January 1943 and issued by the British and United States Army Air Force Commanders on 4 February 1943. The primary objective was "The progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened. Every opportunity to be taken to attack Germany by day to destroy objectives that are unsuitable for night attack, to sustain continuous pressure on German morale, to impose heavy losses on German day fighter force, and to conserve German fighter strength away from the Russian and Mediterranean theatres of war. A list of target systems was also drawn up which gave priority to (a) Submarine construction yards, (b) German aircraft industry, (c) transportation, (d) oil plants (e) other targets in enemy war industry. The priority was to be varied with the strategic situation and the u-boat bases in France.

Please note Harris did not become CoC BC til 22 February 1942, 8 days after ABD was issued.


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## Markus (Sep 29, 2010)

This talk about Americans is OT and mostly incorrect.

Spaatz served in the PTO for a month or two, Eaker not at all and in the ETO the USAAF at least tried to hit industrial targets. That is a far cry from deliberately targeting civilians. 

And while both AF's made their contributions, those were hardly identical. The day-bombing USAAF wore down the Luftwaffe´s fighters, at the same time BC was getting it´s butt kicked by the nightfighters. Which ended only because Göring was sending night fighter pilots to bring day fighter units up to strenght. 

So, do NOT equate the 8th AF with BC!


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## Nikademus (Sep 29, 2010)

so.....

8AF = White Hat

BC= Black Hat

That sum it up?


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## pbfoot (Sep 29, 2010)

Markus said:


> This talk about Americans is OT and mostly incorrect.
> 
> Spaatz served in the PTO for a month or two, Eaker not at all and in the ETO the USAAF at least tried to hit industrial targets. That is a far cry from deliberately targeting civilians.
> 
> ...


you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , Harris IMHO was a jerk who really dragged his feet on the objectives of hitting the Petro industry


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## Milosh (Sep 29, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , Harris IMHO was a jerk who really dragged his feet on the objectives of hitting the Petro industry



I find that hard to understand when BC dropped 93,691 tons while the 8th AF dropped 66,497 tons of bombs on the Petro industry.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 29, 2010)

Markus said:


> The day-bombing USAAF wore down the Luftwaffe´s fighters, at the same time BC was getting it´s butt kicked by the nightfighters. Which ended only because Göring was sending night fighter pilots to bring day fighter units up to strenght.



The above is at least disrespectful and at worst insulting to both allied forces. I dont know what a member of the 8th involved in an unescorted raid in 1943 would have called it but I doubt it would be "wearing down the Luftwaffe". The Germans ceased unescorted daylight raids due to heavy losses, the British ceased unescorted daylight raids including raids with B17s due to heavy losses, so please tell me how the people who decided to commence unescorted raids deep into Germany are persueing some great strategy?

How many US aircrew were lost in the European campaign?


this document is an interesting read
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA398044


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## tail end charlie (Sep 29, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , Harris IMHO was a jerk who really dragged his feet on the objectives of hitting the Petro industry




All BC raid crew were told of some strategic objective and everyone knew there was little chance of hitting it without killing civilians, but the same is true for the USAAF. Look at the civilian deaths on raids in France by day or night!


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## pbfoot (Sep 29, 2010)

Milosh said:


> I find that hard to understand when BC dropped 93,691 tons while the 8th AF dropped 66,497 tons of bombs on the Petro industry.


 I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate


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## parsifal (Sep 30, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate



I dont have the figures here with me...they are at home. But the overwhelming majority of bombs dropped were done so after June 1943, probably in the order of 60000 tons. And what is really galling to this debate, is that as 1944 wore on, and increasing percentage of those bombs dropped could be easily classified as precision attacks, dropped with far greater accuracy than the American ever achieved with visual aids. Technical advances, such as OBOE meant that the days of bombs dropping 5 or 10 miles wide were long gone. With devices like OBOE, bombs could, and were, dropped with astonishing accuracy.

None of this matters to those so blind as to not even want to know the truth. What is focussed on are the painful learning years when bombs really were dropped very wide, and losses climbed well past the 5% mark. it doesnt seem to register that by the latter part of 1944, loss rates were bouncing around at the 1% mark, tonnages easily exceeding those dropped by the US, and more accurately, or that LW losses in Nightfighters were running at about three times the losses for BC. None of this matters, or so it would seem


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## Milosh (Sep 30, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate



How many American bombers were attacking oil targets in early 1941 when BC's priority was synthetic oil production?


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## pbfoot (Sep 30, 2010)

During the last 6mo of 1944 this was the breakdown of BC raids 
Attacks on cities 53%
attacks on RR and canals 15%
attcks on oil 14%
attacks on troops and fortifications 13%
attacks on naval or other objectives 5% 
oil does not seem to be a priority


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## Milosh (Sep 30, 2010)

The following statistics are from the British Bombing Survey Unit. Figures are for the oil campaign in the last year of the war. 

Number of attacks - 8th AF / BC

May 1944 - 11 / 0
June 1944 - 20 / 10
July 1944 - 9 / 20
August 1944 - 33 /	20
September 1944 - 23 / 14
October 1944 - 18 / 10
November 1944 - 32 / 22
December 1944 - 7 / 15
January 1945 - 17 / 23
February 1945 - 20 / 24
March 1945 - 36 / 33
April 1945 - 7 / 9

Total - 233 / 200

That is 285.4 tons/attack for the 8th AF and 468.5 tons/attack for BC. Since BC dropped larger bombs there was more permanent damage done to the facilities. The Americans had to keep going back to finish the job.

The tonnage stated in a previous post was for the above months.

Hall, R. Cargill. Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment. University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 1-4102-2480-5 1998, p. 158.


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## Hop (Sep 30, 2010)

> you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC



But what was a military target?

The 8th AF defined a military target as any town with more than 50,000 people. From standing orders issued in 1944:



> No towns or cities in Germany will be attacked
> as secondary or last resort targets, targets of
> opportunity, or otherwise, unless such towns contain
> or have immediately adjacent to them, one (1)
> ...





> It has been determined that towns and cities
> large enough to produce an identifiable return on
> the H2X scope generally contain a large proportion
> of the military objectives listed above. These centers,
> ...



Read that policy. It boils down to: large towns have military targets in them, if you can see a town on radar it must be big enough to have military targets in it, therefore you can bomb it.

By this definition every Bomber Command attack was on a military target.



> so for all intense purposes they both area bombed



The USAAF knew they were area bombing and did it deliberately. At first they admitted it, and listed targets attacked as city areas. Later they denied doing it but instead attacked "marshalling yards". However, most of their marshalling yard attacks in Germany were carried out using lots of incendiaries (which don't work well against marshalling yards) and using radar bombing, which in USAAF hands wasn't accurate enough to hit anything smaller than a city.

The use of incendiaries shows how cynical the claim of attacking "marshalling yards" was. 

When the RAF attacked marshalling yards they used about 2% incendiaries. The 15th AF also used about 2% incendiaries in their attacks on marshalling yards. In attacks on French marshalling yards, the 8th AF used about 2% incendiaries. In their attacks on Germany yards, they used over 20% incendiaries. 

The intent was to area bomb but claim otherwise.



> I wonder how many tons of 96000 BC bomb tons were dropped prior to late 43 , Thats when the USAAF started throwing their weight around amd BC started to get accurate



On oil? 2,361 tons. Mostly in 1940, with small amounts in 1941 and tiny amounts in 1942 and 1943.

In 1944 BC dropped 48,043 tons and in 1945 47,510 tons on oil.



> Attacks on cities 53%
> attacks on RR and canals 15%
> attcks on oil 14%
> attacks on troops and fortifications 13%
> ...



In the same period the 8th AF dropped 16% of their bombs on oil targets.


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## michaelmaltby (Sep 30, 2010)

Hind sight is *always* 20:20 isn't it ..... .

Adam Tooze's economic analysis of the period 1933-45 ("Wages of Destruction") addresses the RAF bomber campaign against the Ruhr. Tooze claims it was much more effective than generally acknowledged, in these PC days. The Ruhr wasn't just coal, coke and steel but also synthetic oil -- so the objectives were veried. As for "Area Bombing" - collateral damage is collateral damage whether you burst a dam and flood the area around it, or set fires that consume neighbourhoods.

The use of strategies like Mosquito Pathfinders, and OBO navigation, were RAF's efforts to make the strikes as effective as possible. Nothing has changed from then to now except that the tools the USAF has in Af'stan and Pakistan are much more sophisticated, portable and accurate than those of 1943. But weddings still get accidentally targetted. Is Patraeus a war crimial? Hardly.

In WW2, Britain was fighting back as effectively as she could with the available tools and technology. Quite frankly I find the whole BC criticism UNPRODUCTIVE - it brings out the worst in people and usually insults 1,000's and 1,000's of airmen - a large proportion of whom were Commonwealth servicemen.

I admit being repulsed by Hamburg and Dresden - but I am repulsed by the Somme and Ypres also. War is war and countries that start wars should pay the price. 

To argue that Germany should have "surrendered" or sued for Peace is specious. After Versailles in 1918, there was NOT going to be any end to WW2 short of the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of Germany and the DISCREDITATION of the NAZIS idealogy. To the extent that "innocent" Germans went along with Nazism, they suffered. This was no accident. This was strategy ... and it worked. Look no further than modern Germany for proof of that.

MM
Proud Canadian


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## parsifal (Sep 30, 2010)

Excellently put MM, and I second the post


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> I dont know what a member of the 8th involved in an unescorted raid in 1943 would have called it but I doubt it would be "wearing down the Luftwaffe".



I was (very obviously) refering to escorted raids in 1944. 




pbfoot said:


> you are correct in the sense that the USAAF always insisted that there must be a military target as opposed to BC but the fact being neither BC nor USAAF were very accurate so for all intense purposes they both area bombed , ...



My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference. 




Milosh said:


> That is 285.4 tons/attack for the 8th AF and 468.5 tons/attack for BC. Since BC dropped larger bombs there was more permanent damage done to *the facilities*. The Americans had to keep going back to finish the job.



Facilities.


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## Nikademus (Sep 30, 2010)

michaelmaltby said:


> Hind sight is *always* 20:20 isn't it ..... .
> 
> To argue that Germany should have "surrendered" or sued for Peace is specious. After Versailles in 1918, there was NOT going to be any end to WW2 short of the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of Germany and the DISCREDITATION of the NAZIS idealogy. To the extent that "innocent" Germans went along with Nazism, they suffered. This was no accident. This was strategy ... and it worked. Look no further than modern Germany for proof of that.
> 
> ...



IIRC.....Harris considered "morale attacks" a panacea. (among many other things) He viewed the primary goal of the area bombing to be the dislocation of the enemy workforce as well as outright destruction of the tools in which production was made. The strategic bombing campaign....(the whole one, not just BC) proved that Duchot's theories were incorrect...that populations would not bow down in terror and demand peace, rather it hardened attitudes. The firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden "might" have altered that...._if_ the Allies could create them at will. Therein lay the problem...they couldn't. (at least not over Germany....Japan's paper cities were much more conducive to generating firestorms but even then, the population held out)


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## Hop (Sep 30, 2010)

> My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.



It's incorrect. The USAAF frequently didn't have a factory as their aiming point. Often the aiming point was a city centre, a high proportion of incendiaries was used, and radar aiming was employed. This was deliberate area bombing.


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## BombTaxi (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> I was (very obviously) refering to escorted raids in 1944.



So the 8th AF engaging the LW 'wore the LW down', but BC engaging the LW and forcing them to maintain a nightfighter force SOLELY to counter BC raids had no effect upon the fighting capacity of the LW at all?






Markus said:


> My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.



Really? It's no difference at all. The Americans pretended that they were precision bombing but area bombed, while BC admitted it couldn't hit anything smaller than a city and area bombed. The results are exactly the same. Good intentions do not mitigate the effects of a 500lb GP bomb...

As far as I can see Markus, your main driving force seems to be a fairly rabid Anglophobia which means you cannot see the BC campaign for what it was; just one of a series of area bombing campaigns carried out by powers on both sides during the war. I have no idea what your own nationality is, nor do I care. But it would be a good idea to leave your baggage out of the debate...


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## Milosh (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> My point exactly. They had orders to drop their bombs on factories ect. but in the pre laser-bomb age a lot of the bomb hit the surrounding residential areas by accident and not on purpose. That is a big difference.
> 
> Facilities.



303rd BG (H) Combat Mission No. 81
5 November 1943
*Target: Center of City, Gelsenkirchen, Germany*
Crews Dispatched: 19
Crews Lost: Lt. A.G. Grant, 1 crewman KIA, 9 crewmen POW
Length of Mission: 5 hours, 10 minutes
*Bomb Load: 42 x M47A1 Incendiaries*
Bombing Altitude: 26,500 ft
Ammo Fired: 15,485 rounds

303rd BG (H) Combat Mission No. 83
26 November 1943
*Target: City area of Bremen, Germany*
Crews Dispatched: 2 Groups, 17 18 crews
Crews Lost: Capt. A.A. Cote, 10 KIA; 2Lt. H.J. Rocketto,
T/Sgt. R.K. Roberts and 2Lt. L.S. Johnson all KIA
Length of Mission: 6 hours, 10 minutes
*Bomb Load*: 8 x 500 lb G.P. *20 x M47A1 Incendiaries*
Bombing Altitudes: 26,500 ft 27,000 ft
Ammo Fired: 47,000 rounds
Enemy Aircraft Claims: 2 Destroyed

303rd BG (H) Combat Mission No. 107
8 February 1944
*Target: City area, Frankfurt, Germany* (PFF)
Crew Dispatched: 20 plus 2 spares
Crew Members Lost or Wounded: 1 minor wound, 1 frostbite
Length of Mission: 7 hours, 40 minutes
*Bomb Load: 21 or 42 x 65 lb M47A1 Indendiary bombs*
Bombing Altitude: 26,400 ft

More examples and this is just one BG, 303rd BGA Combat Missions and Reports

facilities = refineries


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

Milosh said:


> More examples and this is just one BG, 303rd BGA Combat Missions and Reports
> 
> facilities = refineries




I noticed something. In all three cases the target was obsucred by clouds or smoke. Then I noticed the attacks were flown during the winter, when the weather is generally poor. Hence I picked some dates in the summer and viola, specific targets were attacked. Just once or twice a city area was the target but the report stated it was a "last resort" target due to low clouds. Fit´s into the orders Hop quoted, whenever possible aim visually at individual targets.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> I noticed something. In all three cases the target was obsucred by clouds or smoke. Then I noticed the attacks were flown during the winter, when the weather is generally poor. Hence I picked some dates in the summer and viola, specific targets were attacked. Just once or twice a city area was the target but the report stated it was a "last resort" target due to low clouds. Fit´s into the orders Hop quoted, whenever possible aim visually at individual targets.



Markus

I dont know where you live but low cloud in North Europe is the norm for a major part of the year, your previous triumphal posts about the 8th seem to only refer to escorted missions on a nice summers day. Who is sugar coating history now.

I tried looking on the net and cannot find any complete figure for losses by the Eighth Air force, the Bomber command figure of 55,000 is well known and includes all losses. Please advise how many air crew were lost in bombers and fighters and due to training take off landing accidents in both UK and USA. The report I gave a link to is a good start.

for example
*To highlight this problem one only needs to look at the data from 1944 in the Eighth AF:
there were 2562 aircraft accidents not related to combat, involving 2835 aircraft, and
resulting in the death of 1692 persons.*
and
*1944, 2,835 aircraft of the Eighth Air Force were involved in 2,562 non-combat
related accidents, of which 47.5% were completely destroyed and 17.4% resulted in the
death of one or more persons. The total number of accidents per month averaged more
than 200, ranging from 148 in February to 271 in July, with well over half the accidents
occurring during non-operational flights.3 Over the twelve month period, the Eighth Air
Force averaged 1.79 non-operational accidents per 1000 hours of flying time.
4 Translating
this into today’s figures would mean the Eighth AF was averaging 179 non-operational
accidents per 100,000 hours of flight time. The B-17 had an accident rate of 110 per
100,000 hours of flight time and the B-24 was experiencing 96 accidents per 100,000
hours of flight time.
5 These mishap rates were nearly twice as bad as the average mishap
rate USAAF wide. Clearly, these would be unacceptable numbers in anyone’s mind today
and evidence suggests that Generals Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, and Doolittle, did not
comprehend the severity of these rates or thought of these as the “costs of doing
business.”*


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

michaelmaltby said:


> Hind sight is *always* 20:20 isn't it ..... .
> 
> 
> To argue that Germany should have "surrendered" or sued for Peace is specious. After Versailles in 1918, there was NOT going to be any end to WW2 short of the TOTAL DESTRUCTION of Germany and the DISCREDITATION of the NAZIS idealogy. To the extent that "innocent" Germans went along with Nazism, they suffered. This was no accident. This was strategy ... and it worked. Look no further than modern Germany for proof of that.
> ...



well said MM

Most contributors here have an elected government, during 1940 the British government was concerned morale may crack and the government forced to sue for peace. This was not a consideration of Hitler he wasnt elected and would only be removed by a coup or assasination. If the assasination attempt in July 1940 or various other plots had succeeded then allied air bombing would have been completely vindicated.


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## Hop (Sep 30, 2010)

From American Bombardment Policy against Germany, by Richard G Davis, official USAF historian:



> The first area raid noted in Eighth Air Force
> records occurred on August 12, 1943, when 106
> bombers attacked the city of Bonn, visually, as a
> target of opportunity.
> ...





> *Within a span of
> two weeks after the introduction of a mere six sets
> of radar for the entire force, the Eighth went from
> a command that had never authorized a city area
> ...





> After the Second Battle of Schweinfurt bombing
> policy changed. On the next mission, October 18,
> the Eighth instructed its bombers to hit as their
> primary ‘Duren, Center of City,’ and as their sec-
> ...





> Just once or twice a city area was the target but the report stated it was a "last resort" target due to low clouds. Fit´s into the orders Hop quoted, whenever possible aim visually at individual targets.



So how do you explain the heavy use of incendiaries? Were the 8th AF changing bomb loads in flight, after they had left the UK? Obviously not. So the fact remains they often loaded up with incendiaries and set out to area bomb German cities.

There's no doubt about that. The USAAF might have tried to conceal their policy later in the war, but area bombing was one of the tactics they used frequently. More from Davis:



> *Rail yards as such, however, were poor targets for
> incendiaries.* If the fire bombs landed directly on or near rail cars, they destroyed
> or damaged them; otherwise, they could do little harm to the heavy equipment or
> trackage. The Eighth realized this. *Of the 9,042 tons of bombs dropped on
> ...





> The target category “marshaling yards” received more of the Eighth’s bomb
> tonnage than any other, somewhere between 175,000 and 200,000 tons of bombs.
> At least 25 percent of all the Eighth Air Force bombs dropped over Europe fell on
> “marshaling yards.” One-third of the American incendiary bombs dropped over
> Germany fell on the same system.



If you believe the 8th AF didn't carry out deliberate area bombing attacks, you've fallen for the 8th's own late and post war propaganda.


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## Erich (Sep 30, 2010)

all you guys have to do is research the week in February 1945 about Dresden, Chemnitz and other cities that received the dual bombing of the Allies to know that the project was to break the will of the German people no matter how it was to be done, bomb and destroy everything in existence whether building or human, strafing by both Allies was at an all time high during the week so lets all admit the air war to the ground was not as clean as the text books have said for multiple years. the US as well as the British did a fine job in the air regardless the LW ever so puny in 45 trying as they might were creamed in the air and on the ground. The Fat one had no jurisdiction in 1945 to say one word or another upon transfer of LW air personell from the day fighters to the night fighters or vice versa, it was not in his power


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

On a documentary shown last night in UK (the unseen films) it said that part of the USAAF strategy was to attack targets that the LW must defend, I have heard this before on other documentaries but never seen it written.


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## Erich (Sep 30, 2010)

utter nonsense

the prime directive was to have the LW far and away from the target to engage re: for BC 100grp formation and it's spoof activities plus intruding over LW airfields upon landing if possible. 100th grp overall was incredibly effective in throwing off the LW in late 44 till wars end where the LW could not be more than at one target position at a time where BC could put up fighters/bombers in 4 areas to keep the Luftwaffe guessing......

E ~ the Lw NF force was only getting a 1 % kill return and many times not even that during 1945's operations.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

from the people who took part, all copied from the Bomber Command website

Moral judgements Charles Patterson

'Bomber Command was the only weapon we possessed. Bomber Command was available and had to be used every day and every night, weather permitting. Had that force been available and Churchill had got up and said, in the House of Commons, "Well, we have this large bomber force available, but I'm afraid we mustn't use it because as it operates at night we can't be sure of hitting specific targets, and women and children may get killed", the British people would have been outraged and they would have said, "Not attack them because civilians might get killed? Have you gone mad? Hitler's been killing civilians all over Europe, including England." If Churchill had said that he wouldn't have survived as Prime Minister. Morality is a thing you can indulge in an environment of peace and security, but you can't make moral judgements in war, when it's a question of national survival.'

Charles Patterson,
Bomber Command pilot


The eternal dilemma Peter Hinchliffe OBE

'There was always at the briefing some military reason given for our attack. It was either a steel-producing town or there was a lot of small industry making precision instruments. But the policy was the destruction of towns. You destroy a town, you hinder the war effort in many ways, and that in itself was the justification. The big mistake was to think that by breaking German morale it would end the war. The morale of the German population was utterly and completely broken, but this had no effect on the hierarchy, the people who were actually directing the war. In the Third Reich the popular voice could not have any influence. Something we do have to remember is that from D-Day in June 1944 to the end of the war, the losses among Allied troops were less than for any one major battle of the First World War. When the Americans and British landed in France they were facing a continent that was completely softened up by the Allied bombing. Had that bombing not taken place, leaving aside the morality of it, God knows if we would have survived as an invading force. There are people who say if that had been done, or if this had been done, but you do what seems to be right at the time, and bombing Germany as we did seemed to be right at the time. In fact there was very little alternative .I personally have no regrets in having participated. I do think about these things. It was terrible, but everything you do in war is terrible. If you stick a bayonet into someone it's terrible; if you shoot someone it's terrible; if you put people in concentration camps, it's terrible. But what is the alternative? Should we not have used the force in the best way that seemed possible? Or run the risk of concentration camps in our country? It's the eternal dilemma of peace and war.'

Peter Hinchliffe OBE
Bomber Command

The point of the spear Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE DSO DFC

'We accepted the fact that as a necessary part of the prosecution of the war there were civilian deaths. It occurred in Britain, it occurred in Germany. One got used to the fact that civilians were suffering, and they were suffering all over the eastern front and the Jews in eastern Germany. Everyone accepted that this was total war. We were doing the job we were asked to do, and we thought it was essential under the circumstances we were in.

While I was in training France was conquered, and there was the Continent under the heel of Hitler. While I was in training we had the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Without America in the war the only way we could hit at the Germans was through Bomber Command. The whole attitude of Bomber Command was that we were the point of the spear and we had a job to do. It was highly dangerous. We had to accept that in modern war civilians were killed. In our eyes we were in a desperate situation, and we knew it. The trials of the German nation did not worry us an awful lot.'

Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE DSO DFC
Bomber Command observer


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Erich said:


> utter nonsense
> 
> the prime directive was to have the LW far and away from the target to engage re: for BC 100grp formation and it's spoof activities plus intruding over LW airfields upon landing if possible. 100th grp overall was incredibly effective in throwing off the LW in late 44 till wars end where the LW could not be more than at one target position at a time where BC could put up fighters/bombers in 4 areas to keep the Luftwaffe guessing......
> 
> E ~ the Lw NF force was only getting a 1 % kill return and many times not even that during 1945's operations.



Oops, sorry erich I should have said the daylight strategy.


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Markus
> 
> I dont know where you live but low cloud in North Europe is the norm for a major part of the year, your previous triumphal posts about the 8th seem to only refer to escorted missions on a nice summers day. Who is sugar coating history now.



And that was one of the reasons why the US bomber offensive went into high gear from spring 44 onwards; the weather had to improve sufficiently to actually see the targets or get into the air in the first place as the UK isn´t exactly known for it´s good weather. 




tail end charlie said:


> well said MM
> 
> Most contributors here have an elected government, during 1940 the British government was concerned morale may crack and the government forced to sue for peace. This was not a consideration of Hitler he wasnt elected and would only be removed by a coup or assasination. If the assasination attempt in July 1940 or various other plots had succeeded then allied air bombing would have been completely vindicated.



1. IIRC The Blitz did not break the morale of the UK´s people. I even read it had the opposite effect. 
2. Saying RAF air bombing would have been completely vindicated if Hitler had been killed in one of the many attempts on his life is just absurd. Those who plotted against him before the war did it as they were convinced Germany would loose the war and those who joined their ranks during the war were motivated by what was going on in the USSR, especially by the large scale war crimes.


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## Erich (Sep 30, 2010)

deeper penetrations meant longer range escort fighters like the P-51B in December of 43 onward and the drop tanks on 38's and Jugs.

Tail end during 45 when BC went on the day offensive it did not matter any more there were only 8 or LW units to defend the Reich, the rest of the JG's were sent ot the Ost front.......one of these that stayed was the effective JG 7 with the Me 262. The LW had shot it's wad and was nil to effective anymore. Plenty of crews and A/C no fuel subsidies


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Moral judgements Charles Patterson
> 
> 'Bomber Command was the only weapon we possessed. Bomber Command was available and had to be used every day and every night, weather permitting. Had that force been available and Churchill had got up and said, in the House of Commons, "Well, we have this large bomber force available,...
> 
> ...



Now that has to be the biggest bit of nonsense so far! I´m fairly sure there were military organisations called the Royal Navy and the British Army. By the way, what is that sound? Must be Monty crawling from the grave to have a talk with Mr. Patterson. 

Furthermore what large bomber force is the man talking about? It wasn´t large in 1940 or 41,* it grew large later*, very much at the expense of anything else. So this is BS too.


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## Nikademus (Sep 30, 2010)

What were the RN and British Army supposed to do against Hitler? Particularily in 1940-41?


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## Erich (Sep 30, 2010)

let me issue a WARNING

respect the veterans of both sides and their statements even if you do not agree with them as you were not there. think first before you respond and how you respond. I hope this is easily understood .............


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

Nikademus said:


> What were the RN and British Army supposed to do against Hitler? Particularily in 1940-41?



One word: Logistics!

Since the dawn of time no one could fight a war without supplies, from 39 to 45 the most important british supply line went across the Atlantic, specifically the North Atlantic. It´s security should have had the same priority as the UK´s security because without it´s SLOCs open the Empire could neither attack or defend itself. I guess that gives the RN something to do from day one of the war. 

The Army is harder to get into the fight, though North Africa was a good start, also because of the positive effect an allied controlled Med eventually had on logistics. Than there were certain events in the Far East that shook the Empire´s foundations. Clearly the Army could have done a great deal for the British Empire. 

And last but not least, what did BC do in 1940 and 41? Wasn´t that the time when it was numerically weakest and it´s accuracy was worst? They could have given the RN a hand instead and made the "happy time" a lot less happy for the U-boats.


@Erich: I do respect the veteran´s peronal courage but a statement that is not correct is not correct, no matter who makes it.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> And that was one of the reasons why the US bomber offensive went into high gear from spring 44 onwards; the weather had to improve sufficiently to actually see the targets or get into the air in the first place as the UK isn´t exactly known for it´s good weather.



I believe you are sugar coating hostory again, Big Week was in February ...hardly good spring weather but by then the USAAF had enough escorts to recommence operations. Unless of course you are saying that the Eight Airforce had ample bombers and escorts available but wouldnt use them because the sun wasnt shining?



Markus said:


> 1. IIRC The Blitz did not break the morale of the UK´s people. I even read it had the opposite effect.
> 2. Saying RAF air bombing would have been completely vindicated if Hitler had been killed in one of the many attempts on his life is just absurd. Those who plotted against him before the war did it as they were convinced Germany would loose the war and those who joined their ranks during the war were motivated by what was going on in the USSR, especially by the large scale war crimes.



Your point 1. I said "concerned" ...In 1940 no body really knew what bombardment a civilian population could withstand. There were many people theorised about mass panic and riot demanding peace AND the bomber will always get through theory that basically meant civilians were defenceless. There is no doubt at all civilians can be bombed into submission, even an army can as was shown in the eastern front, falaise and latterly with the revolutionary guards in Iraq.

Your point 2 Romell was one who plotted against Hitler not because of the Eastern fron but because he like many others including Goering knew Germany was going to lose, part of that is being unable to defend your cities by day or night. Please read my post I said ALLIED that is RAF and USAAF. I do not seek in anyway take away from the USAAF its achievements or sacrifices. But they did bomb cities and suffered heavy unnecessary losses due to decisions of their commanders, just as BC did.

Goering said "when I saw American fighters over Berlin I knew the gig was up" what is that apart from admission that you are beaten and he was not only head of the defence (Luftwaffe) but a senior Nazi leader.


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## Erich (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus if you do respect them then do use internet etiquette if you will and do not call there statements BS but say that you disagree with their thoughts. again you and I both were not there we have texts of their courage only and can now compare with what we know and the continued knowledge and freedom of the net that will soon change too soon.


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## Nikademus (Sep 30, 2010)

I think you misunderstood the question. I asked, what was the RN and British army supposed to _do_ against Hitler? You mentioned "logistics", I'm sure your aware that Germany's import situation was quite different in WWII. There would be no strangling of Germany's economy or civilian population by distant blockade. There was no huge High Seas Fleet for the RN to square off against. As for keeping Britian in the fight and supplied....the RN was already doing that. But in terms of acting _against_ Germany....now a continental power, there were few options. The British Army was too small and weak to fight Germany's Army....especially in 1940-41. North Africa occured because of Italian actions which forced Germany to send a limited force there to keep them afloat but ultimately it paled in comparison to the struggle that would emerge on the Russian steppes.

So what was Britian supposed to do? She can't invade Germany or Occupied France....she can't sail her Navy up the Helgoland Bight. Germany bombed the hell out of Britian during the BoB and then the Blitz. Britian's only weapon against Germany proper was........_Bomber Command_.


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

Again this is not about their courage during the war or something they said during the war. Mr. Patterson seems to have made this statement very recently. And it´s at least a huge oversimplyfication.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> Markus you wernt there he was therefore your comments are quite plainly nonesense. The people who lived through the war, like my family, fully supported Bomber Command going out to bomb Hitlers big black heart out (aas one commander put it. If Churchill had suggested we dont strike back he would have been out of office. In fact one of Churchills many quotes was from 14 July 1941, I have put in bold the most relevant part, no doubt you think that is nonesense too.
> 
> quote
> I must, however, admit that when the storm broke in September, I was for several weeks very anxious about the result. Sometimes the gas failed; sometimes the electricity. There were grievous complaints about the shelters and about conditions in them. Water was cut off, railways were cut or broken, large districts were destroyed, thousands were killed, and many more thousands were wounded. But there was one thing about which there was never any doubt. The courage, the unconquerable grit and stamina of our people, showed itself from the very outset. Without that all would have failed. Upon that rock, all stood unshakable. All the public services were carried on, and all the intricate arrangements, far-reaching details, involving the daily lives of so many millions, were carried out, improvised, elaborated, and perfected in the very teeth of the cruel and devastating storm.
> ...


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Markus you wernt there he was therefore your comments are quite plainly nonesense.



Bye, tail end charlie.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> Again this is not about their courage during the war or something they said during the war. Mr. Patterson seems to have made this statement very recently. And it´s at least a huge oversimplyfication.



Markus


Below is the story of Charles Patterson I am sure after a brief meeting with you he would have realised you know everything and he was indeed speaking nonesense, sadly he died in 2008. My only question for you is how dare you?



Squadron Leader Charles Patterson, who has died aged 88, took part in many daylight low-level bombing raids, including three of the most audacious of the war, exploits which earned him a DSO and a DFC.

Patterson had already excelled at flying Blenheims and Mosquitos when his air officer commanding, Air Vice Marshal Basil Embry, selected him to fly a Mosquito specially modified to carry a cine camera in the nose of the aircraft. It was his task to follow the bomber force and to arrive over the target five minutes later to film their results as he dropped his own bombs.

Flying at very low level in broad daylight was always hazardous, but Patterson ran the additional risk of being shot down by the German flak batteries that had been alerted by the 20 or 30 bombers just ahead of him.

One of his first tasks with the camera was to fly alone down the Scheldt estuary as far as a German fighter airfield whilst taking a film of the route; this was used a few days later to brief crews for the attack on the Philips Radio and Valve factory at Eindhoven.

On the morning of December 6 1942 a large force of light bombers attacked the factory. Patterson was at the rear and filmed the heavy damage, and the success of this sortie led to his becoming the RAF Film Unit's official pilot with his own dedicated Mosquito "O for Orange".

By nature Patterson was a loner and an individualist, and thus well suited to fly these operations. To increase his chances of survival he devised unconventional tactics: he selected his own route to the target, not following that of the main force; and after filming and bombing the target, he returned by a devious and unlikely route.

On one occasion, after attacking a target in Holland, he turned due north and flew out over the Zuider Zee and between the Dutch Friesian Islands, thus avoiding the German fighter airfields and the anti-aircraft batteries on the coast. On another he came home from a French target by flying through the sparsely populated Ardennes before turning for England.

Following the success of the Eindhoven raid, Patterson was often selected to fly to a potential target to film the approaches, and his results were used to plan the subsequent attacks by a larger force of Mosquitos. Sometimes he would fly on ahead to check the weather and to report on enemy defences. 

In late 1943 he was sent ahead of 40 Mosquitos attacking a V1 site in the Pas de Calais. The cloud base was at 200ft and Patterson, then a flight lieutenant, ordered the force to turn back. Piloting one of the Mosquitos was Embry, renowned for his press-on spirit - but he admired Patterson's expertise and fully approved. The target was successfully attacked the following day.

On landing after one attack Patterson was met by Embry who, at the end of the debriefing, asked to see his log book. A few weeks later it was announced that "for his outstanding devotion to duty and determination" Patterson had been awarded the DSO, a rare award to a junior officer, particularly since his was for a sustained period of gallantry rather than for a specific act.

Charles Elliott Sinclair Patterson was born in Edinburgh on November 27 1919 and educated at Canford School. He was learning about farming in Ireland when war was declared, and returned immediately to Britain to volunteer to be a pilot in the RAF.

During his training Patterson disliked aerobatics and flying inverted, so he volunteered to be a bomber pilot. After converting to the Blenheim light bomber he was posted to No 114 Squadron, which had just been detached to Coastal Command to enhance the capability against enemy shipping in the North Sea and English Channel. 

By the summer of 1941, No 114 had reverted to its overland daylight-bombing role. Casualties had been so high that Patterson was promoted three times in the space of a few weeks, and by August was a 21-year-old acting squadron leader and flight commander. 

On the afternoon of August 11 he and the other squadron executives were briefed confidentially on a raid against the power generating stations at Knapsack, on the outskirts of Cologne. At that stage of the war it was the most daring and hazardous daylight operation so far attempted, involving the deepest penetration into Germany without a fighter escort.

Patterson was a sensitive man who readily acknowledged that he felt fear when he flew. He was unable to sleep before this raid and accepted that his chances of returning were very slim. He wrote his will, a letter to his mother and tidied his room. In later years he commented in an interview: "Despite my constant fear, I flew because it was my duty to continue, and others relied on me." The raid was a success, but 12 aircraft were lost. After 40 operations Patterson was awarded the DFC and sent to be an instructor.

He returned to operational duties in August 1942, when he joined the first Mosquito squadron, No 105. Under Wing Commander Art Reynolds, he took part in the raid on the Zeiss optical factory at Jena, near Leipzig, the RAF's deepest-ever daylight low-level penetration of Germany from Britain. 

After 69 operations Patterson was finally grounded, although he managed to fly three more sorties in O for Orange immediately after the D-Day landings. He spent the last 18 months of his service as an instructor before leaving for the Far East. He was released from the RAF in December 1945.

Patterson found it difficult to settle to civilian life but, with his great love of the countryside and of horses, he became a successful bloodstock dealer, spending much time in Ireland. He established close links with the racing fraternity in New Zealand and much of his business involved sales to that country. He also made many successful deals with Middle Eastern stables.

He was a fine horseman, and hunted with more than 40 packs in England and Ireland. He supported Gloucestershire County Cricket Club and greatly enjoyed his annual visits to the Cheltenham Festival.

A cultured, articulate and patriotic man who was fiercely loyal to his country and to his friends, Patterson could be outspoken and held strong views on world affairs and modern-day habits; but he tempered his observations with a keen sense of humour and a twinkle in his eye.

A staunch supporter of the Blenheim Society, he was always prepared to help aviation historians, and was particularly pleased to discover that his films are held at the Imperial War Museum.

Charles Patterson died on March 2. He was unmarried.


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

Nikademus said:


> I think you misunderstood the question. I asked, what was the RN and British army supposed to _do_ against Hitler?...



What could the BC do against Hitler? Drop some bombs on some town? That might have had the we-strike-back flair but helping to defeat German attacks on the UK would have been ten times more helpful to the UK´s war effort. Besides if the UK had limited BC´s size from 42 onwards we would not have this discussion in the first place.


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## Nikademus (Sep 30, 2010)

<shrug> well you said the BC's comments were "nonsense" when he said BC was all the UK had.....that there were these two other big Orgs that Britian could have used.....the RN and British Army....hence my question.

That BC could do little to hurt Germany is not disputed....but something is better than nothing and the veteran's point was that they had no other real options at the time. 8AF's start did little to hurt Germany as well but in lieu of Allied plans, it was the only means to attack Germany directly as well.


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

Nikademus said:


> That BC could do little to hurt Germany is not disputed....but something is better than nothing and the veteran's point was that they had no other real options at the time.



Yes, something is better than nothing but the question Britain faced after the Fall of France was not do we do something but what do do. Burn down their towns or save our merchant ships? I think saving ships would have been much more effective. 

As far as the veteran´s POV is concerned he is right *if* he refers to 44 or 43. By that time the UK had a powerful bomber fleet but it´s gound forces were also battling the Whermacht on the continent. The introduction dates of the Lanc, Halifax and the Sterling give me the impression BC as a lot less impressive in 41 and maybe even 42(Cologne Raid).


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## michaelmaltby (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus you are a poor student of history - or at the least the broad sweep of it - not the stats perhaps. Britain went to war in 1914 -- went to the Continent in defense of her Allies because of Germany - and German aggression. She paid a huge price - loss of Empire and bankruptcy.

If it took from 1940 to 1943 and lots of $$$$'s to build up a murderous BC - who cares? What the Churchill quote above illustrates is the degree of consensus in the British public. 1940 it was going to be different than 1914-18. *Germany was going to get it. * There would be no peace this time when Germany was "cornered" - before any fighting on her soil took place. Before any GERMAN cities were decimated.

Bomber Command and Mr. Harris *were the reflection of the broad will of the British public* - and everything on that subject since 1945 is revisionist rubbish -- progressive speculation .

BC was the fastest, most effective weapon Britain had in the build-up to the Ruhr (1943) to strike back at the Homeland, to start to TOTALLY DECONSTRUCT German life and German industry. You can play all the "stats" you want - but this isn't baseball - and in the end - British strategy worked. (And in the end "working" had nothing to do with the Norden bombsight, pickle barrels or USAAF "strategic" bombing. It worked because it was tenacious British bloody mindedness )

As for "... Bye, tail end charlie." . Childish.

MM


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> What could the BC do against Hitler? Drop some bombs on some town? That might have had the we-strike-back flair but helping to defeat German attacks on the UK would have been ten times more helpful to the UK´s war effort. Besides if the UK had limited BC´s size from 42 onwards we would not have this discussion in the first place.




Markus 
The North africa campaign started on 10 June 1940
the first thousand bomber raid was Cologne May 1942, hardly some bombs on some town.
the Dieppe raid was August 1942 (and was a disaster).

And BTW if the UK had limited the size of Bomber command in 1942 who would do any bombing the USAAF wasnt ready until 1944, and would the USAAF have been happy if the British were spectators to massive casualties. Both the UK and USA were under pressure from Stalin to assist the eastern front, Stalin wanted a second front but thatwasnt possible the least he demanded as an ally was maximum effort to bomb Germany.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Erich said:


> deeper penetrations meant longer range escort fighters like the P-51B in December of 43 onward and the drop tanks on 38's and Jugs.
> 
> Tail end during 45 when BC went on the day offensive it did not matter any more there were only 8 or LW units to defend the Reich, the rest of the JG's were sent ot the Ost front.......one of these that stayed was the effective JG 7 with the Me 262. The LW had shot it's wad and was nil to effective anymore. Plenty of crews and A/C no fuel subsidies




Erich, thanks, (and for your previous post) but I did know that, my first post was badly worded, funny how the ommision of one word changes everything. I was just reading last night about night fighter tactics "conditioning" was damned clever and courageous.


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## Markus (Sep 30, 2010)

michaelmaltby said:


> BC was the fastest, most effective weapon Britain had in the build-up to the Ruhr (1943) to strike back at the Homeland, to start to TOTALLY DECONSTRUCT German life and German industry. You can play all the "stats" you want - but this isn't baseball - and in the end - British strategy worked. (And in the end "working" had nothing to do with the Norden bombsight, pickle barrels or USAAF "strategic" bombing. It worked because it was tenacious British bloody mindedness )
> 
> MM



No doubt it was the most effective weapon *the UK* had.


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> Yes, something is better than nothing but the question Britain faced after the Fall of France was not do we do something but what do do. Burn down their towns or save our merchant ships? I think saving ships would have been much more effective.



Markus you seem to have fallen for an idea that the only thing needed to defeat the U boats was a few bombers. This is clearly nonesense. Until the USA entered the war the U boats could and did operate close to the USA coast. Even after the entry of the USA into the war it was not just closing the air gap in the atlantic that mattered things like more escort carriers, destroyers with asdic, hedgehog, centimetric radar leigh lights and breaking of the KM enigma code were needed

from wiki
quote
The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies in two months. There was no single reason for this, but what had changed was a sudden convergence of technologies, combined with an increase in Allied resources.

The mid-Atlantic gap that had been unreachable by aircraft was closed by long-range B-24 Liberator aircraft. Effective employment of these aircraft required shift of operational control from the United States Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Command to the United States Navy. At the May 1943 Trident conference, Admiral King requested General Henry H. Arnold to send a squadron of ASW-configured B-24s to Newfoundland to strengthen air escort of North Atlantic convoys. General Arnold ordered his squadron commander to engage only in "offensive" search and attack missions and not in escort-of-convoys. In June, General Arnold suggested the Navy assume responsibility for ASW operations. Admiral King requested the Army's ASW-configured B-24s in exchange for an equal number of unmodified Navy B-24s. Agreement was reached in July and the exchange was completed in September 1943.[16]

Further air cover was provided by the introduction of merchant aircraft carriers or MAC ships and later the growing numbers of American-built escort carriers. Flying primarily Grumman F4F/FM Wildcats and Grumman TBF/TBM Avengers, they sailed in the convoys and provided the much needed air cover and patrols all the way across the Atlantic.

The larger numbers of escorts became available, both as a result of American building programmes and the release of escorts that had been tied up in the North African landings during November and December 1942. In particular, destroyer escorts (similar British ships were known as frigates) were designed, which could be built more economically than expensive fleet destroyers and were also more seaworthy than corvettes. There would not only be sufficient numbers of escorts to securely protect convoys, they could also form hunter-killer groups (often centered around escort carriers) to aggressively hunt U-boats.

By spring 1943 the British had developed an effective sea-scanning centimetric radar small enough to be carried on patrol aircraft armed with airborne depth charges. Centimetric radar greatly improved detection and was undetectable by the German Metox radar warning equipment. Armed with radar, RAF Coastal Command sank more U-Boats than any other Allied service in the last three years of the war.[17] During the year 1943, U-Boat losses amounted to 258 to all causes. Of this total, 90 were sunk by Coastal Command, and 51 damaged.[18]

The continual breaking of the German naval Enigma enabled the Allied convoys to evade the wolf packs while British support groups and American hunter-killer groups were able to hunt U-boats that approached the convoys or whose positions were revealed by Enigma decrypts.

Allied air forces developed tactics and technology to make the Bay of Biscay, the main route for France-based U-boats, very dangerous. The introduction of the Leigh Light enabled accurate attacks on U-boats re-charging their batteries on the surface at night. The Luftwaffe responded by providing fighter cover for U-boats exiting into and returning from the Atlantic and for returning blockade runners. Still, with intelligence coming from resistance personnel in the ports themselves, the last few miles to and from port proved hazardous to many U-Boats.

Dönitz's aim, in this tonnage war was to sink Allied ships faster than they could be replaced; as losses fell, and production, particularly in the United States, rose, this became increasingly unachievable.
unquote


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> No doubt it was the most effective weapon *the UK* had.



Last night I saw a documentary that said in 1939 the USA had the 17th largest army in the world, is that true?. In 1943 the 8th Airforce was so innefective it withdrew from the conflict to put a british engine and gunsight into one of its fighters. This cessation of activity was seen as little more than cowardice by Stalin whos airmen at times were being killed on a 10 to 1 ratio (and more)

American shipping was slaughtered by U boats in sight of the coast. The convoy system was a tragic joke with ships meeting up outside the port. The U boats would sink the ships as they travelled up the coast, the good citizens on the land helped the KM by leaving their lights on allowing merchant ships to be silhouetted against the light. 
The American army took huge casualties in North Africa due to inexperience, thats where Patton got his chance
The USAAF had to stop raids due to losses/ poor equipment lack of escorts.

What were your "effective weapons" when the war started in 1939? And where were they at Pearl harbour? Every country involved in the war learned very hard lessons, your gloating does a disservice to those who learned the hard way in all services, especially your own countrymen. It was a persistent sub plot in the war that the USA was disparaging of UK methods.
Even though the USA had been a spectator for over 2 years they had no system for defending their shipping. Without ASDIC and centimetric radar it would be difficult to develop a defence. When the B17 was used in combat it was said to be unsuitable for unescorted raids by the RAF, the geniuses in the USAAF put this down to the RAF and had to re learn all the same tragic lessons. At D Day the British used a variety of equipment known a "Hobarts Funnies" which were dismissed by the USA armed forces. The need for these "funnies" was learned at Dieppe by Canadian and British troops......they would have reduced losses on Omaha beach for sure but Bradley and his commanders didnt need them, how many died at Omaha?


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## pbfoot (Sep 30, 2010)

I have nothing but the utmost respect for any guy that took part in the air campaign over Europe and in hindsight I view this campaign as easy to pick apart both the 8th AF and BC's early efforts . \
However I have no problem slamming Harris he was the Allies WW2 version of Haig and the air battle he waged was akin to the WW1 Paschendale such questios bother me such as why did he wait for the U boat pens construction to finish prior to bombing them , why did he say Coastal Command was a waste of resources


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## parsifal (Sep 30, 2010)

Correlli Barnett (“Engage the Enemy More Closely”) contains an interesting and accurate account of the U-Boat campaign particularly in the critical year of 1942.

There can be little doubt that Harris’s penny pinching insofar as redirecting some bombers to ASW work was not one of his better decisions. He preferred to divert the whole of the command to attacks on the U-Boat production and logistics network (mostly direct attacks on ports and U-Boat Pens) . The reasons were twofold, firstly that the crews of the force lacked the necessary maritime skills to be effective in the maritime patrol role, and secondly there were strong pressures within the British leadership, dating back to the near admission of defeat in November 1941 (and the Butt Report) for the command to be broken up, and its assets redistributed elsewhere. BC had little to be cheery about at that time. The brilliance of Harris was his ability to turn a a defeated force into major instrument for victory in less than a year. One of his earliest achievements was to defeat the calls for the disbandment of BC. He did this by two means principally, by mounting the 1000 bomber raids and by resisting all calls for diversion of BC efforts away from its primary mission. IMO his second means to preserving BC as a force was done a little too purely. At a time when the U-Boats were decimating the convoys, Harris was refusing to allow even a few aircraft to work with CC. 

Eventually however, this was done. Not all of BCs equipment was suitable to conversion to the maritime, but some of it was critical to the victory in the Atlantic. In particular, the VLR a/c (B-24s and some Wellingtons mostly). 

Whilst it is justified to criticise Harris’s intransigence on transferring some resources from BC to CC, it is completely another matter to argue that BC as an entity was a mistake. More of that in a minute…..how does the British experience compare with the US effort in the U-Boat war. At the time (early to mid 1942) shipping losses in the British controlled sector were quite low, and no great threat to Britain’s survival. The real bloodletting on allied shipping was occurring in the US controlled sectors. The main reasons for this can be summarised as follows:

•	“Uncle Ernies” refusal to institute convoys, 
•	“Uncle Ernies” refusal to allocate resources commensurate with the problem (the USN was still forming “hunter killer” groups, a concept that was unworkable until much later, and a concept tried and abandoned by the RN in 1939), 
•	A shortage of suitable escorts. The USN had badly ignored the need for dedicated ASW escorts, believing that fleet destroyers could fulfil the role, and that no special training or teamwork was needed. This was a major oversight by the USN 
•	An absolute refusal by Ernest King to accept any help in the developing crisis. In the agreed areas of USN operations, particularly the gulf of Mexico, he steadfastly refused any and all offers of British help. 
•	A similar refusal as BC was that the USAAAF refused to direct resources, particularly VLR resources to the ASW role. Just as the British wanted to maintain a potential for a bomber force, the USAAAF maintained a similar position 

So, realistically, diverting the entire resources of BC would not have resulted in the decrease in the losses of shipping to any great extent at all. Later, as the focus of enemy u-Boat activity in 1943 shifted back to the British sector, enough VLR resources were available to tip the balance in favour of the british. After may 1943, the U-Boats were effectively defeated, though their presence remained until the end of the war. Diverting all the resources of BC might have had some effect in the months December 1942 through to March 1943, but would have had no effect on the battle. It would have been an enormous waste of effort to divert BCs resources to a “front” that was already under control. Worse than that in fact, since by direct action it has been estimated that in 1943 the bomber offensive reduced output of German military hardware in 1943 by 9%, and by 39% in 1940, (which by extension, means that U-Boat production was curtailed by a similar amount). And worse still the bomber offensive at that time (1943) was soaking up the resources needed to build the nightfighter forces and the flak arms. In 1943, the efforts of BC were in full swing, whereas the efforts by the 8AF did not really get seriously underway until the latter part of 1943, and whereas BC was faced by a force in excess of 1000 nightfighters, the 8AF was drawing the attentions of only about 600 SE fighters (in mid 1943) 

WWII was not won by any single nation, and more pertinently, by any single weapon or offensive. The U-Boat war was important, but not the only front to worry about. The war in the MTO was important, but not the only front to worry about. So too were the battles in Normandy, and the eastern front, the underground resistance, the battles being fought on the eastern front…..and the battles in the air over Germany, by day and by night. The great strength of the allies was that they had the resources to bring the fight to the germans on multiple levels and on multiple fronts. It was the “death by a thousand cuts” under another name…….


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> I have nothing but the utmost respect for any guy that took part in the air campaign over Europe and in hindsight I view this campaign as easy to pick apart both the 8th AF and BC's early efforts . \
> However I have no problem slamming Harris he was the Allies WW2 version of Haig and the air battle he waged was akin to the WW1 Paschendale such questios bother me such as why did he wait for the U boat pens construction to finish prior to bombing them , why did he say Coastal Command was a waste of resources



I dont know when Harris said that but until the introduction of centrimetric Radar basically it was. An aeroplane could be seen/heard by a submarine in most cases before the submarine could be seen by an airplane. Covering the whole of the north sea and atlantic by patrols is a massive undertaking which yielded little until centimetric radar and many other things were introduced, see my previous post.

As for destruction of the U boat pens why not wait and let the Germans use their energy. The Germans constructed a fake decoy airfield in Holland so the RAF (informed by spies) let them build it and then a mosquito dropped a wooden bomb with "bang" written on it when it was completed.


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## pbfoot (Sep 30, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> As for destruction of the U boat pens why not wait and let the Germans use their energy. .


Its much easier to destroy when its open and you don't need grand slams and blockbusters to try and penetrate the concrete. The battle of Berlin and the raid on Nuremburg inccured losses of 8+% for the former and 12% for the latter
or a loss of 700 bombers if you include aircraft that returned but were written off


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> Its much easier to destroy when its open and you don't need grand slams and blockbusters to try and penetrate the concrete. The battle of Berlin and the raid on Nuremburg inccured losses of 8+% for the former and 12% for the latter
> or a loss of 700 bombers if you include aircraft that returned but were written off


PBfoot

I am not an appologist for everything that Harris did but there were many raids on U boat pens, maybe they wanted to destroy U boats inside and the staff involved. Its easier to destroy something while its under construction but if you destroy it when its armour is completed you are saying dont bother building anymore.
I dont know the raids you are talking about so its just a thought.


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## parsifal (Sep 30, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> The battle of Berlin and the raid on Nuremburg inccured losses of 8+% for the former and 12% for the latter
> or a loss of 700 bombers if you include aircraft that returned but were written off



Which is an admittedly very heavy and unsustainable loss rate. However if we are going to include write offs, then we should also include axis write offs in their loss sheets in that same period. According to Murray, losses incl write offs in 1943 were running at about 1000 machines per month. In 1944 this increased to nearly 2000 machines per month at the end of the year. These loss rates would have shrunk to nearly nothing if not for the bombers constantly attacking Germany. In the final reckoning, one also has to consider that BC was given credit for the loss in production of 9% of german output in 1943, and 17% in 1944.

I would say that whilst the price was high, and too high whilst the loss rates were above 3%, it was still a price worth paying, given what was inflicted on the Germans


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

parsifal said:


> Which is an admittedly very heavy and unsustainable loss rate. However if we are going to include write offs, then we should also include axis write offs in their loss sheets in that same period. According to Murray, losses incl write offs in 1943 were running at about 1000 machines per month. In 1944 this increased to nearly 2000 machines per month at the end of the year. These loss rates would have shrunk to nearly nothing if not for the bombers constantly attacking Germany. In the final reckoning, one also has to consider that BC was given credit for the loss in production of 9% of german output in 1943, and 17% in 1944.
> 
> I would say that whilst the price was high, and too high whilst the loss rates were above 3%, it was still a price worth paying, given what was inflicted on the Germans




Parsifal the bare statistics omit a vital detail. 

I live near old WW2 bomber airfields and a heavy industrial area. The bombers going out on a night was a psychological boost for the whole population hearing them go to "mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure" (as Churchill said) that is impossible to measure, the fact that we were fighting back by whatever means kept the nation going. Everybody knew what a grim business it was.


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## Nikademus (Sep 30, 2010)

Markus said:


> Yes, something is better than nothing but the question Britain faced after the Fall of France was not do we do something but what do do. Burn down their towns or save our merchant ships? I think saving ships would have been much more effective.



They did save their merchant ships. The question was what offensive action could the UK take against Hitler's Germany. You insinuated that Britian could have done something with the Navy and Army as an alternative to bombing thus the BC veteran's commentary regarding BC being their only weapon to use was "nonsense" according to you. Yet you are unable to come up with a viable and realistic alternative. All you could suggest was the the RN and/or army concern itself with Logistics (??) and that the Med offered good prospects. The former suggestion is frankly, non-sensible....the RN was already ensuring that Britian's "logistics" remained viable and was also primary a defensive action. The Navy was not capable of conducting any meaningful offensive action against Germany while the British Army at best was only capable of battlling the Italians and their small German allied contingent in a distant secondary theater. All this leaves Germany itself untouched. Despite this, you continue to portray BC's efforts negatively. (i.e. "burning towns" etc)

You also fail to address the points made regarding the 8AF's own efforts which also ultimately resorted to the same Area Bombing (or "Blind bombing" /Radar Bombing as they liked to call it)

It is also evident that you don't appreciate the value for a nation at war, with it's very survival at stake to be able to strike back directly at it's antagonist. There are political and morale issues to be dealt with here as well. Not all nations had two oceans between them as shields...yet one can easily recall the outrage and panic that ensued in the wake of Pearl Harbor.


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## Nikademus (Sep 30, 2010)

Erich said:


> all you guys have to do is research the week in February 1945 about Dresden, Chemnitz and other cities that received the dual bombing of the Allies to know that the project was to break the will of the German people no matter how it was to be done, bomb and destroy everything in existence whether building or human, strafing by both Allies was at an all time high during the week so lets all admit the air war to the ground was not as clean as the text books have said for multiple years.



Agreed. 

Here's a nice blurb from Donald Miller's "Masters of the Air" regarding the missions around the time of Dresden.

_The Eighth AF was never capable of precisely hitting a marshalling yard obscured by smoke or clouds. Young men died trying, but HQ was apparantly not satisfied with heroic failures. After the war, it cleansed its bombing records. During the war, Eighth AF's group commanders made no attempt to disquise what they were doing. While the targets might be designated as "marshalling yards," the after-action summaries are perfectly clear about what was destroyed. "The low squadron pattern hit in the central city area and compact residential district fully built up," read the typical mission summary, this one from the October 7, 1944 Dresden raid. Yet after the war, when anonymous Air Force historians compiled two massive statistical compendiums of American strategic bombing missions-reports still widely used by independent historians-neither volume listed "city area" as a target catagory. As Richard Davis, a senior historian with the Air Force History Support Office wrote: "The unknown hand of hands" that put together the reports "changed all raids striking city areas to 'marshalling yards' or 'port' or 'industrial areas.' And all raids on central Berlin were changed to a special catagory expressly reserved for that city, "Military Civil Government Area." It is as if the American Air Force in Europe never sent a single sortie against an enemy city.

This calculated policy of obfuscation began during the war with the press releases of the Air Force's formidable public relations machine, second to none in the services, not even that of the Marines. General Frederick Anderson cabled a worried Hap Arnold with this reassuring news: "Public relations officers have been advised to take exceptional care tha the military nature of targets attacked in the future be specified and emphasized in all cases. As in the past the statement that an attack was made on such and such a city will be avoided; specific targets will be described." _


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## Markus (Oct 1, 2010)

Nikademus said:


> They did save their merchant ships.



Not nearly as many as they could have saved.




> The question was what offensive action could the UK take against Hitler's Germany. You insinuated that Britian could have done something with the Navy and Army as an alternative to bombing thus the BC veteran's commentary regarding BC being their only weapon to use was "nonsense" according to you.



Actually the BC´s offensive was worse. I dug up some stats about the amount of bombs dropped on Europe by the Brits:

40: ~16k tons
41: ~46k tons
42: ~74k tons
43: ~213k tons
44: ~703k tons

As you can see when the bomber was the only weapon with which the UK could *directly* attack Germany, the UK didn´t have a large bomber fleet. And when it had large bomber fleet it had an Army on the ground in Italy and another in France, meaning BC was no longer the UK´s only weapon.




> Yet you are unable to come up with a viable and realistic alternative. All you could suggest was the the RN and/or army concern itself with Logistics (??) and that the Med offered good prospects. The former suggestion is frankly, non-sensible....the RN was already ensuring that Britian's "logistics" remained viable and was also primary a defensive action. The Navy was not capable of conducting any meaningful offensive action against Germany while the British Army at best was only capable of battlling the Italians and their small German allied contingent in a distant secondary theater. All this leaves Germany itself untouched. Despite this, you continue to portray BC's efforts negatively. (i.e. "burning towns" etc)



First of all I strongly disagree about the RN´s success. While few convoys lost many ships and most were in fact not attacked at all shiplosses were still severe, 1124 ships with 5.3 million GRT.
Second the Med was the UK´s best option in 40/41. A few more or less charred towns in Germany are nothing compared to the Axis evicted from NA, a secure SLOC though the Med and NA as a base for threathening the Axis southern flank. That won´t hit Germany *directly* but by weakening Italy you weaken Germany *indirectly*. 




> It is also evident that you don't appreciate the value for a nation at war, with it's very survival at stake to be able to strike back directly at it's antagonist.



If your nations survival is at stake, how about defending yourself? And when you go on the offensive wouldn´t it be nice to do so in an effective manner? The very last thing you should do is get on the offensive with an insecure line of communication. Your remark about "concerning itself with Logistics (??)" indicates you greatly underestimate the importance of logistics.


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## michaelmaltby (Oct 1, 2010)

".... Not all nations had two oceans between them as shields...yet one can easily recall the outrage and panic that ensued in the wake of Pearl Harbor."

A very strong point.

I remember Mom's oldest brother, Richard, who served in WW1 and WW2 - in #2 he was deemed too old for combat so used to act as a senior officer for troops traveling across to GB on the Queen Mary. He described how he heard the bombers leave at night and then saw them returning at early light with engines missing, holes in the wings, limping back to Britain. Talk about moral and psychology ..... there had never been anything quite like that before in warfare (since the days of fighting outside the city walls ).

It was so very important for Britains to see first hand that the fight was being taken to the Germans relentlessly, night after night and at any price. I am NOT a big Bomber Harris fan but I would not have wanted his job.

Whatever the butcher's bill incurred by BC they were learning and I do not have the sense of utter futility about their Ops that I feel when I read about the static set-piece land battles of WW1.

A final point to consider: Britain bombed by night (for reasons we all understand here). America bombed by day. There are two entirely different bodies of photographic evidence (homefront propaganda, if you prefer ) associated with the two campaigns. And much American material was shot in colour. You just have to look at BikerBabes "WW1 in Colour" post to get the signifigance of this. There are no agonizing film clips of the wings folding up on Lancs (like B-24's) or slanting in inverted (like B-17's) just black sky and flames and a final explosion. Both day and night operations were ghastly. 

Somehow I prefer those Mosquito strikes that were fast, low and stealthy .

MM
Proud Canadian


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## tail end charlie (Oct 1, 2010)

michaelmaltby said:


> ".... NThere are no agonizing film clips of the wings folding up on Lancs (like B-24's) or slanting in inverted (like B-17's) just black sky and flames and a final explosion. Both day and night operations were ghastly.
> 
> /QUOTE]
> 
> ...


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## Nikademus (Oct 1, 2010)

Markus said:


> Not nearly as many as they could have saved.



Speculation. What matters is that they survived. Clay Blair did argue that it would have served a better purpose had more BC bombers been assigned to Coastal Command duty....but later admited that in terms of final results it probably would not have changed things much. In the case of 1939-41 this was certainly true as the technological tools that made Air ASW so decisive were not yet in place. This remains a defensive action however which is the central point.



> Actually the BC´s offensive was worse. I dug up some stats about the amount of bombs dropped on Europe by the Brits:



So now it's a question of which AirForce was more effective?



> As you can see when the bomber was the only weapon with which the UK could *directly* attack Germany, the UK didn´t have a large bomber fleet. And when it had large bomber fleet it had an Army on the ground in Italy and another in France, meaning BC was no longer the UK´s only weapon.



Irrelevent. BC, regardless of it's strength levels was the only tool available for direct offensive action against Germany. Citing the later war situation is irrelevent to this argument because per the Allied conferences (primarily Casablanca), a full scale strategic bombing campaign by both nations was to be waged. 



> First of all I strongly disagree about the RN´s success. While few convoys lost many ships and most were in fact not attacked at all shiplosses were still severe, 1124 ships with 5.3 million GRT.



Per Clay Blair's two volume work on the Uboat war the damage was severe but did not come close to severing Britian's lifeline. 98% of all inbound laden ships in convoy made it through. (12,057 ships in 900 convoys of which 291 were sunk) New construction added 2 million tons of shipping added to the lease or purchase of another 4 million tons of shipping. Blair showed that during the war against the UK alone their merchant fleet actually grew in size from 17.8 million tons to 20.7. In return the RN wiped out 35% of the ocean-going Uboat force (153 boats) sent to attack them. (54 boats sunk) I think they did well enough.



> Second the Med was the UK´s best option in 40/41.



The Med was a sideshow made possible by Italian indescretion. The Germans made it important by going there and providing force levels small enough for Britian to fight against and learn. The British did not make it happen. The Germans reinforced failure by continuing the fight with insufficient force levels to complete the job ultimately providing a training ground for the American ground forces as well. 



> If your nations survival is at stake, how about defending yourself? And when you go on the offensive wouldn´t it be nice to do so in an effective manner? The very last thing you should do is get on the offensive with an insecure line of communication. Your remark about "concerning itself with Logistics (??)" indicates you greatly underestimate the importance of logistics.



They did defend themselves and you continue to ignore the effects on morale and civilian mindsets in regards to offensive actions of any kind. The Germans continued to bomb the British Isles even after the Battle of Britian. The only weapon of retaliation was BC. I understand logisitcs fine. I questioned your use of the term because it didn't make sense.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 1, 2010)

Nikademus said:


> So now it's a question of which AirForce was more effective?
> 
> .



Nikademus


Markus seems to have overlooked the fact that bombs in 1940 were mainly dropped on ports to counter the invasion and airfields in N Europe in the BoB since the invasion didnt take place it must be termed a success. By 1942 the Germans saw little point in attacking ships defended by the British when they could quite happily sink completely undefended ships within sight of the US coast.


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## Markus (Oct 1, 2010)

Nikademus said:


> The Med was a sideshow made possible by Italian indescretion. The Germans made it important by going there and providing force levels small enough for Britian to fight against and learn. The British did not make it happen. The Germans reinforced failure by continuing the fight with insufficient force levels to complete the job ultimately providing a training ground for the American ground forces as well.



Exactly, the Med was the only place where the UK could safely and effectively hurt the Axis. Italy directly and Germany indirectly.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 1, 2010)

Markus said:


> Exactly, the Med was the only place where the UK could safely and effectively hurt the Axis. Italy directly and Germany indirectly.




What is indirect about a battle with the Afrika Korps? You have also forgotten Norway and Dieppe which were disasterous however without Norway Dieppe N Africa and Italy then D Day may well have been a disaster too.
You use 20/20 hindsight on every issue, the British didnt choose to fight in Africa because it was "safe" or they could be "effective" the alternative was to hand the whole continent of Africa and the middle east to the Axis. Sinilarly the BEF going to Belgium and France was always an extremely bad idea but had to be undertaken due to international treaty obligations.

Another thing you seem to have completely forgotten or probably never knew. An air raid causes damage and death. To avoid this populations take cover and have an alarm system. Being sent to air raid shelters night after night is wearing and eventually affects production. There was no doubt about this to the British because it happened to them during the Blitz.


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## parsifal (Oct 1, 2010)

I fail to see how scrapping BC would increase the troop levels in North Africa by any appreciable level. It might mean more aircraft, but this would have been cancelled out by more German aircraft as well, as well as more armaments, including U-Boats with which to wage war on the British. To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 1, 2010)

parsifal said:


> To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future.


Parsival

That was a major part of thinking in the UK 1939 to 1942 were very dark days, to spend three years just "taking it" doing nothing may well have broken everyones spirit. I have heard 1 lancaster in flight and it is impressively noisy I can only imagine what noise a few hundred would make. It must have given a great feeling of something being "done".

Much of these discussions rely on post war statistics which is useful for historians and strategists but it can lead to nonesense. For example I (and anyone reading the BoB thread here) am much more aware of the situation day by day on both sides of the channel than Churchill, Hitler, Dowding or Goering during the BoB. 

It is easy to say this was wrong or that was stupid we are looking at the whole situation in the cold light of day not in the height of battle through the fog of war. Some decisions by Hitler and Goering were quite clearly stupid because they were based on completely false intelligence, the allies suffered the same problem.

It was impossible to say exactly what the effects of a raid were you may flatten a factory completely but you dont know if all machine tools had been moved out the week before or you may have a lucky hit like a single V1 that killed or injured about 1000 troops in a cinema. 

Whatever the rights and wrongs or any proof that BC raids were ineffective or immoral I cannot remember meeting anyone who lived through those times who didnt think it was the right thing to do, and that to me is what matters. My uncle was a navigator in BC in the early years a gentle kindly guy, devout christian without a violent bone in his body. He left me his medals in his will and was quite clearly proud of what he had done even though he never spoke about it, what he did was bombing the heart out of Nazi Germany. Thankfully Pnemonia invalided him out of BC before the Luftwaffe got him. Even my mother (his brother) a devout church going christian who hates violence says "God bless those boys" when she sees an old airman soldier sailor or especially Chelsea pensioner on T.V. 

However such things do have an amusing side in the modern day, after the bombs in London on 7 July 2005 there was an old guy in London laughing at the T.V. camera. he said "if the arabs think this is terror they are jokers I was here in the Blitz, more people have died of old age than with these bombs, they are cowards".


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## Markus (Oct 2, 2010)

So the Germans could have countered more ASW a/c and they could have countered more bombers for the Med so well that they would have become inefficient. Follwing that logic they could have also countered some bombers trying to set some towns in Germany on fire. 

_To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future._

That means BC´s biggest effect in it´s early days was PR!?


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## Glider (Oct 2, 2010)

Markus said:


> So the Germans could have countered more ASW a/c and they could have countered more bombers for the Med so well that they would have become inefficient. Follwing that logic they could have also countered some bombers trying to set some towns in Germany on fire.



I must disagree with this as the Luftwaffe were overstretched for the vast majority of the war and certainly from the start of the attack on Russia and couldn't counter more of anything anywhere.



> _To say nothing of the feeling of sheer helplessness for the british, with no weapon that even showed the slightest inkling of being able to strike at the Germans for the foreseeable future._
> 
> That means BC´s biggest effect in it´s early days was PR!?



To a degree that is true remembering that the PR was both in the UK and Germany. It can play an important part of the war. There was one meeting between Russia and Germany when the siren went and eneryone had to go to the shelters. The Germans wwere saying that the British were on their last legs and bound to lose. The Russian minister asked if that was the case why was he in the bomb shelter and not the British.
Another fact is that lessons had to learn and navigation techniques developed. This is often overlooked but it should be remembered that when Germany launched the Little Blitz in early 1944, the Luftwaffe had great difficulty finding London which is only 50 miles from the French Coast.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 2, 2010)

Markus said:


> That means BC´s biggest effect in it´s early days was PR!?




Don't forget that PR has a big effect on morale.

On both sides.

Many raids and strikes were planned for PR results alone by many nations.

Doolittle's raid on Tokyo is one. Early French and Russian raids on Berlin are others. 

Little or no military value but good PR or propaganda. They could and did also cause redistribution of enemy forces and in some cases alterations in production allocations.


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## Markus (Oct 2, 2010)

Glider said:


> I must disagree with this as the Luftwaffe were overstretched for the vast majority of the war and certainly from the start of the attack on Russia and couldn't counter more of anything anywhere.



That´s just perfect.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 2, 2010)

*Many raids and strikes were planned for PR results alone by many nations.*



Agreed, the British raid on Berlin in 1940 had an influence on Germay attacking London which changed the course of the BoB. One raid on berlin later in the war was purely to disrupt a broadcast by Goering.


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## BombTaxi (Oct 2, 2010)

Markus said:


> That´s just perfect.



What would be perfect is if you could respond to these points that I have already raised and you have ducked:

1. Why is it that BC were butchers, but 8th AF and XX AF, using exactly the same tactics, were not?

2. You stated that the 8th AF wore the LW down while BC did not. How do you square this with the fact that the LW had to maintain a large NF force solely to counter BC raids, absorbing resource which could have been used elsewhere? 

3. What could German industry have acheived if it wasn't being bombed around the clock? And how much more war material could have been produced if it wasn't for the damage and disruption caused by the BC and 8th offensives?

Cheers

BT


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## tail end charlie (Oct 2, 2010)

as regards PR the first raid by the USA in Europe was made in planes borrowed from the RAF specifically so it could be made on the 4th July. see the USA bombers thread.

I think it would be true to say the USAAF wore down what was left of the Luftwaffe in conjunction with the other forces on east and west fronts. There were over 50,000 Bf109 and FW 190s produced and thousands of others of various types, to claim wiping out the whole force is egging the pudding a bit.


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## Glider (Oct 2, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> What would be perfect is if you could respond to these points that I have already raised and you have ducked:
> 
> 1. Why is it that BC were butchers, but 8th AF and XX AF, using exactly the same tactics, were not?
> 
> ...



*Calm down*, his statement was made in responce to my comment about the germans being overstretched, not about what you posted.


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## BombTaxi (Oct 2, 2010)

I'm calm mate  I just feel Markus has said little of substance to support his trashing of BC, nor resolved some of the contradictions in his own statements. My last post wasn't meant to come across angry, apologies to all if it did


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## bobbysocks (Oct 3, 2010)

dresden will always be a topic of controversy much like hiroshima. people have opinions and like sports or religion you are not going to sway them from their point of view. when i was going through my father's papers i ran into this article about it. he did not escort the bombers to dresden but to chemnitz that day. i can not vouch for the "correctness" of the information and facts but since the subject of dresden was breached several posts ago...here it is in it entirety: 

editorial by walter brown md - excepts of the article.

the dresdeners

every year just before valentine's day there are stories published about the bombing of dresden germany on feb 13-14, 1945. the articles written by revisionists accuse the united states and great britian of firebombing unnecessarily. television and radio carried reports of similar themes. the media once again did not have the moral or ethical sensibilities to look for the facts concerning the dresden raid and present them accurately.

the time was early 1945. russian troops were advancing on germany from the east at a rapid clip. our ground troops had finally won the batle of the bulge and were heading for germany from the west. the nazis had pulled many of their troops and most of their war equipment back from the russian front and purposely amassed them in the marshaling yards in dresden. those weapons were to be thrown up against the american soldiers in attempts to slow forward progress across germany towards berlin. the german leaders apparently thought we would not bomb dresden-that their valuable guns and vehicles would be safe. they were warned by the allies in advance to move the equipment into the city or expect the worst. days before the bombing, leaflets were dropped on the city advising the citizens of the situation. the germans continued to move equipment into the city.

the night of february 13, the raf area bombed the city in night raids just as they had been doing in their attacks on german industrial cities for previous years of the war. the following day 461 b-17s of the first air division precision bombed the marshaling yards with good results. *general lew lyle*, flying lead aircraft, attests to the target for the day and the military reasons for the raid on dresden. the target was the marshaling yards in dresden. *john greenwood, president of the 8th afmmf, flying as lead navigator *gives a detailed account of the mission. his story was recently written up in the new york times. most telling, however, is the evidence of *harry gobrecht *who flew the mission with the 303rd bomb group and is their official historian. harry has done extensive research into all the missions the 303rd flew and has found classified mission reports on the dresden raid. these secret documents leave no doubt as to the purpose of the mission to dresden.

questions asked as to why dresden was bombed so close to the end of the war are senseless as those journalists who write according to their own aganda and for reasons other than historical accuracy. no one knew at the time that the war would end three months later. the german army was still fighting and the allied soldiers were being killed.

the 8th air force ( and all allies ) was still losing fighters and bombers every day. perhaps the dresden raid was instrumental, as most bombing raids were, in saving allied lives and hastening the surrender of the nazi regime. perhaps the "political revisionists" should consider the facts of the war as they existed at the time. and perhaps they should consider what the alternative outcomes of the war would have been.

peter f. ardizzi, editor
"keystone tale winds"
p,o, box 102
warminster, pa 18974-0511

(*** i do not know how old this article is or if the publication is still in existance. but it does site names and references for research if you are so inclined to dig deeper)


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## Hop (Oct 3, 2010)

The B-17s sent to the "marshalling yards" in Dresden carried nearly 40% incendiaries. Dresden was a city area raid by the 8th AF, both in practice and intent.


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## Markus (Oct 3, 2010)

Hop said:


> The B-17s sent to the "marshalling yards" in Dresden carried nearly 40% incendiaries. Dresden was a city area raid by the 8th AF, both in practice and intent.



Have you ever seen a railroad marshalling yard or railcars for that matter? Somehow I doubt it!

@bobbysocks: 8th AF drooped less than 800 tons of all kind of bombs while BC dropped 1.200 tons of incendiaries., plus 1.400 ton of HE. Thus 8th AF´s attack isn´t seem as more than an addendum.


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## bobbysocks (Oct 3, 2010)

actually i live near one of the biggest rail yards in the state and pretty much the region. they are tightly compact and have thousands of rail cars end to end..side by side and spread for miles. a single car fire can damage/destroy the 8 or more adjacent cars and if it spreads its worse. these are modern steel cars. rail cars in those days were made primarily of wood, tanker cars each carry thousands of gallons of....syrup, oil, fuel, antifreeze...etc. wrecks in the yard take days to clear up as to you have to shuffle cars to different sidings get the wreck train in...and that is a small scale. oh, yes...most of them are in very close proximity to industrial or/and residentual areas. so, yeah...i do know a little about choo choos.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 3, 2010)

bobbysocks said:


> actually i live near one of the biggest rail yards in the state and pretty much the region. they are tightly compact and have thousands of rail cars end to end..side by side and spread for miles. a single car fire can damage/destroy the 8 or more adjacent cars and if it spreads its worse. these are modern steel cars. rail cars in those days were made primarily of wood, tanker cars each carry thousands of gallons of....syrup, oil, fuel, antifreeze...etc. wrecks in the yard take days to clear up as to you have to shuffle cars to different sidings get the wreck train in...and that is a small scale. so, yeah...i do know a little about choo choos.



You must live near chatenooga bobby.

As you say most rolling stock was made of wood and so were ammunition boxes. But as your previous post it was a war, whether Dresden was full of soldiers or not it was full of Germans, people putting out fires arnt fighting. Buildings around marshalling yards are also important.


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## Hop (Oct 3, 2010)

> Have you ever seen a railroad marshalling yard or railcars for that matter? Somehow I doubt it!



Yes, I have.

The point is, Bomber Command didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards. The 15th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards. The 8th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards in France, Belgium or the Netherlands. When they were on a specific mission like operation Clarion, the 8th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards in Germany.

But when the 8th AF were planning an area bombing raid against a German city, and used "marshalling yards" as a cover, they did use incendiaries. A lot of them.

So why the difference? Why did the 8th AF think German marshalling yards, attacked using radar aiming, would burn better than French, Belgian or Dutch marshalling yards? When they had a specific order to attack German marshalling yards handed to them (Clarion), why didn't they use incendiaries?

Richard G Davis:



> *Rail yards as such, however, were poor targets for
> incendiaries. If the fire bombs landed directly on or near rail cars, they destroyed
> or damaged them; otherwise, they could do little harm to the heavy equipment or
> trackage*. The Eighth realized this. Of the 9,042 tons of bombs dropped on
> ...



Why were the Dresden rail yards thought worth 40% incendiaries?

The evidence is the 8th AF used HE on marshalling yards when the marshalling yard itself was the main target. When they wanted to cause incidental damage to the town, as on their general missions to Germany, they used a high proportion of incendiaries.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 3, 2010)

Hop said:


> Yes, I have.
> The 8th AF didn't use incendiaries against marshalling yards in France, Belgium or the Netherlands.
> 
> When they wanted to cause incidental damage to the town, as on their general missions to Germany, they used a high proportion of incendiaries.



In France Belgium and Holland they had to keep civilian casualties to a minimum they wernt the enemy.

In Dresden the surounding population were German, everyone knew by that time what percentage (approximately) would hit the target if the marshalling yard is destroyed and the surrounding city set alight then that is a good result.


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## bobbysocks (Oct 3, 2010)

Hop said:


> So why the difference? Why did the 8th AF think German marshalling yards, attacked using radar aiming, would burn better than French, Belgian or Dutch marshalling yards?
> 
> Why were the Dresden rail yards thought worth 40% incendiaries?



like i said i did a whole 10 minutes of research on this BUT...to answer your question above i would have to say...perhaps it would burn better. i do not know without viewing the air recon photos and intel of the target area. just to say they didnt use it in other places is not a good argument....like TEC said above wiping out your allies isnt the smartest game plan. perhaps dresden lent itself to a dutch mix of HE and Incin where other places in germany this would have been futile. i did read that dresden had a larger percentage of wooden structures ( like tokyo) . other factors...the close proximity of industry or residence....the construction of the yard itself (cement or wood ) with round houses, car barns, fuel storage tanks might have made it more than feasible...again i would have to see the hard intel to make a objective assessment.


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## Erich (Oct 3, 2010)

may I make a suggestion and allow yourselves some research as to where the majority of the bombs landed in Dresden.............in the old part of the city. I can also think of Pforzheim and why it turned into a fire storm as well.

war sucks gents the puny ugly little Austrian reaped a wirl-wind of Allied wrath onto Germany, my relatives for one felt it though undeserving


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## BombTaxi (Oct 4, 2010)

I think the point that everyone is trying to make is that the USAAF were as 'guilty' of indiscriminate area bombing as BC, and used much the same tactics. This squarely contradicts Markus' claim that only BC engaged in such barbaric activities. While I find the area bombing of cities morally repugnant, Erich is right that this was total war, where ALL sides targeted civilians as a means of disrupting production and morale. With the gift of hindsight, we can see that area bombing was not as successful in those aims as it's advocates might wish. 

What frustrates me is that Markus is responding to the well-reasoned and substantiated claims of other posters with a stream of vitriolic and unsubstantiated Anglophobia, insulting the memory of the BC vets, and chooses to avoid answering any challenges to his position. This is a debate I am more than happy to have, but it is frustrating when the other viewpoint is couched in such terms.


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## Markus (Oct 4, 2010)

Hop said:


> Yes, I have.
> 
> Why were the Dresden rail yards thought worth 40% incendiaries?



bobbysocks already told you. Cars with a wooden superstructure, filled with wooden boxes, filled with woodchips to absorb shock and the ties were also made of wood, wood treated with combustible chemicals.

edit: The yard at Hamm was attacked seven times by 303 BG, twice as a secondary target. In the five planned attackes a mix of HE and incendiaries was used twice. Alltogether 26 times only HE was used, 22 times HE and incendiaries in the attacks on German RR-yards.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

I have seen british bombers dropping incendiaries which are not bombs and cannot be dropped precisely, what were the American incendiaries like? Also a bomb dropped on a city is as much to damage water mains and blow roof tiles as anything else.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> What frustrates me is that Markus is responding to the well-reasoned and substantiated claims of other posters with a stream of vitriolic and unsubstantiated Anglophobia, insulting the memory of the BC vets, and chooses to avoid answering any challenges to his position. This is a debate I am more than happy to have, but it is frustrating when the other viewpoint is couched in such terms.



I agree completely. I found the quote below on usaaf.net which I think gives a good account. The only thing I would add is the confirmation that those of London, Coventry and many other cities would agree with the final paragraph completely.

*On the night of May 30, 1942, it mounted its first "thousand plane" raid against Cologne and two nights later struck Essen with almost equal force. On three nights in late July and early August 1943 it struck Hamburg in perhaps the most devastating single city attack of the war -- about one third of the houses of the city were destroyed and German estimates show 60,000 to 100,000 people killed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed and there is some indication from interrogation of high officials that Hitler himself thought that further attacks of similar weight might force Germany out of the war*
and
*In the latter half of 1944, aided by new navigational techniques, the RAF returned with part of its force to an attack on industrial targets. These attacks were notably successful but it is with the attacks on urban areas that the RAF is most prominently identified. 

The city attacks of the RAF prior to the autumn of 1944, did not substantially affect the course of German war production. German war production as a whole continued to increase. This in itself is not conclusive, but the Survey has made detailed analysis of the course of production and trade in 10 German cities that were attacked during this period and has made more general analyses in others. These show that while production received a moderate setback after a raid, it recovered substantially within a relatively few weeks. As a rule the industrial plants were located around the perimeter of German cities and characteristically these were relatively undamaged. 

Commencing in the autumn of 1944, the tonnage dropped on city areas, plus spill-overs from attacks on transportation and other specific targets, mounted greatly. In the course of these raids, Germany's steel industry was knocked out, its electric power industry was substantially impaired and industry generally in the areas attacked was disorganized. There were so many forces making for the collapse of production during this period, however, that it is not possible separately to assess the effect of these later area raids on war production. There is no doubt, however, that they were significant. 

The Survey has made extensive studies of the reaction of the German people to the air attack and especially to city raids. These studies were carefully designed to cover a complete cross section of the German people in western and southern Germany and to reflect with a minimum of bias their attitude and behavior during the raids. These studies show that the morale of the German people deteriorated under aerial attack. The night raids were feared far more than daylight raids. The people lost faith in the prospect of victory, in their leaders and in the promises and propaganda to which they were subjected. Most of all, they wanted the war to end. They resorted increasingly to "black radio'' listening, to circulation of rumor and fact in opposition to the Regime; and there was some increase in active political dissidence -- in 1944 one German in every thousand was arrested for a political offense. If they had been at liberty to vote themselves out of the war, they would have done so well before the final surrender. In a determined police state, however, there is a wide difference between dissatisfaction and expressed opposition. Although examination of official records and those of individual plants shows that absenteeism increased and productivity diminished somewhat in the late stages of the war, by and large workers continued to work. However dissatisfied they were with the war, the German people lacked either the will or the means to make their dissatisfaction evident. 

The city area raids have left their mark on the German people as well as on their cities. Far more than any other military action that preceded the actual occupation of Germany itself, these attacks left the German people with a solid lesson in the disadvantages of war. It was a terrible lesson; conceivably that lesson, both in Germany and abroad, could be the most lasting single effect of the air war.*


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

I will make 2 statements and a question here...

1. I can see tempers are going to flair soon (it always does when this topic comes up every year...). Lets try and keep that from happening everyone. Play like adults and be civil and this conversation can continue.

2. War is hell people, civilians on all sides felt the brunt of the war more. 

And now the question...

*How was Dresden any different from London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Guernica, Belfast, Rotterdam, Wieluń, Frampol (just to name a few)? *

To talk about the BC as if they were the only ones that were bombing civilian centers is absured. All of the nations are guilty of it, and it started with the Luftwaffe (probably the most guilty of it).


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 2. War is hell people, civilians on all sides felt the brunt of the war more.



Adler, I couldnt agree more. there seems to be a new modern day notion that civilians wernt involved in war prior to the the invention of the airplane. From the post war movie industry there is always a good guys bad guys theme. It all seems to give the idea that you can wage a good or clean war.

The Vikings in England habitually murdered civilans and especially christian settlements what we would now call ethnic cleansing, though this was probably revenge for simmilar attacks againt them in other parts of Europe.
From the days of walled cities and castles, civilians were starved into submission. there was a convention that if a city surrendered to an army they would not be molested but if they resisted the city would be sacked (rape murder theft and fire). Sacking a city that surrendered was a bad move as it meant every other city would fight to the death.
Napoleons revolutionary army pillaged their way across Europe with a fearsome reputation for destroying everything they came across. They paid a fearsome price on the retreat from Moscow (which they burned) as they were retreating through the land they had just ravaged. A German once explained to me it was this that lead to the shutsenfests in Germany, towns had to be able to defend themselves. Wellington had to maintain strong discipline with his army in Portugal Spain and especially France insisting the people wernt molested and all supplies were paid for because he couldnt afford the citizens turning against him with a small army, what we would now call "winning hearts and minds". Winning hearts and minds isnt only goodwill it is sound military practice

In the Franco Prussian war Paris was beseiged and the citizens on the verge of starvation, and in the first world war towns like Dunkerque took a battering as did every town on the front. The British in the Boer war were fighting civilians and in what is now Iraq would bomb villages. 

From the start of conflicts civilians have been involved used and abused I dont know where the idea it was any different comes from.


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## Erich (Oct 4, 2010)

Chris is correct we can broadcast as much as we want about all the Allied and German cities hammered during the war 

think we are going back again to re-hashing the same ol stuff with nothing new to the point it is headache time, agreeing to disagree from our own points of view thus the thread is going nowhere now.

point as a matter of true fact US and BC did their job well and it was needed to crush the German moral whether by populace or by industry, it brought the cruelties of war right into the German home.

E ~


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## parsifal (Oct 4, 2010)

Ive watched this "debate" with increasing frustration, but I am not going to allow that to spill over onto the thread.

To me, this accusation of the british is not productive. i fail to see how any rational person can seriously argue that the british were any worse, or better, in targetting civilians, than anybody else, including the Americans.

As to war crimes and war guilt, ther are some basic qustions that each of us needs to sit back and consider....

1) Who started the war?
2) Who was the first nation to target cities as legitimate targets
3) Who was first to consider it legitimate to target civilians (such as refugees) as legitimate targets in WWII
4) Who was the first to deliberately target cities in terror attacks, and continue to do so for a great part of the war?
5) Paraphrasing, who said that if they drop 10 or 50 tons of bombs on Berlin, we will drop 10 times that amount on British cities. And was that threat ever made against an American City?
6) And in 1945, despite the war being obviously lost, and germany obviously on the ropes, who was it who refused to surrender. Who was still resisting as the so-called inneffective Bomber command levelled the city of Dresden.
7) Who told, or allowed, so many civilians to take shelter in the city, well beyond the limits of the cities civil defences?
8) Who was found guilty of conducting an illegal war of agression, along with a whole stack of other related war crimes?

The British did not start the war, but are guilty of obstimately refusing to surrender. They were there at the end, with BC doing its share of pounding Germany into the stone age. I am totally unapologetic for that. The stated allied terms of surrender were unconditional surrender, and overwhelmingly that surrender was secured, within the terms of the Geneva convention. The killing of civilians in German cities was no different to the killing of civilians anywhere in Europe. It happens in modern war. It is not a war crime, unless its avoidable. In the context of the technologies available in the war, night bombing required area bombing, and area bombing was going to kill civilians. If the Allies had used gas, that would have been a war crime, but they didnt. The Geneva convention does not prevent the killing of civilians, and it does not prevent the use of area bombing. Once a nation has capitulated, the occupying power must observe the normal rule of law, which the germans did not do, and as a consequence committed untold attrocities that were totally illegal.

And just to make it perfectly clear, I believe it was Churchill who made it perfectly clear what they (the British) were going to do. Again, paraphrasing....."we do not ask for quarter or pity in this war, but our enemies can neither expect any as well, until they surrender"


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## Timppa (Oct 4, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> The Vikings in England...,
> Napoleons revolutionary army...shutsenfests in Germany.. Wellington had to maintain strong discipline..In the Franco Prussian...Boer war...



This thread is degenerated.. but,

IMO the Bomber Command could have done better. Tizard and Blackett argued that even then. Speer was worried about the USAAF 8AF raids (especially against the ball bearing industry), not about British bombing campaign.


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## parsifal (Oct 4, 2010)

Timppa said:


> This thread is degenerated.. but,
> 
> IMO the Bomber Command could have done better. Tizard and Blackett argued that even then. Speer was worried about the USAAF 8AF raids (especially against the ball bearing industry), not about British bombing campaign.



With respect, but that is sheer fiction. He was very concerned about the impact of the British bombing campaigns as his comments following Hamburg clearly show. Germany's defences were slanted to defending against night attack until the very end of 1943, and Hitler lost his confidence in the Luftwaffe primarily because of the british offensive.

The British from the 2nd quarter of 1942 were increasingly effective at night bombing, and the Germans knew that with exceptional clarity


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> I think the point that everyone is trying to make is that the USAAF were as 'guilty' of indiscriminate area bombing as BC, and used much the same tactics.



I think that its the somewhat predictable posters from Britain who try to relativize RAF BC's actions by trying make the USAAF look like 'just as guilty' as RAF BC when it comes to indisrciminate area bombings. Yes the USAAF also did area bombing, especially towards the end of the war. 

The difference lies within the world also. Despite the claim that "marshalling yards" were just an American euphenism for terror bombing, it is a fact that the Reichsbahn was in ruins by the end of war, deprieved of its rolling stock; as were the German oil industry. 

And it wasn't a mysterious fairy that did it, it was USAAF and its bombers and leaders who pushed for it, and the only effective bombing performed by the Allies that actually weakened the Germans - direct bombing of factories just did not yield notable results. RAF BC was randomly hitting German cities and the countryside at a huge cost of both manpower and material for almost exactly five years (in the first half first out of incompetence, then out of immorarilty) and achieving nothing in return, and was unwilling to abandon the slaughter until its nose was bloodied over Berlin, and Eisenhowever was pushing for bombing something worthwhile in the first half of 1944 - the railway system - in France and oil refinieries in Germany. 

As for BC's (or Nachtjagd for that matter) vets, they deserved the medals they've got because they were carrying out the orders they received, and they risked their lifes every night for their country. May they rest in peace. Their leaders, however, deserve nothing but rope for the orders they gave.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

parsifal said:


> With respect, but that is sheer fiction. He was very concerned about the impact of the British bombing campaigns as his comments following Hamburg clearly show.



Although this is often repeated by Anglophil apologists, that Speer was "very concerned" about Bomber Command's attacks, actually Speer in his book, in Chapter The Bombing War makes it utterly clear he was very thankful for every ton of bombs randomly dropped by Bomber Command in terror raids on cities and not on factories.

If I recall correctly Speer considered a major relief that the British continued - I believed he used the phrase - "senseless terror campaign" instead of concentrating on the bottlenecks of the industry, like ball bearing plans.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> And now the question...
> 
> *How was Dresden any different from London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Guernica, Belfast, Rotterdam, Wieluń, Frampol (just to name a few)? *



That it was a bombing performed with the pure aim of terrorizing the population, without any identifiable military goal or advantage seeked from it...? 

Warsaw, Guernica, Rotterdam, Wieluń areas - and not the cities themselves - were all attacked with identifiable military goals either in direct or indirect support of the actual army operations. The military benefits were immidiate. In London the targets were identifiable as industrial, military or trasportational targets (ie. docks and factories and airfields around and in Greater London - not to mention the fact that Bomber Command was actively bombing similiar German cities since May 1940 and the Luftwaffe had not yet even responded to these for months.

Amsterdam, frankly I dunno if it was ever bombed, unless you mean the V-2 strikes in late 1944, which targeted the Allied oil lines under the Channel. Frampol OTOH does appear as valid case for targetting a small town, though oddly AFAIK nobody could ever came up with an actual German paper ordering so, rather than simply assuming they did.


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## RCAFson (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Although this is often repeated by Anglophil apologists, that Speer was "very concerned" about Bomber Command's attacks, actually Speer in his book, in Chapter The Bombing War makes it utterly clear he was very thankful for every ton of bombs randomly dropped by Bomber Command in terror raids on cities and not on factories.
> 
> If I recall correctly Speer considered a major relief that the British continued - I believed he used the phrase - "senseless terror campaign" instead of concentrating on the bottlenecks of the industry, like ball bearing plans.




Except, of course, that BC wasn't dropping bombs "randomly" and with the introduction of Oboe, Gee and H2S BC could and did carry out "precision' bombing even at night, and they did so with far heavier and more destructive bombs than were typically used during daylight attacks, for example BC dropped 45% of the tonnage dropped against German oil targets.
Oil Campaign of World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> That it was a bombing performed with the pure aim of terrorizing the population, without any identifiable military goal or advantage seeked from it...?
> 
> Warsaw, Guernica, Rotterdam, Wieluń areas - and not the cities themselves - were all attacked with identifiable military goals either in direct or indirect support of the actual army operations. The military benefits were immidiate. In London the targets were identifiable as industrial, military or trasportational targets (ie. docks and factories and airfields around and in Greater London - not to mention the fact that Bomber Command was actively bombing similiar German cities since May 1940 and the Luftwaffe had not yet even responded to these for months.
> 
> Amsterdam, frankly I dunno if it was ever bombed, unless you mean the V-2 strikes in late 1944, which targeted the Allied oil lines under the Channel. Frampol OTOH does appear as valid case for targetting a small town, though oddly AFAIK nobody could ever came up with an actual German paper ordering so, rather than simply assuming they did.



1. In your posts above you are on the verge of becoming downright insulting to people. Choose your words more wisely. You have received enough warnings from me in other threads. *There are no more.*

2. You are a revisionist here and possibly a sympathizer (I believe this more and more every day...).

3. Quit kidding yourself that the Luftwaffe attacked London, Coventry, Guernica, Warsaw adn Wielun and most other cities for pure military reasons. They were not military targets, they were bombed for the pure fact that they were "enemy" cities. Nothing else. There may have been military targets in the city, but that does not warrant the complete destruction of a city. Quit trying to church up the Luftwaffe.

4. What was the *military value* of the millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs that were exterminated by the Nazis? Are you going to be apologetic to them? 

5. Let me get this straight? It is okay for the Luftwaffe, or any German military branch to commit war crimes but you condemn the Allies for it? I never see you attack the Nazi's for committing crimes or terror bombing.

6. Do not skirt around this question. Show me with facts *what were the military targets at these locations*?

a. Guernica

b. Wieluń (I am really interested in this one Kurfurst. What were the military targets, come on enlighten me. Also don't give me the crap about a Polish Cav Brigade being in the City. You don't need to completely destroy a town by aerial bombardment for that reason...).

c. Warsaw (sure there may have been troops in the city, but certainly the whole city was not a military target.)

d. Frampol (I guess you consder destroying a city and killing 4000 people for practice a military target huh?

So again I ask you this Kurfurst, how did the Germans not use terror bombing but the allies did? How is it that you have no problem with the Nazi's committing war crimes? Yeah you struck a nerve here. I will refrain from personal attacks, but you might want to answer my questions above pretty darn carefully...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

Now that I have answered Kurfurst, I wish to say this...

The bombing of cities is a legit target. Cities contain industry, industry is part of the overall war machine. To destroy this helps your war effort. All sides attempted to do this, it is a fact of war. Germans, British, Americans, Russians, Italians, etc... *If they were not doing this, they were not trying to win the war. Period!*

Another factor is to demoralize the enemy (this includes the civilian population). Who did this? Germany? You betcha. England? You betcha. USA? You betcha. *If they were not doing this, they were not trying to win the war. Period!*

To say that one side did not do this and that another is wrong for it, is just plane ignorant. Is it unfortunate that civilians suffer? Of course, but you know what that is an unfortunate fact of war.


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## Markus (Oct 4, 2010)

parsifal:

In what way do the moral points you raise change BC mission and BC´s inefficience? They don´t. By the way, I get why the Brits did what they did, I´m just saying it didn´t work.


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## Hop (Oct 4, 2010)

> The difference lies within the world also. Despite the claim that "marshalling yards" were just an American euphenism for terror bombing, it is a fact that the Reichsbahn was in ruins by the end of war, deprieved of its rolling stock; as were the German oil industry.
> 
> And it wasn't a mysterious fairy that did it, it was USAAF and its bombers and leaders who pushed for it



Whilst it was the Americans who pushed most for the oil campaign, the transport campaign was the brainchild of the RAF's Solly Zuckerman. Both the 8th AF and Bomber Command contributed to the oil and transportation plans.

Nobody is denying the 8th AF also genuinely targeted German transportation targets. The point Davis is making is that when the 8th were going after a particular rail target they did so visually using HE. When they were conducting an area raid they usually did so using radar aiming and a large proportion of incendiaries, and claimed the target was a "marshalling yard".


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

Markus said:


> parsifal:
> 
> In what way do the moral points you raise change BC mission and BC´s inefficience? They don´t. By the way, I get why the Brits did what they did, I´m just saying it didn´t work.



I fail to see the difference in efficiency between BC bombing at night with oboe and the USAAF bombing through cloud with radar. Perhaps you could explain?


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 1. In your posts above you are on the verge of becoming downright insulting to people. Choose your words more wisely. You have received enough warnings from me in other threads. *There are no more.*
> 
> 2. You are a revisionist here and possibly a sympathizer (I believe this more and more every day...).



Your points 1. and 2. seem to be at odd with each other. You ask me not to insult people, then you start to insult me in the next sentence..



DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 3. Quit kidding yourself that the Luftwaffe attacked London, Coventry, Guernica, Warsaw adn Wielun and most other cities for pure military reasons.



I am not kidding myself, I have researched it, so I know _for certain_. In London the targets attacked were the London docks. Of the many raids, only three were repraisal raids for (from the German POV, indiscriiminate due to their inaccuracy, though the targets were acceptable) British attacks on German cities.

The target in Coventry was the cities extensive aero industry, plain and simple, which was successfully destroyed. The city itself got its own pounding in the process. Exceptional, hardly. 

Take a walk in Győr. There was a Messerschmitt factory there. After 15th AAF visited it, no Messerschmitt factory, and no main street either.



> They were not military targets, they were bombed for the pure fact that they were "enemy" cities.Nothing else.



Hermann Göring's general order, issued on 30 June 1940:

_The war against England is to be restricted to destructive attacks against industry and air force targets which have weak defensive forces. ... The most thorough study of the target concerned, that is vital points of the target, is a pre-requisite for success. It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population._

Seems to be at odds with what you seem to believe.

British official POV from Collier, Basil. The Defence of the United Kingdom. HMSO, 1957:

_Although the plan adopted by the Luftwaffe early September had mentioned attacks on the population of large cities, detailed records of the raids made during the autumn and the winter of 1940-41 does not suggest that indiscriminate bombing of the civilians was intended. The points of aim selected were largely factories and docks. Other objectives specifically allotted to bomber-crews included the City of London and the governmental quarter rounds Whitehall._

Also at odds. So, can you specifically menion LW attacks on Britain in 1940 that you believe to be terror raids?



> There may have been military targets in the city, but that does not warrant the complete destruction of a city.



No city was completely destructed during the Battle of Britain. The industry and shipping, OTOH, was hit hard. Nor elsewhere - Frampol comes close, but it was a sizable village rather than a city, with wooden houses.



> Quit trying to church up the Luftwaffe.



I am merely stating the well researched and provable historical facts. Does this bother you?



DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 4. What was the *military value* of the millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs that were exterminated by the Nazis? Are you going to be apologetic to them?



Nope, genocide is genocide, whoever commits it: British in Sout Africa, the Americans on the Philippines, the Belgians in the Kongo, the Japanese in China, the Russians in Ukraine etc. or the Germans in, well, Ukraine again. 

That is, however, not the topic of the current discussion. Do you want it to be? Count me out then. Even more boring and pointless discussions than this one.



DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 5. Let me get this straight? It is okay for the Luftwaffe, or any German military branch to commit war crimes but you condemn the Allies for it?



So far this thread has shown opposite trend: white-washing Bomber Command. First it was relativizing it with the "USAAF did the same" arguement, and then the "Luftwaffe started it all" arguement. 

The problem with both arguements is that they don't stand up to historical scrunity: the USAAF was certainly not very fond of terror bombing (over Europe. Over Japan it was very fond of it indeed) and Luftwaffe certainly didn't do it with the regularity or being the first or most happy advocate of it. 

The Harrissian apology is always that "they sow the wind...". Trouble is, Arthur Harris himself was an active member of the terror bombing club during the 1920s. While Hitler was still a prisoner in some German castle, busy writing the Mein Kampf, Arthur Harris as a young RAF officer was already putting terror bombing into practice in Iraq against tribal rebels, saying that a few bombers destroying an Arab village will "convince" them soon enough, and that the "Arab only understands the heavy hand'. Nope, he didn't need Goering, Hitler or whoever to show him the way or give him an excuse.



DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I never see you attack the Nazi's for committing crimes or terror bombing.



There's no problem with attacking the Nazis for their crimes or the terror bombings they commited. They've commited enough anyway, so I always wonder why it is neccessary to try so hard to condemn them for crimes they have not commited....? 

You see, its always seemed odd to me, that the same politcal system that carefully documented to genocide of millions of Jews etc., would took so much care to hide the alleged "terror bombing" nature of small bomber attacks with a few hundred civillian casulties at best.. which *MUST* be the cause that if we search the LW records for allaged terror raids, the orders written back in the 1940 and after which the attacks were executed, keep repeating airfield, factory, bridge, dock and so on, and so rarely to just hit the see whole city anywhere.



DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 6. Do not skirt around this question. Show me with facts *what were the military targets at these locations*?
> 
> a. Guernica



Target was the infrastructure to aid Francoist advance, by bombing of the bridge accross the river and simultaniously the housing nearby the bridge so it would collapse on the road and block it. The city also had a Republican garrison and a small arms factory, but these weren't direct targets. 

Of course why the case of Guernica was so much bloated out of proportion was that 

a, Allied press skyrocketed casulties, writing some 3000 or more rather than the 2-300 actually identifiable, some of them soldiers
b, Picasso
c, The fact that it was a Basque town, and the Basque independence movements are currently using it for political aganda against the Spanish "supressors" (talk about political spin with the Italians and Germans bombing a bridge, but not one Spanish plane being there...)



> b. Wieluń (I am really interested in this one Kurfurst. What were the military targets, come on enlighten me. Also don't give me the crap about a Polish Cav Brigade being in the City. You don't need to completely destroy a town by aerial bombardment for that reason...).



Polish cavarly brigade advancing to and around the city. Pretty well documented. They bombed these, which is what the Stuka pilots say who bombed, which is what the operational orders for Stukas that day say, too. 

It was effective and they routed, Wielun felling the German Army on the first day. The town wasn't 'completely destructed' either - a few dozen Stukas that were there could hardly accomplish such with their small bombload anyway. The small downtown area and the houses around the city square got a couple bombs - this is the picture they are always showing, but kindly compare Wielun's _entire area_ to that - which is sad but hardly exceptional. 


-continued-


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

--- more excitement coming ---



> c. Warsaw (sure there may have been troops in the city, but certainly the whole city was not a military target.)



September 1. Operation Wasserkante was planned for massive bombardment of Warsaw with bombers. Called off. Bombing was limited tp Warsaw's PZL aircraft factory and airfields around the city.

First bombing done by KGr 100 with X-Geraet guidance, target being bridges accross the city. Between 3 and 11 September, ''LnAbt'' 100 conducted four precision night missions using the X-Gerät blind bombing navigation system for the first time in the war, destroying a munitions dump.

September 9, the German army reaches Warsaw, and by 13 September it is under siege as the garrison refuses to surrender.

On the 13 of September, following orders of the ''ObdL'' to launch an attack on northern Warsaw, the Jewish Quarters, and also military targets, justified as being for unspecified crimes committed against German soldiers. In the last hour commander of the participating Kampgruppe changes targets to military ones, and as a result comes in conflict with von Richthofen. He is later sacked. 183 bomber sorties were flown with 50:50 load of high explosives and incendiaries, reporting to have set the Jewish Quarter ablaze.

On 14 September the French Air [[attaché]] in Warsaw reported to Paris that "... the German Air Force acted in accordance to the international laws of war [...] and bombed only targets of military nature. Therefore, there is no reason for French retorsions."

On 22 September [[Wolfram von Richthofen]] requested: "Urgently request exploitation of last opportunity for large-scale experiment as devastation terror raid ... Every effort will be made to eradicate Warsaw completely". His request was rejected by ObdL.

On 25 September the Luftwaffe, parallel with artillery bombardment, flew 1,150 sorties and dropped 560 tonnes of high explosive and 72 tonnes of incendiaries to soften up the defences of the besieged city.

As the modern bomber types were already transferred to the West to conserve the strength of the bomber units for the upcoming western campaign, the modern He 111 bombers were replaced by Ju 52 transports using "worse than primitive methods" for the bombing. Due to prevailing strong winds they achieved poor accuracy, even causing some casualties to besieging German troops.

On the ironic side, the Germans of course could have also used artilerry to smash their way into the besieged city, keeping everybody in this thread happy, except the citizens of Warsaw of course, but they had little say in the matter. In any case, Warsaw was surrounded, demanded to surrender, refused and thus was besieged. Compare how the Brits took Caen, not damaged but simply levelled the whole city they besieged (and made their own job rather harder with it btw).



> d. Frampol (I guess you consder destroying a city and killing 4000 people for practice a military target huh?



I have already noted that Frampol may have well been a case of a wanton terror raid, but the evidence is lacking.. read back. And 4000 dead? The whole city haven't got that many citizens to start with, are you saying the Germans killed absolutely_ everyone_ in the city via air bombing..? 'cos that would be exceptional indeed.. 



> So again I ask you this Kurfurst, how did the Germans not use terror bombing but the allies did?



Did I say so? Nope. OTOH the above examples are explicitely NOT examples of German terror bombing, nor was there any "bomber barons" in the Luftwaffe which would press for the case of terror bombing so much as Harris did in Britain. Plus there was not much need - the German Army was victorious on the continent, the Luftwaffe had air superiority and its bombers could operate by daylight for precision strikes, and when not their bombers had radio bombing guidence systems to do the same by night. In short, they did not have the doctrine, they did not have the will, and they did not have the need to so.

None of which could be said of the British. The army's stuff was in the sand of Dunkerque and Dieppe, they had people like Harris completely fond of terror bombing and douhetism for decades before WW2, they didn't have effective radio navigation systems for much of the war, nor could the Bomber Command hope to bomb in the daylight after December 1939. I guess that's a recipe for what they did eventually.



> How is it that you have no problem with the Nazi's committing war crimes? Yeah you struck a nerve here.



Can you specifically mention Nazi war crime which I have supposedly have no problem with? Because frankly, I don't remember saying so. You seem to have brought it up, out of no-where. So name the war crime, and then I can say wheter or not I have a problem with it.


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## Marcel (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> the Luftwaffe had air superiority and its bombers could operate by daylight for precision strikes



I wouldn't call Rotterdam a "precision strike" as they succeeded in missing a lot of military and hit a lot of civilians. But it's true that Rotterdam was a military target. I think Rotterdam was one of the LW's biggest blunders.
But as they threatened to bomb Utrecht if the NL would not surrender, I think it is also quite possible that it was also meant as terror bombing.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

Timppa said:


> This thread is degenerated.. but,



Pardon me for degenerating a thread. The german ack ack defenses were at the end of the war operated by boys women and girls. Russian women flew combat aircraft and fought in tanks and as snipers. The idea of innocent civilians is a modern western creation which has nothing to do with all out war and never has had. Dresden was a beautiful city bombed near the end of the war which resulted in a firestorm but many cities were flattened and burned by all sides, I dont see the difference, it was a war.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

Well, "precision" on the level of the 1940s should be surely a better phrase... I've just been looking at a after-action aerial photo taken after the 15th AAF tried to hit the souther railway bridge of Budapest.. I am not sure they hit it in the end, but the surroundings within about a 500 meter radius surely show they tried hard...!


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## pbfoot (Oct 4, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> Except, of course, that BC wasn't dropping bombs "randomly" and with the introduction of Oboe, Gee and H2S BC could and did carry out "precision' bombing even at night, and they did so with far heavier and more destructive bombs than were typically used during daylight attacks, for example BC dropped 45% of the tonnage dropped against German oil targets.
> Oil Campaign of World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Gee and Oboe were line of sight navaids to bomb a target more then 300 miles away the aircraft had to be a very high altitude 26000 ft and even then poor results were obtained 
H2S was a primitive radar which is alright if you had large geographic landmarks (Hamburg Harbour) that would show up on the screen(PPI) but near to useless when bombing a city like Berlin with little in the ways of geographic features . 
Also please note that BC attacks on oil began in earnest after thye apt named Butcher Harris was placed under command l of the Combinrd Chiefs of staff on Sept 14th 44 and the directive to attack oil on the SEpt 23rd 44


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## Marcel (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Well, "precision" on the level of the 1940s should be surely a better phrase... I've just been looking at a after-action aerial photo taken after the 15th AAF tried to hit the souther railway bridge of Budapest.. I am not sure they hit it in the end, but the surroundings within about a 500 meter radius surely show they tried hard...!


And that was even a good attempt. You probably know the British made report (Butt report) of their "success" during the first years of the war. The percentage of a/c that bombed within *5 miles* was only 25%. In reality it probably was even worse. Admittedly this was at night, but I don't suppose the LW was much better than that.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

I have made a dear mistake...

Getting involved in a discussion with someone so one sided as Kurfurst.

I will admit you make a good argument, but I think you are very wrong. To actually believe that the Luftwaffe made every effort to not harm civilian populations is extremely naive. To use the argument that the Germans only attacked the docks in London or only military targets in any city is extremely wrong. 

My new found beliefs in your agenda Kurfurst will not change...

Unfortunately I am afraid that I would end up resorting to your own tactics, if I continue.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> RAF BC was randomly hitting German cities and the countryside at a huge cost of both manpower and material for almost exactly five years (in the first half first out of incompetence, then out of immorarilty) and achieving nothing in return, and was unwilling to abandon the slaughter until its nose was bloodied over Berlin, and Eisenhowever was pushing for bombing something worthwhile in the first half of 1944 - the railway system - in France and oil refinieries in Germany.
> 
> In 1939 and 40 BC were hitting coastal ports and airfields to prevent an invasion hardly nothing in return
> 
> ...


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## Hop (Oct 4, 2010)

> The target in Coventry was the cities extensive aero industry, plain and simple



What about the orders to "wipe out the dense concentrations of worker's housing"?



> which was successfully destroyed



From the War Cabinet reports compiled a week or more after the Coventry attack:



> Coventry is the chief centre of aero-engine assembly factories and
> machine tools. Probably all factories have been more or less affected by the
> dislocation of electrical, gas and water supplies, and the effect on production of
> this factor has been more serious than that caused by direct damage to plant and
> machinery.


and 


> , We are also having difficulties about machine tools. These do not spring
> from the actual damage done to the tools. On the contrary, it has been found
> that the machine tool stands up to the blast of the bomb remarkably well.
> *In the attack on Coventry, where 50,000 machine tools were concentrated,
> ...


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

Hop said:


> What about the orders to "wipe out the dense concentrations of worker's housing"



Something along the lines that I'd like to see them.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Well, "precision" on the level of the 1940s should be surely a better phrase... I've just been looking at a after-action aerial photo taken after the 15th AAF tried to hit the souther railway bridge of Budapest.. I am not sure they hit it in the end, but the surroundings within about a 500 meter radius surely show they tried hard...!



I read that the first raid by the USAAF resulted in 2 of the planes being so confused by the camouflage that the pilots didnt drop any bombs. Even daylight bombing isnt easy you need a good bombsight. Wiki says this about the Norden bomb sight.

By the spring of 1943 some impressive results were being recorded. Over Bremen-Vegesack on 19 March, for instance, the 303d Bombardment Group dropped 76 per cent of its load within the 1,000 ft ring. Under perfect conditions only 50 percent of American bombs fell within a quarter of a mile of the target, and American flyers estimated that as many as 90 percent of bombs could miss their targets.[5][6][7] Nevertheless, many veteran B-17 and B-24 bombardiers swore by the Norden.


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## bobbysocks (Oct 4, 2010)

what about the v1 and v2 attacks....precision strikes.... aimed towards military installations? hardly, the target was downtown london. and they were terror attackes pure and simple. hitler changed his tactics in during the BoB from military facilities, airfields and plants to jolly old london herself. and that was his undoing for several reasons..1. it gave the RAF time to build and resupply ac and 2. it solidified british resolve instead of breaking the english will...which ended up being harder than hilters resolve...and cost him most likely the BoB and the subsequent planned invasion of the british isles.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

bobbysocks said:


> what about the v1 and v2 attacks....precision strikes.... aimed towards military installations? hardly, the target was downtown london. and they were terror attackes pure and simple.



Don't even bother with it. He will say it is allied Propaganda...

I am going to let my judgment get away from myself here.


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## RCAFson (Oct 4, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> Gee and Oboe were line of sight navaids to bomb a target more then 300 miles away the aircraft had to be a very high altitude 26000 ft and even then poor results were obtained
> H2S was a primitive radar which is alright if you had large geographic landmarks (Hamburg Harbour) that would show up on the screen(PPI) but near to useless when bombing a city like Berlin with little in the ways of geographic features .
> Also please note that BC attacks on oil began in earnest after thye apt named Butcher Harris was placed under command l of the Combinrd Chiefs of staff on Sept 14th 44 and the directive to attack oil on the SEpt 23rd 44



I guess you've never heard of the Pathfinders? This force acted as a target marker force and could use the high altitude capability of Mosquito to enhance the range of Gee and Oboe. _"The Path Finder Force flew a total of 50,490 individual sorties against some 3,440 targets." _
Pathfinder (RAF) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am not saying that BC didn't engage in area bombing designed to "de-house" civilians but the fact is that BC could and did engage in "precision" bombing against targets in Europe at night, and did so successfully.


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## Glider (Oct 4, 2010)

I like the bit about H2S radar being primitive, a radar way ahead of its time and used on Vulcans until they were withdrawn in the early 1980's. I also like the assumption that all German raids were precision. In the little blitz of early 1944 the Luftwaffe were happy to hit any part of London. Even during the BOB those of us reading the day by day account will have noticed the use of fighter bombers dropping bombs from high altitude. I never realised that the Me109 was a precision high altitude bomber.

Its probably true to say that where possible the air forces tried in the early days to be precise in their bombing if only because they wanted to make the most effective use of their assets. However, when this became impossible for whatever reason then bombing became random.

Kurfurst does have a point about the length of time that Bomber Command stuck with area bombing even after they developed the tools to be more precise. I would have hoped that raids such as Peenemünde would have shown what could be achieved.


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## RCAFson (Oct 4, 2010)

In any event it seems kind of strange that the Luftwaffe could engage in outright terror attacks against cities like Warsaw and Rotterdam, to force a previously neutral country to surrender through sheer terror, and then have the Luftwaffe cry foul when the same tactics were used against Germany by BC. The Luftwaffe started a campaign of aerial terror against defenceless opponents and then German propaganda cried "terror fluger" when they got the same back. Germany could hardly expect to fight half a war. 

Luftwaffe Terror Raids : Rotterdam
Rotterdam Blitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Luftwaffe Terror Raids : Warsaw


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

_The Führer has ordered that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly, when targets are being selected, preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life. Besides raids on ports and industry, terror attacks or retaliatory nature are to be carried out against towns other than London. Minelaying is to be scaled down in favour of these attacks.

-14 April 1942._


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

From the very outset of blitzkrieg towns and villages were bombed to flood the roads with refugees and prevent movement of the opposing army thats why stukas have sirens isnt it?


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## Kurfürst (Oct 4, 2010)

Copy paste from wiki  the leading paragraph went missing however:

The period of calm came to an end in April 1942 when, following a destructive RAF attack on the Hanseatic medieval city of Lübeck, Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to retaliate, leading to the so-called Baedeker Blitz:



DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> _The Führer has ordered that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly, when targets are being selected, preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life. Besides raids on ports and industry, terror attacks or retaliatory nature are to be carried out against towns other than London. Minelaying is to be scaled down in favour of these attacks.
> 
> -14 April 1942._



The whole thing started when these evil German hit _back_. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, a medieval city in Germany for a medieval city in England. There is no denying that the Luftwaffe answered BC's terror with its own terror.

More on the background:

Lübeck was bombed on the night of 28/29 March 1942. Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Air Officer Commanding RAF Bomber Command, wrote of the raid that "Lübeck went up in flames" because_ "it was a city of moderate size of some importance as a port, and with some submarine building yards of moderate size not far from it. It was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city"_. He goes on to describe that the loss of 5.5% of the attacking force was no more than to be expected on a clear moonlit night, but if that loss rate was to continue for any length of time RAF Bomber Command would not be able to _"operate at the fullest intensity of which it were capable"._

A. C. Grayling in his book Among the Dead Cities makes the point that as the* Area bombing directive issued to the RAF on 14 February 1942,* focused on the "morale of the enemy civil population", Lübeck, with its many timbered medieval buildings, was chosen because the RAF _"Air Staff were eager to experiment with a bombing technique using a high proportion of incendiaries"_ to help them carry out the directive — The RAF were well aware that the technique was effective against cities and not against industrial targets because cities such as Coventry had been subject to such attacks by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz.* In retaliation for the Lübeck* raid the Germans bombed Exeter on 23 April 1942, the first of the 'Baedeker' raids. The Lübeck raid along with the raid on Rostock caused "outrage in the German leadership ... and inspired the retaliatory 'Baedeker' raids".


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Copy paste from wiki  the leading paragraph went missing however:



No, I only did what you do. Copy and paste the part that I want to. You are very good that, aren't you? Anything that makes the allies out to be Satan that is. 

If anyone posts anything contradictory to your beliefs they are "Anglophil apologists" or "Allied Apologists" or anything else you can think of.

The Allies were evil, the Germans were sent from heaven and only responded with terror when it was used upon them. You do a really good job of burying yourself, no one has to help you.

Oh well, I am going to bed. It is not worth discussing anything with you. I only get more and more frustrated with the BS. I am going to revert to the same tactics you do and then it goes against the very things I preach against. I really understand where the other members of this forum come from, when I have to tell everyone to calm down. 

To everyone else, have a good night.


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## RCAFson (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> The whole thing started when these evil German hit _back_. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, a medieval city in Germany for a medieval city in England. There is no denying that the Luftwaffe answered BC's terror with its own terror.
> 
> .



Tell us which cities BC "terrorized" to justify the attacks on Warsaw and Rotterdam?


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## pbfoot (Oct 4, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> I guess you've never heard of the Pathfinders? This force acted as a target marker force and could use the high altitude capability of Mosquito to enhance the range of Gee and Oboe. _"The Path Finder Force flew a total of 50,490 individual sorties against some 3,440 targets." _
> Pathfinder (RAF) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> I am not saying that BC didn't engage in area bombing designed to "de-house" civilians but the fact is that BC could and did engage in "precision" bombing against targets in Europe at night, and did so successfully.


I'm quite aware of 8 group , I just believe the resources of Bomber Command could have been better applied then on raids with very iffy results and very high costs


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## parsifal (Oct 4, 2010)

well I will concede this....at least Kurfurst has the gumption to answer his critics, even if everything he is saying on this subject doesnt seem right. His mate Markus doesnt seem capable of providing any answers except some glib, unsubstantiated one liners


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## bobbysocks (Oct 4, 2010)

i am sorry i thought the battle of britian was in 1940...not 42... my mistake


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## tail end charlie (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst

You are making me laugh now, as a brit I must apologise here and now for causing outrage in the german leadership, I didnt realise the poor dears were so delicate and sensitive. Are you really comparing Lubeck (nice though I am sure it was) to London as a city of architechural or historical importance, after ordering the destruction of London what did he expect?


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## RCAFson (Oct 4, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> I'm quite aware of 8 group , I just believe the resources of Bomber Command could have been better applied then on raids with very iffy results and very high costs



I don't disagree that BC and that Commonwealth bomber production could have been more profitably employed and that some BC campaigns were wasteful.


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## ccheese (Oct 4, 2010)

A word of warning, gentlemen. If this thread continues in the direction it appears to be going, I will close it.

This "pot calling the kettle black" stuff has got to cease. If you're going to quote sources, quote the entire portion
of your source, not just the parts that you think will help your arguement. I don't want to put anyone on the beach,
but this thread has raised some hackles with the mods/admins. 

Continue the march.....

Charles


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## parsifal (Oct 4, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> actually Speer in his book, in Chapter The Bombing War makes it utterly clear he was very thankful for every ton of bombs randomly dropped by Bomber Command in terror raids on cities and not on factories..



Makes sense that the bombs that fell wide and missed their targets would be pleasing to Speer. What about those that did find their mark???? I hardly think Speer would be rather pleased at the results of the Hamburg raids. The quote you are making is being taken out of context. He was thankful when they missed, not that they were hitting targets. He may have thought a precision attack would be of more use, but the RAF had deemed this was not an option available to them at that point in the war (1942-3), because of the potential losses


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## pbfoot (Oct 4, 2010)

parsifal said:


> Makes sense that the bombs that fell wide and missed their targets would be pleasing to Speer. What about those that did find their mark???? I hardly think Speer would be rather pleased at the results of the Hamburg raids. The quote you are making is being taken out of context. He was thankful when they missed, not that they were hitting targets. He may have thought a precision attack would be of more use, but the RAF had deemed this was not an option available to them at that point in the war (1942-3), because of the potential losses



the Hamburg raids caused less then 40-50 days of lost production which according to official RAF Historian was not much it the scheme of things ,


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## parsifal (Oct 4, 2010)

Well you can believe that if you wish, and misquote whatever you like, but the raid has been described as the most effective raid in Europe in the pre-nuclear age. It was devastating enough for Goebels to record in his diary that the bombing of Hamburg was the first time that he thought Nazi Germany might have to call for peace.

The bombing of Hamburg is described in post war assessments as wreaking utter destruction to the city and regardless of what happened to the city itself, it did a great deal to hearten people in Britain who had seen London and many other cities attacked and bombed with the resulting casualties.

The first attack came in the early hours of Sunday 24th. In one hour, between 01.00 and 02.00, 2,300 tons of bombs were dropped which included 350,000 incendiary bombs. 15,000 people were killed and approximately 65000 wounded. In previous bombing raids, the RAF had sent in pathfinder planes to illuminate the target by dropping incendiary bombs. The main bulk of the attack followed on to what was now a burning target. For the attack on Hamburg, the RAF combined the use of high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs, which were dropped together. The result made all but useless any form of fire fighting. 

The Americans attacked on Monday 26th July and sustained heavy losses as a result of Luftwaffe attacks. An American attack on the Tuesday was called off due to poor weather.

The raid was resumed on the Wednesday. The 722 bombers were loaded with an extra 240 tons of incendiary bombs and dropped a total of 2,313 tons of bombs in just 50 minutes. The impact of this attack led to a firestorm with temperatures estimated to have reached 1000oC. Bomber crews reported smoke reaching 20,000 feet. Winds on the ground reached 120 mph. While not exclusively a wooden city, Hamburg did have many old wooden houses and after a dry summer they easily burned.

In the second and third raids 30,000 were killed, and an estimated 130000 wounded . On the Thursday the smoke blotted out the sunlight associated with July. Goebbels called the raids “the greatest crisis of the war.” Hamburg was cordoned off for the remainder of the war; such was the unnerving impact the raids had on the Nazi hierarchy.

It is estimated that over 80% of the bombs dropped hit the target area, which was the city centre, measuring only 2 miles by 1 mile. Most other bombs fell somewhere within the city. The attacks ignited fires that gradually spread fire eastwards. The firestorm lasted for about three hours, consuming approximately 16,000 multi-storied apartment buildings. Most fatalities were from carbon monoxide poisoning when all the air was drawn out of their basement shelters. Fearing further raids, two-thirds of Hamburg's population, approximately 1,200,000 people, fled the city in the aftermath. So the total fatalities in these raids were in the order of 45000 killed, and a 195000 maimed. When you consider that in all the war the germans suffered less than a million civilian casualties from Bombing, the importance of hamburg in the effects of the overall campaign cannot be over-stated. 

What were the long term effects of the raid. Speer estimated that production in the city was not restored to meaningful levels for three months, but the effects went much deeper. Hamburg as an industrial city never returned to its former economic importance of the war. It thoroughly alarmed the Nazi leadership. Did the raids have any value? There can be little doubt that the reported impact of the raids did a great deal to lift morale in Britain. They also clearly had an impact on the Nazi government - Hitler refused to visit the city, possibly not wanting to see what his war had resulted in. Hamburg was the major port of the north and the work done by the port was disrupted. I also believe that Speers assessment postwar is based on his immediate reports to Hitler at the time, and not a subsequent part y conference held in December 1944, which is the reference made by Kurfurst in his earlier post


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## Juha (Oct 5, 2010)

Hello Kurfürst
Quote:_ ”…it is a fact that the Reichsbahn was in ruins by the end of war, deprieved of its rolling stock; as were the German oil industry. _
_
And it wasn't a mysterious fairy that did it, it was USAAF and its bombers and leaders who pushed for it, and the only effective bombing performed by the Allies that actually weakened the Germans - direct bombing of factories just did not yield notable results. RAF BC was randomly hitting German cities and the countryside at a huge cost of both manpower and material for almost exactly five years (in the first half first out of incompetence, then out of immorarilty) and achieving nothing in return_…”

As Hop already wrote, the transport plan was a brainchild of Solly Zuckerman, a British zoologist working for Tedder. And of course also BC participated its implementation. And if you think that BC achieved nothing, all I can say, read more. That doesn’t mean that IMHO BC was used optimal way, IMHO from 1943 onwards, when navigation aids arrived, there would have been more effective ways to bomb as Peenemünde and BC attacks on oil targets in later part of 44 showed.

I agree with Rotterdam, even if LW bungled it unbelievably badly if we believe the German version of it. But Wielun, what military targets were there? At least the Kampfgruppe from Heer’s 1st Light Div, which was the first German unit in the town didn’t mention any enemy contact according to the unit history, but the troops were rather shocked of the level of destruction and the number of killed civilians there. IMHO the bombing of Wielun wasn’t a war crime but a product of bad intelligence.

Quote:” _In London the targets were identifiable as industrial, military or trasportational targets (ie. docks and factories and airfields around and in Greater London - not to mention the fact that Bomber Command was actively bombing similiar German cities since May 1940 and the Luftwaffe had not yet even responded to these for months_.”

I reality LW had made small scale attacks on GB from early on, first British civilian was killed in March 40. For ex on May 24/25 1940, 7 bombs were dropped at Southbank and Middlesbrough, Teeside. Also two cottages were damaged in Norfolk and a chickenhouse in Essex. On 18/19 June 40 air raids killed 10 and injured 26 civilians, Cambridge was worst hit, 9 killed. And the claim that LW targeted only specific targets was somewhat nullified by the use of aerial-mines, sea mines with contact fuzes hanging under parachute, first used against London Sept 16/17 1940. That was seen by British as a use of area weapon, IMHO with reason, because of it is difficult to see how one could believe to hit with that kind of weapon to a specific target by night during normal level attack.

Juha


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> the Hamburg raids caused less then 40-50 days of lost production which according to official RAF Historian was not much it the scheme of things ,



By the figures quoted here 50,000 died and 200,000 were injured they certtainly didnt resume production within 40-50 days and one thing Germnany definitely ran out of was man power.
It is impossible for any raid to destroy production for longer than it takes to build new production facilities which in a war is months, therefore every raid will be termed a failure until the nation as a whole loses the capacity to rebuild.


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## parsifal (Oct 5, 2010)

I should wish to make one further observation. With around 200000 wounded people arising from Operation Gomorrah, it takes around six people in the immediate surroundings to nurse them back to health. This is exclusive of the workforce not directly associated with their rehabilitation, like people working in the drugs companies and the like.
So, based on the known military statistics for the numbers of carers per serious casualty one could expect around a million personnel needed to care for the sick and wounded. Wartime, the Ersatz heer reports an average of 5-7 months to convalesce a wounded soldier. If that statistic is at all applicable to civilian casualties fro a firestorm, then the raid would have occupied the attentions of at least 1.2 million people, most of them workers of some description, for at least seven months.

On top of that the statistics concerning produstion do not include statisitics needed to return the city to a semblance of normality in terms of city services. Hamburg never recovered from the housing shortages it suffered as a consequence of the raids, its civil infrastructure never really recovered either.


So to try and argue that the raid was not that effective is total bollocks to me


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Statistics

Many contributors to this debate are using post war statistics to support or criticise wartime decisions. If every body in BC and USAAF were so sure of what the effcts of bombing were at the time why was so much time taken after the war evaluating the effects of the bombing? The fact is no body had any clue as to the real effectiveness just an opinion. Even now I find the effects of the eastern front almost witewashed from the discussion. Germany lost most of its men tanks and aeroplanes in the east and finally ran out of oil when the eastern oilfields were over run. The bombing by the western allies speeded the downfall of Nazi Germany it didnt bring it about, Russia did that.

Bomber Harris spent the whole war being told that the destruction of one industry or another would bring about Hitlers downfall. None of these magic solutions were correct. His solution to bomb and bomb until Germany had had enough of it was pretty much what happened and as I understand it that is what the Casablanca conference was all about. 

Poland suffered higher casualties than either Germany or the Soviet union as a percentage of population, why is no one pleading their case or expressing outrage at their treatment after all they didnt invade anybody.


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## Njaco (Oct 5, 2010)

To anyone who believes that the LW targeted strictly military targets and civilian deaths and destruction were just collateral damage I would offer "The Baedecker Raids" of April - June1942. On 14 April the Luftwaffe Operations Staff issued the following order: "_The Führer has ordered that air warfare against England is to be given a more aggressive stamp. Accordingly when targets are being selected, *preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life*. Besides raids on ports and industry, *terror attacks of a retaliatory nature are to be carried out against towns other than London*. Minelaying is to be scaled down in favor of these attacks_." 

The raids were named after a German Publishing company that printed tourist guidebooks. Hitler had announced that the Luftwaffe would destroy every building in Britain to which Baedeker had awarded three stars of its places of interest.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 5, 2010)

parsifal said:


> I should wish to make one further observation. With around 200000 wounded people arising from Operation Gomorrah, it takes around six people in the immediate surroundings to nurse them back to health. This is exclusive of the workforce not directly associated with their rehabilitation, like people working in the drugs companies and the like.
> So, based on the known military statistics for the numbers of carers per serious casualty one could expect around a million personnel needed to care for the sick and wounded. Wartime, the Ersatz heer reports an average of 5-7 months to convalesce a wounded soldier. If that statistic is at all applicable to civilian casualties fro a firestorm, then the raid would have occupied the attentions of at least 1.2 million people, most of them workers of some description, for at least seven months.
> 
> On top of that the statistics concerning produstion do not include statisitics needed to return the city to a semblance of normality in terms of city services. Hamburg never recovered from the housing shortages it suffered as a consequence of the raids, its civil infrastructure never really recovered either.
> ...



While I agree that the claim that the Hamburg raid was ineffective is bogus I think your casualty care estimate is rather off.
From the figures presented so far we have no idea how many of the 200,000 were seriously injured or wounded. How many were critical? how many were serious? how many were "walking wounded"? Of course there may have been thousands with minor injuries that never went to aid stations to be treated. 

Granted with such numbers everything is an average but how long does it take to recuperate from a broken leg or arm? Much less than sever burns over a large part of the body. Many Soldiers returned to duty after suffering gun shot wounds in less than 5-7 months. A simple straight through puncture wound to an arm or leg as opposed to a hit in the body cavity or a major bone broken (femur).
Of the death tolls, how many were dead on the day/s of the raids and how many died in the weeks that followed?


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Njaco said:


> The raids were named after a German Publishing company that printed tourist guidebooks. Hitler had announced that the Luftwaffe would destroy every building in Britain to which Baedeker had awarded three stars of its places of interest.




I have just read the life story of Harry Patch Britains last British army survivor from the trenches he was in Bath when the Baedeker raid happened there 401 killed 875 wounded (360 seriously)19000 buildings damaged but mainly houses......waste of effort if you ask me. Harry Patch's opinion is that the raids were revenge in part and industrial targets were getting better defence so it was an easy option. He does say that the design of torpedoes and the mulberry harbours were in Bath so to some extent all targets are potentially military.

When you use a tourist guide to decide your next offensive target I think you are in the wrong job, it sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland.


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## pbfoot (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Statistics
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Harris twisted the directives to suit his own purpose or aims which was area bombing. Thought ir was aprpos to toss the last pic in as it was just flying over at same time as I was doing this


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## parsifal (Oct 5, 2010)

I would grant you that estimating the length of time taken to heal from wounds is at best a rough idea. However the figure for 5-7 months convalesence is based on figures by the German replacement army. We simply dont have hard data on the comparability of civvy casualties to military casualties, but the figures are going to be similar, at least.

I was trying to be as conservative as possible in my casualty figures, but I conceded there is some debate about the actual numbers, since may German records are innaccurate, incomplete or otherwise lost.

AFIK Germany did not include minor wounds in their casualty lists, at least not for military casualties. this was a uniquely American habit. But your right ther is going to be a wide spread of injury types and recovery times. But I dont think it is going to fall short of those military stats I have quoted. I am theorising, but I would expect the number one injury would be respiratory, followed by severe burns, followed by broken bones. Again theorising, I would thini damage to the lungs would be more or less permanent, requiring intense levels of care for the rest of their lives. BVurns can vary as you say, but I doubt that firestorm victims are going to have blistered thumbs in the casualty lists. Burns victims from the BoB took about two years to "recover", and were usually horribly disfigured for life. I dont think those poor devils were much help to the war effort after that ordeal. Why would the germans be different? 

I am not entirely sure of the maimed numbers , but I do know the overall casualty figures exceeded 240K. I am flabbergasted to see people here, who really should know better, trying to claim this rad as inneffectual


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## pbfoot (Oct 5, 2010)

parsifal said:


> I am not entirely sure of the maimed numbers , but I do know the overall casualty figures exceeded 240K. I am flabbergasted to see people here, who really should know better, trying to claim this rad as inneffectual



I'm quite sure with the resources available a better set of targets could be found I truely believe BC was misused


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

parsifal said:


> Makes sense that the bombs that fell wide and missed their targets would be pleasing to Speer. What about those that did find their mark????



I can only repeat what Speer said of Allied bombing of Germany: he was thankful for every RAF area raid dropped bombs randomly over a randomly selected German city and fearful of the BC starting picking targets of industrial importance. Moreover he considered this blunder of strategy by the RAF decisive for 1943, when the USAAF was hitting Schweinfurt OTOH.



> I hardly think Speer would be rather pleased at the results of the Hamburg raids.



He wasn't, obviously. Speer noted that if attacks on the scale on Hamburg would have continued, Germany would have been forced out of the war. Trouble was that Bomber Command could absolutely positvely incapable of repeating the Hamburg raid and the Germans became aware of this soon.

Without that capability, Hamburg was just another big mass murder on larger scale than usual, without any noticable effect on the German war economy. U boots kept pouring out of Hamburg just the same (Blohm Voss cancelled but_ two_ U-boats due to their damage..), and the same tonnage would have been dropped on those installations, they wouldn't. 



> The quote you are making is being taken out of context.



No Sir, you are making references Speer out of context. Speer makes it clear that area bombing by RAF Bomber Command was ineffective and wasteful use of Allied resources. He was thankful that Bomber Command continued with the area raids, where it did much, much less damage in his - rather authoritive - opinion than if it would be engaged in bombing industrial targets.



> He was thankful when they missed, not that they were hitting targets.



That's is not Speers opinion, that is your opinion. What targets are speaking about? 

Bomber Command_ typically_ not targeted anything specially, it sent bombers over any German city where they unloaded large HC bombs and incideniraries on the city centre with the sole purpose of killing as many German civillians as possible, and with this terror campaign force Germany out of the war. There were no targets at all. This lasted until the failure of BC and Harris become plain to see in the Battle of Berlin, after which he had to bow to the US strategy of hitting industrial bottlenecks - oil and transportation. _Which worked. _Typical of Harris, that even after the means were available, and it become clear what had to be targeted to hurt the Germans, he went back to area bombing ASAP.

Anything of importance that was hit was a random side effect, and generally it was not the war industry. Industry was on the city perimeter, Bomber Command aimed for the city centre.



> He may have thought a precision attack would be of more use, but the RAF had deemed this was not an option available to them at that point in the war (1942-3), because of the potential losses



Possibly. But even in 1943 they started to have means to at least try to pick specific targets like industry etc. Even trying would have made better use of Bomber Commands resources, that drew so heavily on Britain. They should have realized that by 1943, as the German nightfighters grew so strong anyway that BC's losses were hardly better after nightfall than the USAAF's during the daylight. 

That they continued on the same path, after guidance become available, heavy bombers arrived in numbers, and Pathfinding and radar jamming techniques were perfected was a gross example of stupidity. 

They had the tool by 1943 but had no idea how to use it. I fully agree with Max Hastings on this one.


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## Milosh (Oct 5, 2010)

*13 September 1939*, the town of Frampol, population 3000, and without military or industrial targets, nor any Polish Army defenders, was practically annihiliated by Luftwaffe bombing practice. . . Luftwaffe analyst Harry Hohnewald: "Frampol was chosen as an experimental object, because test bombers, flying at low speed, weren't endangered by AA fire. Also, the centrally placed town hall was an ideal orientation point for the crews. Wolfgang Schreyer's book "Eyes on the sky.")


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Are you really comparing Lubeck (nice though I am sure it was) to London as a city of architechural or historical importance,



Never been to Lübeck, though I think most of us here on the continent understands its cultural importance. It was a nice medieval town, I guess like Prague. I've been to London, and its one of the ugliest "imperial" cities I've seen as far as architecture goes, sorry to say that. To sum it up, my impression was that its a large industrial city from the beginning of the century with a lot of monuments randomly littering it, with obviously a great expense but little taste involved.

In any case your dissing of cultural etc. values if they are not British is somewhat disturbing for a European ear. 8)



tail end charlie said:


> ....after ordering the destruction of London what did he expect?



Could you kindly quote that order?

I don't see any order about the destruction of London; Hitler's directives specifically forbade the LW to _initiate_ a bombing war, Görings directives specifically forbade bombing London on own initiative, but the LW would respond in kind if the British started such; and they considered to bombing of Berlin as such, because it was so inaccurate that it seemed indiscriminate bombing by the British. It should be noted that the British were bombing German cities in Western Germany since May 1940, just as inaccurately that it was seen as indiscriminate bombing, which already outraged the German leadership as they were specifically forbidden to target cities in England. 

The bombing of Berlin in August was the last drop in the glass as they use to say. As a result the LW performaned three rataliation raids against London, responding to BC attacks on Berlin and other German cities, but even when some of the more Harris-like figures in the LW brass such as General Hans Jeschonnek asked Hitler to allow him to attack residential areas to create "mass panic" on 14 September 1940, Hitler rejected them. I doubt he would do that out of moral considerations, but he simply didn't believe in it, and believed that instead of useless raids on population centres, the industry needs to be hit.

*Directive No. 17 *

*For the conduct of air and sea warfare against England*
The Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces	
Führer Headquarters,
1st August 1940.
10 copies

In order to establish the necessary conditions for the final conquest of England I intend to intensify air and sea warfare against the English homeland. I therefore order as follows:

The German Air Force is to overpower the English Air Force with all the forces at its command, in the shortest possible time.* The attacks are to be directed primarily against flying units, their ground installations, and their supply organizations,* but also against the* aircraft industry,* including that manufacturing *antiaircraft equipment.*

After achieving temporary or local air superiority the air war is to be* continued against ports,* in particular against stores of food, and also against *stores of provisions in the interior of the country.*

Attacks on s*outh coast ports will be made on the smallest possible scale*, in view of our own forthcoming operations.

On the other hand, air attacks on enemy warships and merchant ships may be reduced except where some particularly favorable target happens to present itself, where such attacks would lend additional effectiveness to those mentioned in paragraph 2, or where such attacks are necessary for the training of air crews for further operations.

The intensified air warfare will be carried out in such a way that the Air Force can at any time be called upon to give adequate support to naval operations against suitable targets. It must also be ready to take part in full force in Operation Sea Lion.

I reserve to myself the right to decide on terror attacks *as measures of reprisal.*

The intensification of the air war may begin on or after 5th August. The exact time is to be decided by the Air Force after the completion of preparations and in the light of the weather.

The Navy is authorized to begin the proposed intensified naval war at the same time.

_[signed] ADOLF HITLER_


----------



## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> 1 Moreover he considered this blunder of strategy by the RAF decisive for 1943, when the USAAF was hitting Schweinfurt OTOH.
> 
> 2 He wasn't, obviously. Speer noted that if attacks on the scale on Hamburg would have continued, Germany would have been forced out of the war. Trouble was that Bomber Command could absolutely positvely incapable of repeating the Hamburg raid and the Germans became aware of this soon.
> Without that capability, Hamburg was just another big mass murder on larger scale than usual, without any noticable effect on the German war economy.
> ...


.

From the points above which I have numbered 

1 . When the USAAF was hitting Schweinfurt they suffered such high losses they stopped such raids for 5 months while production at Schweinfurt was recovered in 1.5 months.

2 The second point above is just not undestandable are you saying that if you could repeat Hamburg all over Germany it is a sound tactic but if you cant it is mass murder? 

3 How would you propose to use BC in 1943, daylight raids? when the equipment to bomb accurately at night was available it was used in fact BC bombed Schweinfurt in Big week. When the USAAF resumed bombing and the combined offensive became a combined offensive in Spring 1944 both forces were hitting similar and sometimes the same targets.


----------



## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Never been to Lübeck, though I think most of us here on the continent understands its cultural importance. It was a nice medieval town, I guess like Prague. I've been to London, and its one of the ugliest "imperial" cities I've seen as far as architecture goes, sorry to say that. To sum it up, my impression was that its a large industrial city from the beginning of the century with a lot of monuments randomly littering it, with obviously a great expense but little taste involved.
> 
> 
> Could you kindly quote that order?
> ...



I have travelled extensively in Europe and the world and am not "Dissing" anything I imagine Lubeck to be like Celle or Gothenburg. London has been a capital since Roman times and its architecture reflects that Such things as Westminster Abbey The Houses of parliament The Tower of London and St Pauls are a matter of taste as far as looks go but "importance" in the history of Europe and the World there is no comparison. How many world renowned museums and art galleries were there in Lubeck. I thought we were discussing cultural importance not cuteness and charm.


I dont have to quote the order you already have, Hitler reserved for himself the right to order bombing of London the fact that London was bombed means he gave the order. THe LW dropped Bombs on London, BC dropped bombs on Berlin so the LW dropped more bombs on London under hitlers orders. After bombing most of the major cities in the UK and laying waste many others in Europe Hitlers supposed outrage at the bombing of Lubeck shows he was losing the plot.


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## Markus (Oct 5, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> Tell us which cities BC "terrorized" to justify the attacks on Warsaw and Rotterdam?



Excuse me but who do you want to fool? Warsaw and Rotterdam were fortresses and thus perfectly legal targets by the standards of the time. Take a look at the 1907 Hague convention. _SECTION II
HOSTILITIES CHAPTER I Means of Injuring the Enemy, Sieges, and bombardments_, Articles 25 to 27.


With regard to the Baedecker Raids and the V-weapons mentioned by others, that was two to four years after the RAF had started the area bombing of German towns.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> Excuse me but who do you want to fool? Warsaw and Rotterdam were fortresses and thus perfectly legal targets by the standards of the time. Take a look at the 1907 Hague convention. _SECTION II
> HOSTILITIES CHAPTER I Means of Injuring the Enemy, Sieges, and bombardments_, Articles 25 to 27.
> With regard to the Baedecker Raids and the V-weapons mentioned by others, that was two to four years after the RAF had started the area bombing of German towns.



Where are Rotterdam and Warsaw defined as fortresses? Did they have a wall and gates? The term fortresss can apply to anything especially if a convention allowes you to bomb fortresses. Lubeck was a medieval stronghold with a wall and gates i.e. a fortress. My fish and chip shop wasnt a fortress and they bombed that.


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## Colin1 (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> My fish and chip shop wasnt a fortress and they bombed that.


Did the plaice take a battering?

I'll get my coat...


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Where are Rotterdam and Warsaw defined as fortresses? Did they have a wall and gates?



Fortress is a legal term to define an enemy place or settlement defended by enemy forces. It is a term used to differentiate from open, ie. undefended cities.

_Art. XXV. It is forbidden to attack or to bombard towns, villages, houses, or dwellings *which are not defended.*
_
Both Rotterdam and Warsaw were defended, and under attack by land forces. Their bombardment were according to the international rules of warfare.

_Art. XXVI. The commander of the attacking troops, before undertaking a bombardment, will, except in case of an open assault, do all that lies in his power to give warning to the authorities._

Both in the case of Warsaw and Rotterdam, surrender was demanded and was refused - in case of Warsaw, even leaflets were dropped; the civillians were also requested to leave. In the case of Rotterdam, the air attack was to direclty assist the scheduled attack of land forces. when the garrison surrendered, part of the bombers, that could be communicated with, were called back and did not bomb.


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## Milosh (Oct 5, 2010)

Can we please stop this holier than thou talk of German bombing of industrial targets.

THE HULL BLITZ - a HULL BOMB MAP

Maps showing position of German bombs dropped on Hull in 1941, '42 and '43. Notice the lack of bombs in the dock areas and the rail yards.


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## Milosh (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Fortress is a legal term to define an enemy place or settlement defended by enemy forces. It is a term used to differentiate from open, ie. undefended cities.
> 
> _Art. XXV. It is forbidden to attack or to bombard towns, villages, houses, or dwellings *which are not defended.*_



So why all this whining about BC bombing German cities and towns?


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

Milosh said:


> So why all this whining about BC bombing German cities and towns?



Well it was legal barbarity, if we accept the British argument that German cities were somehow defended cities, because they had AA defences. 

Though the pre-war resolution of the Leage of Nations, it was illegal to bomb cities with the explicit goal of killing civillians, but I am not sure of its binding power; the British Empire was a signatory to it though.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

Milosh said:


> Notice the lack of bombs in the dock areas and the rail yards.


----------



## Milosh (Oct 5, 2010)

Try looking at the other maps Kurfurst.

So much for German precision bombing.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Colin1 said:


> Did the plaice take a battering?
> 
> I'll get my coat...



The shop owner was *Gutted* but *Cod* do nothing about it


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

Colin1 said:


> Did the plaice take a battering?
> 
> I'll get my coat...






tail end charlie said:


> The shop owner was *Gutted* but *Cod* do nothing about it





Thank you this humor was sorely needed in this thread! 



Kurfürst said:


> Well it was legal barbarity, if we accept the British argument that German cities were somehow defended cities, because they had AA defences.



This is different from British, Polish, Russian, French, Czech, Yugoslavian, Greek cities how?


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## Markus (Oct 5, 2010)

Milosh said:


> So why all this whining about BC bombing German cities and towns?



Maybe because unlike Warsaw and Rotterdam, Essen, Berlin and lot´s of other German town were not under siege/attack by ground forces? The Hague Convention is pretty clear that defended means defended by one sides ground forces from the other sides ground forces. 


@Kurfürst:

Why do you even react to trolling like _Did they have a wall and gates_?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> Maybe because unlike Warsaw and Rotterdam, Essen, Berlin and lot´s of other German town were not under siege/attack by ground forces? The Hague Convention is pretty clear that defended means defended by one sides ground forces from the other sides ground forces.
> 
> [/I]?



Was London under siege, or any British city for that matter?

You are being very hypocritical.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> @Kurfürst:
> 
> Why do you even react to trolling like _Did they have a wall and gates_?



Because I believe in the power of a convincing arguement backed by verifiable evidence overtrolling backed by emotions... and probably I have too much spare time on my hand today! 

If a few people learn something about bombing in WW2, highly propagandized air raids and their factual and legal background, it already worth it though.


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## Markus (Oct 5, 2010)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Was London under siege, or any British city for that matter?
> 
> You are being very hypocritical.




And you did not pay attention to what I wrote! 




> Maybe because unlike Warsaw and Rotterdam, Essen, Berlin and lot´s of other German town were not under siege/attack by ground forces?



Notice the absence of any british town? That´s why:



Milosh said:


> > Originally Posted by Kurfürst View Post
> > Fortress is a legal term to define an enemy place or settlement defended by enemy forces. It is a term used to differentiate from open, ie. undefended cities.
> >
> > Art. XXV. It is forbidden to attack or to bombard towns, villages, houses, or dwellings which are not defended.
> ...




See? Milosh, Kurfürst, me, we were refering to two towns that were *not* british.


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## bobbysocks (Oct 5, 2010)

remind me again what were the atrocious acts of aggression the polish and czechs carried out against germany that warranted hilter had to respond by overrunning their countries? and wasnt belgium neutral?


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

The short answer is that Hitler wanted to (re-)integrate these territories into the Reich. 

On the side note I guess he had as much justification for that - meaning: right of the stronger one - as there was for a British Governor in India, or you can start thinking about how did the 13 colonies got attacked at Pearl Harbour and the Philippines. Because the last time I checked, those are not exactly native British or American soil either... to put it bluntly, the Hitler gave up colonizing the Third World, because it was already taken, and colonized Eastern Europe instead. On the second side note, it might be a given for us today that Poland and Czechoslovakia are independent nations, but they were part of the Holy Roman Empire and its before that for centuries.

On the longer note, I suggest you read upon a bit on Polish-German-Russian relations between 1920-1939, or Czechoslovakian state policy towards ethnic minorities of the defeated WW1 powers. You might find interesting things. Poland for one attacked both Germany and Russia after WW1 (got beaten back) and was happily participating in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Speaking of the latter, the Slovaks were quite happy to have their independent state instead of being a Czech-run province under a nice common name.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> And you did not pay attention to what I wrote!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I understand exactly what you were saying, I was asking again why it is so bad that BC did it, but not that the Germans did it as well (Or the Russian, Italian or Americans for that matter)?

I refer to a much earlier post that I made in which I stated that everyone bombed civilian centers during WW2. It is a terrible fact. No one was innocent from it, but at the same time if they had not done it, they would not have been trying to win the war.


----------



## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> The short answer is that Hitler wanted to (re-)integrate these territories into the Reich.



How do you re integrate countries into a reich they were never part of in the first place.

If you read back into German history pre WWI you will find a fine developed civilized and cultured nation.


----------



## RCAFson (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> Excuse me but who do you want to fool? Warsaw and Rotterdam were fortresses and thus perfectly legal targets by the standards of the time. Take a look at the 1907 Hague convention. _SECTION II
> HOSTILITIES CHAPTER I Means of Injuring the Enemy, Sieges, and bombardments_, Articles 25 to 27.
> 
> 
> With regard to the Baedecker Raids and the V-weapons mentioned by others, that was two to four years after the RAF had started the area bombing of German towns.




So tell me did Hamburg have AA defences? Nightfighters? Did Hitler declare it an open city? Again, the typical argument of an apologist: Hitler carefully observed legality and only the Allies committed atrocities...

The simple facts are that Germany used area bombing of cities as a means to try and force defenceless opponents to surrender and then cried "terror fluger" when they got the same back. 

The moral of the story is that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfurst

You said

"The Hague Convention is pretty clear that defended means defended by one sides ground forces from the other sides ground forces." 

What did the hague convention say about execution of prisoners, slave labour, mass execution of minorities and medical experimentation? 

and can you explain what you mean by this

"He wasn't, obviously. Speer noted that if attacks on the scale on Hamburg would have continued, Germany would have been forced out of the war. Trouble was that Bomber Command could absolutely positvely incapable of repeating the Hamburg raid and the Germans became aware of this soon.
Without that capability, Hamburg was just another big mass murder on larger scale than usual, without any noticable effect on the German war economy."


----------



## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> Kurfurst
> 
> You said



Nope.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> The simple facts are that Germany used area bombing of cities as a means to try and force defenceless opponents to surrender ...



Care to post some detailed examples of such raids, with backing evidence about what were the issued targets? 
Like I did when I was asked to do so by Adler?

Otherwise it counts as an opinion, rather than a fact. Opinions are fine. Everyone has them.


----------



## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> The shop owner was *Gutted* but *Cod* do nothing about it



The owners started to *flounder * about, the Parrot fell of its *perch* onto a *pike* I think the poor *mullet* needs a *sturgeon*


----------



## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> How do you re integrate countries into a reich they were never part of in the first place.



O RLY? Show me Czechoslovakia or Poland on the map please in say, 1850. Or in 1798. Or in 1914.



> If you read back into German history pre WWI you will find a fine developed civilized and cultured nation.



That's flattering. Then the British Empire declared war on them, and they all the sudden ceased to be such a fine developed and cultured nation, and become the barbaric Huns, right?


----------



## BombTaxi (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> The short answer is that Hitler wanted to (re-)integrate these territories into the Reich.
> 
> On the side note I guess he had as much justification for that - meaning: right of the stronger one - as there was for a British Governor in India, or you can start thinking about how did the 13 colonies got attacked at Pearl Harbour and the Philippines. Because the last time I checked, those are not exactly native British or American soil either... to put it bluntly, the Hitler gave up colonizing the Third World, because it was already taken, and colonized Eastern Europe instead. On the second side note, it might be a given for us today that Poland and Czechoslovakia are independent nations, but they were part of the Holy Roman Empire and its before that for centuries.
> 
> On the longer note, I suggest you read upon a bit on Polish-German-Russian relations between 1920-1939, or Czechoslovakian state policy towards ethnic minorities of the defeated WW1 powers. You might find interesting things. Poland for one attacked both Germany and Russia after WW1 (got beaten back) and was happily participating in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Speaking of the latter, the Slovaks were quite happy to have their independent state instead of being a Czech-run province under a nice common name.



Oh, please. 

To echo other posters, this wasn't re-integration because those countries were never part of the Third Reich to start with - and please do not go down the 'ethnic Germans' route, it will merely confirm me in Adler's belief that you are a sympathizer.

I am not particularly proud of my country's colonial past, *but how dare you* compare the British Empire to the Third Reich? We may not have treated native populations with the respect they deserved, *but we never organised systematic and industrialised ethnic cleansing of occupied territories. That is the difference and do not try to pretend otherwise.*

As for Polish relations with their neighbours, and former membership of the HRE, what has that got to do with 1938-39? *NOTHING.* If Britain invaded Germany now because Germany fought Britain in 1945, would that be justified? Of course not. And are you seriously suggesting that because the Czechs treated former Austro-Hungarians badly, what the Germans did to thier country was OK? I suspect you are merely trying to cover for the actions of your favourite dictator...


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## RCAFson (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Care to post some detailed examples of such raids, with backing evidence about what were the issued targets?
> Like I did when I was asked to do so by Adler?
> 
> Otherwise it counts as an opinion, rather than a fact. Opinions are fine. Everyone has them.





_



At the onset of World War II began the tactic was used on Warsaw and other Polish cities (September 1939). One historian writes, "The bombing of Warsaw early in the war made it clear to the Allies how Hitler intended to fight his war. What he threatened the Czechs with he carried out on the Poles. It was to be Schrecklichkeit ('frightfulness') with no regard for the civilian population."

Click to expand...

_Luftwaffe Terror Raids : Warsaw

I'm dying to hear your explanation as to how it was legal for Germany to bomb Warsaw and not legal for the Allies to bomb Hamburg.


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## BombTaxi (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> O RLY? Show me Czechoslovakia or Poland on the map please in say, 1850. Or in 1798. Or in 1914.
> 
> 
> 
> That's flattering. Then the British Empire declared war on them, and they all the sudden ceased to be such a fine developed and cultured nation, and become the barbaric Huns, right?



Germany didn't exist in 1850 or 1798, so how could Poland or Czechslovakia belong to it? And the HRE wasn't Germany, nor did the Germany of 1871-1914 have any claim to former lands of the HRE, so forget about that argument.

Adolf Hitler stopped Germany being a fine and cultured nation. Period. Please deal with it and move on.


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## Markus (Oct 5, 2010)

So tell me, was the British Army at the gates of Hamburg? Had Monty his artillery trained at the Wehrmacht troops dug in inside the town? Again, the typical argument of an apologist, who deliberately misinterprets the relevant passages of the Hague Convention. 

The simple fact is that BC began large scale area bombing of cities with attacks on Berlin in August 1940. A policy planned by the RAF during the many years before the war. With the possible exception of Frampol nothing of what the LW did so far qualifiy as BC-style area bombing. 

_The moral of the story is that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... _

Indeed!


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## Markus (Oct 5, 2010)

*double post*


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## BombTaxi (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> So tell me, was the British Army at the gates of Hamburg? Had Monty his artillery trained at the Wehrmacht troops dug in inside the town? Again, the typical argument of an apologist, who deliberately misinterprets the relevant passages of the Hague Convention.
> 
> The simple fact is that BC began large scale area bombing of cities with attacks on Berlin in August 1940. A policy planned by the RAF during the many years before the war. With the possible exception of Frampol nothing of what the LW did so far qualifiy as BC-style area bombing.
> 
> _The moral of the story is that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... _



Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Was the Final Solution valid under the Hague conventions? Or the Commissar Order? Or the Katyn Massacre? In fact, by your own admission, the Baedecker raids, although made in retaliaition, were also against the Hague Convention, as they were terror raids. So get off your high horse and join an intelligent devbate...


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## fastmongrel (Oct 5, 2010)

This topic is getting really offensive to me. I havent taken part in the discussion because I have nothing to add to it I dont indulge in rascism nor do I denigrate dead people who have no means of defending themselves. I wont bother visiting this topic again because it will only upset me further. Some people on this forum seem to have no problem defending the indefensible, grow up.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> O RLY? Show me Czechoslovakia or Poland on the map please in say, 1850. Or in 1790. Or in 1914.
> That's flattering. Then the British Empire declared war on them, and they all the sudden ceased to be such a fine developed and cultured nation, and become the barbaric Huns, right?



Show me a map of Germany before 1871 when it became a state.

The huns were a Germanic tribe and hun is a derogatory term for a german a bit like insel apfen in Germany.

The german states were traditionally allies of Britain and prior to the first world Germany was considered a friend. Germany became barbaric when Hitler siezed power. If you read any quote from Churchill he always refers to Nazi Germany, our fight was with the regime unfortunately the regime controlled the people. I have worked for a long time in Germany apart from a few idiots they are nice people, and the old people who were there at the end of the war spoke very highly of the British. To deny Germanys of history of art music science and culture is as bad as denying the holocaust.
British democracy and the English language has its main roots in Saxon culture not Norman.


----------



## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> The owners started to *flounder * about, the Parrot fell of its *perch* onto a *pike* I think the poor *mullet* needs a *sturgeon*



Some of these fish jokes are really *CARP*


----------



## Marcel (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> O RLY? Show me Czechoslovakia or Poland on the map please in say, 1850. Or in 1798. Or in 1914.


On the map, sure:




(1619)

Could you tell me when the German being one state was ever formed? Oh right, that was in 1871. Before that it was a bunch of independent states. The existence of Poland dates back to 966, so which one was older?
You make strange statements for one claiming to use backed-up arguments.





Kurfürst said:


> That's flattering. Then the British Empire declared war on them, and they all the sudden ceased to be such a fine developed and cultured nation, and become the barbaric Huns, right?



Hmm, Kurfürst I would be very careful trying to defend the actions that the Germans did in 1939/1940. When were The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Denmark ever part of Germany? What right did they have to invade those countries? And barbaric? yes the Nazi's were barbaric, My own grandfather could tell you about it if he still lived. And the Nazi's ruled Germany in those times or did you forget?


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## pbfoot (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> .
> 
> . A policy planned by the RAF during the many years before the war. With the possible exception of Frampol nothing of what the LW did so far qualifiy as BC-style area bombing.
> 
> [I[/I]


Now that is pure Bullshit nowhere in British plans is bombing of cities mentioned check out Western Air Plans from Sept 1 39


----------



## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> Oh, please.
> 
> To echo other posters, this wasn't re-integration because those countries were never part of the Third Reich to start with - and please do not go down the 'ethnic Germans' route, it will merely confirm me in Adler's belief that you are a sympathizer.



Why the distinction 'Third Reich'... now how about the Second Reich? Or the First Reich? I am not saying that the integration into the Reich was justifiable - every nation has the right to self-govern, at least in theory which interpreted with great flexibility in practice.

Now as for posters appearantly completely unfamiliar with the basic historical facts of Europe.. it reflects on them, not on me.



> I am not particularly proud of my country's colonial past, *but how dare you* compare the British Empire to the Third Reich? We may not have treated native populations with the respect they deserved, *but we never organised systematic and industrialised ethnic cleansing of occupied territories. That is the difference and do not try to pretend otherwise.*.



From where does the word 'concentration camp' comes from into English, if I may ask..? HINT: pre-dates Dolpho and his Gang.



> As for Polish relations with their neighbours, and former membership of the HRE, what has that got to do with 1938-39? *NOTHING.* If Britain invaded Germany now because Germany fought Britain in 1945, would that be justified? Of course not.



Agreed but the point? Hitler was rebuilding the Reich from the ashes of Versailles. That was his stated political goal. And the Reich contained what we call today Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and Poland. This was the _reason_ for it, not a moral justification for it. Do you understand the meaning of _reason_ and _moral_, and their difference?

He did this because for one, he could do that, and secondly, because he had plenty of support for it, not only at home but also abroad. Simple fact was that these countries only enjoyed independence for less than 20 years after WW2. 



> And are you seriously suggesting that because the Czechs treated former Austro-Hungarians badly, what the Germans did to thier country was OK?



Nope. I am saying though that was one of the reasons, and a pretty good political excuse for Hitler to smash a part of the small-entente states that was hostile towards Germany. And everyone was very happy about it, the Poles, the Slovaks, the Hungarians, because everyone got what he wanted. The Czech, of course, were not happy about it, but I would hardly call interwar Czechoslovakia with its ethnic laws and Czech dominance over others a model state of democracy.



> I suspect you are merely trying to cover for the actions of your favourite dictator...



We could go down on this path, sharing with everyone our mutual suspicions about the other, but I believe this was specifically asked by the moderators not to be done, so I guess you'll have to enjoy that part of the conversation all alone.


----------



## Njaco (Oct 5, 2010)

This is getting to be too much and now derogatory words are being used. I suggest everyone realize that you are debating opinions and nobody will win against that. This thread is about to be closed if it doesn't cool down.


----------



## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> So tell me, was the British Army at the gates of Hamburg? Had Monty his artillery trained at the Wehrmacht troops dug in inside the town? Again, the typical argument of an apologist, who deliberately misinterprets the relevant passages of the Hague Convention.
> The simple fact is that BC began large scale area bombing of cities with attacks on Berlin in August 1940. A policy planned by the RAF during the many years before the war. With the possible exception of Frampol nothing of what the LW did so far qualifiy as BC-style area bombing.
> _The moral of the story is that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... _
> 
> Indeed!



The British made plans to defeat an attack by air from the Luftwaffe mainly because Britain was attacked by Germany in the first world war by Zeppelin and Gotha Bombers. I dont remember a german army around London or Middlesbrough at those times either. Having seen the Germans in Spain everyone knew a war with Germany would mean bombing of cities. Germany started area bombing its not BCs fault that the LW wernt very good at it.


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

Njaco said:


> This is getting to be too much and now derogatory words are being used. I suggest everyone realize that you are debating opinions and nobody will win against that. This thread is about to be closed if it doesn't cool down.



+1


----------



## Marcel (Oct 5, 2010)

A cool beer, anyone?


----------



## pbfoot (Oct 5, 2010)

here are the war plans for the RAF sept 1 39
please note the priority of oil and the bombing of forests


----------



## Markus (Oct 5, 2010)

pbfoot said:


> Now that is pure Bullshit nowhere in British plans is bombing of cities mentioned check out Western Air Plans from Sept 1 39



Charles Portal and Hugh Trenchard, they never wasted a thought on "moral bombing"? And a certain A. Harris didn´t already bomb civillians in the 1920´s? The RAF was waaaaay more into strategic bombing than the LW.


----------



## BombTaxi (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Why the distinction 'Third Reich'... now how about the Second Reich? Or the First Reich? I am not saying that the integration into the Reich was justifiable - every nation has the right to self-govern, at least in theory which interpreted with great flexibility in practice.
> 
> Now as for posters appearantly completely unfamiliar with the basic historical facts of Europe.. it reflects on them, not on me.
> 
> ...





OK, the distinction Third Reich is used because it was the Third Reich that invaded Poland and Czechslovakia on the back of a BS claim about 'ethnic German' populations, not the First or Second. 

As for concentration camps..... I can't actually type what I want to type. Because I'll be banned. But let me just say this. Yes, Brits invented them. Did we use them for the industrialised slaughter of minorities? No. Did the Nazis take the idea and develop it into a means for massacring millions? Yes. The South African camps were nothing like Treblinka, Auschwitz etc, and you know it. 

I'm not going to respond to the rest of your post because it's more of the same 'it was the Allies fault' BS that apologists usually peddle. Hitler started the war to complete his vision of the 'Thousand Year Reich'. No amount of whining about Versailles will hide the fact that this was about conquest, not redress.


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## Marcel (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> Charles Portal and Hugh Trenchard, they never wasted a thought on "moral bombing"? And a certain A. Harris didn´t already bomb civillians in the 1920´s? The RAF was waaaaay more into strategic bombing than the LW.


And the Germans bombed London in the first war, what are you saying?


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## Marcel (Oct 5, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> As for concentration camps..... I can't actually type what I want to type. Because I'll be banned. But let me just say this. Yes, Brits invented them. Did we use them for the industrialised slaughter of minorities? No. Did the Nazis take the idea and develop it into a means for massacring millions? Yes. The South African camps were nothing like Treblinka, Auschwitz etc, and you know it.


Eh bomb, you know quite a lot of Boeren died in those camps, you know that? The Nazi's just perfected them. Kurfurst has one point in which he's right. All countries have done their bad things, the Germans did that in WW2, the Dutch in the 17th century (slaves etc) and the English did their part. Nobody is innocent, even if we don't want to know about it.


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## RCAFson (Oct 5, 2010)

Markus said:


> So tell me, was the British Army at the gates of Hamburg? Had Monty his artillery trained at the Wehrmacht troops dug in inside the town? Again, the typical argument of an apologist, who deliberately misinterprets the relevant passages of the Hague Convention.
> 
> The simple fact is that BC began large scale area bombing of cities with attacks on Berlin in August 1940. A policy planned by the RAF during the many years before the war. With the possible exception of Frampol nothing of what the LW did so far qualifiy as BC-style area bombing.
> 
> ...



The Hague Convention (it is ironic that Germany broke the Hague convention, then attacked the neutral state in which it was located and actually occupied the Hague...)



> Sieges, and bombardments
> Art. 22.
> *
> The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.*
> ...



The Hague Convention specifically declared the bombing of Warsaw to be a criminal act. Unlike some I don't accept Hitler's interpretation of the Hague Convention.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> The owners started to *flounder * about, the Parrot fell of its *perch* onto a *pike* I think the poor *mullet* needs a *sturgeon*



Anyway the home guard said to her dont be a *sucker* and listen to that old*trout* *Eel* get up your *nase* come here my litttle *ray* of sunshine.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> As for concentration camps..... I can't actually type what I want to type. Because I'll be banned. But let me just say this. Yes, Brits invented them. Did we use them for the industrialised slaughter of minorities? No. Did the Nazis take the idea and develop it into a means for massacring millions? Yes. The South African camps were nothing like Treblinka, Auschwitz etc, and you know it.



Bomb Taxi

Concentration camps were used in the Spanish American war which was before the boer war.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

Marcel said:


> Could you tell me when the German being one state was ever formed? Oh right, that was in 1871.



Oddly referred to between historians as the _second_ Reich. I wonder why that is. 



> Before that it was a bunch of independent states.



Noope and yes. It became a bunch of independent states some time after the Treaty of Westphalia, or one can argue after Charles V. Legally it was still one state though, until a small Corsican artillery officer got bored of the whole stuff. And before Charles V, it was as much as of a 'one state' of a nation as any other in the same period. The King (Emperor) ruled over its vassals, more or less successfully.



> The existence of Poland dates back to 966, so which one was older?



Which one was older is not really a question - the HRE dates back to 962, when Otto was crowned Emperor, the Eastern Frankish Empire, pretty much covering Germany after goes back to the Treaty of Verdun in 843.
As for Poland, its first King was a vassal of and paid tribute to the Emperor.



> You make strange statements for one claiming to use backed-up arguments.



Suggested reading: Holy Roman Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Holy Roman Empire (HRE; German: Heiliges Römisches Reich (HRR), Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum (IRS), Italian: Sacro Romano Impero (SRI)) was a realm that existed for about a millennium in Central Europe, ruled by a Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes. In its last centuries, its character became quite close to a union of territories.

The first Holy Roman Emperor (German: Römisch-Deutscher Kaiser) is generally considered to have been Otto I, King of Germany, crowned in 962; Otto was the first emperor of the realm that later became known as the Holy Roman Empire who was not a member of the earlier Carolingian dynasty.[2] The last Holy Roman Emperor was Francis II, who abdicated and dissolved the Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was officially changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (German: Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation, Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ). [3]

The multiethnic Empire's territorial extent varied over its history, but at its peak it encompassed the Kingdom of Germany, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Burgundy; for much of its history the Empire consisted of hundreds of smaller sub-units, principalities, duchies, counties, Free Imperial Cities, as well as other domains. Despite its name, for most of its history the empire did not include Rome within its borders.
The territories and dominion of the Holy Roman Empire in terms of present-day states comprised Germany (except Southern Schleswig), Austria (except Burgenland), the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Slovenia (except Prekmurje), besides significant parts of eastern France (mainly Artois, Alsace, Franche-Comté, Savoy and Lorraine), northern Italy (mainly Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, and South Tyrol), and western Poland (mainly Silesia, Pomerania, and Neumark).



> Kurfürst I would be very careful trying to defend the actions that the Germans did in 1939/1940.



I am not defending them. I am telling how things were. Burn me at the stake for it.



> When were The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Denmark ever part of Germany? What right did they have to invade those countries?



Err, they were, I believe (see above), and no, this didn't give right for Germans in the 20th century to invade them. 

On the other hand, they were invaded by military neccessity: the British and French were planning to invade Norway to cut off Germany from Swedish ore shipments; Denmark was occupied because it was, well, in the way of German counter plans to prevent this. No, it was not nice from Hitler to do so but I guess it wasn't nice from the Brits and the French to plan the same (see Operation Wilfred) for Norway under the pretext of 'helping out the Finns against the Soviets'. Their incompetency to succeed in it does not give them a moral absolution.

Belgium announced itself neutral, in practice it wasn't, though it tried desperately to become again the battleground of French and German armies. Unfurtuntely for Belgium, she was created originally just for that purpose (see: Belgian Revolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). 

I guess the Netherlands got in the way of things again, but frankly I have no idea why operations were extented to the NL. Perhaps the Navy wanted bases for its subs, perhaps it was irritating that the NL allowed Brit planes to fly over, or that Dutch intelligence conspired with the British to kill Hitler a few years before, a plan that gone bad when the German intel found it out (see Venlo incident), perhaps the Army simply wanted room the manouver. No, it was not nice from Hitler either, especially as he succeeded in it, but I guess Germany wanted to win the war in the West just as badly as France and Britain that initiated it and wouldn't come terms with the new status quo Germany has created. 

BTW I wonder if you were the Germans in 1940, what would you have done?



> And barbaric? yes the Nazi's were barbaric



Agreed. Now, how about all Germans? Because I see a distinction between ordinary Germans and Nazi party functionaries. And you?


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> The Hague Convention specifically declared the bombing of Warsaw to be a criminal act.



Oh, what a foresight they had in 1907...!


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## RCAFson (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> I guess the Netherlands got in the way of things again, but frankly I have no idea why operations were extented to the NL. Perhaps the Navy wanted bases for its subs, perhaps it was irritating that the NL allowed Brit planes to fly over, or that Dutch intelligence conspired with the British to kill Hitler a few years before, a plan that gone bad when the German intel found it out (see Venlo incident), perhaps the Army simply wanted room the manouver. No, it was not nice from Hitler either, especially as he succeeded in it, but I guess Germany wanted to win the war in the West just as badly as* France and Britain that initiated it *and wouldn't come terms with the new status quo Germany has created.
> ?



Again you act as an apologist to justify the German invasion of the Netherlands...

Right, so now Britain and France started the war? Funny, the history books that I've read stated that Germany invaded Poland and the Allies declared war after giving Germany an ultimatum to withdraw from Poland. You reveal yourself more and more...


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfurt

Charles the Great was the first emperor (It says in Wiki just below your quote) therefore germany is part of Greater France. Like I am in a Danish state and the people north of me belong to Norway.

I would have thought Holy *ROMAN* empire would have indicated something wasnt 100% German about it unless of course Rome is in Germany too.


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## BombTaxi (Oct 5, 2010)

Marcel said:


> Eh bomb, you know quite a lot of Boeren died in those camps, you know that? The Nazi's just perfected them. Kurfurst has one point in which he's right. All countries have done their bad things, the Germans did that in WW2, the Dutch in the 17th century (slaves etc) and the English did their part. Nobody is innocent, even if we don't want to know about it.



I am not claiming that the British were innocent, and I am, of course, aware that Boers died in the camps. But the camps were not expressly set up to kill civilians, as the Nazi death camps were. The British Empire inflicted much pain and suffering on the world, and I do not, for even a second, condone those actions. But for Kurfurst to draw a direct comparison between the South African camps and Auschwitz is monstrous and unfair


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> Again you act as an apologist to justify the German invasion of the Netherlands...
> 
> Right, so now Britain and France started the war? Funny, the history books that I've read stated that Germany invaded Poland and the Allies declared war after giving Germany an ultimatum to withdraw from Poland. You reveal yourself more and more...



Run out of civilized arguments so soon, and only the insults remain, eh?


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## RCAFson (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Run out of civilized arguments so soon, and only the insults remain, eh?



No insults, just statements of fact. I notice that you make no attempt to deny that you believe that the Allies *initiated* the war.


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## Marcel (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> Oddly referred to between historians as the _second_ Reich. I wonder why that is.


Frankley, I don't consider the 'Holy Roman Empire' as a German state (one would claime that Italie was German, too  ), although Germany as it is now was part of it. This is of course debatable and unfortunately Hitler saw it otherwise.





Kurfürst said:


> Err, they were, I believe (see above), and no, this didn't give right for Germans in the 20th century to invade them.
> 
> I guess the Netherlands got in the way of things again, but frankly I have no idea why operations were extented to the NL.
> BTW I wonder if you were the Germans in 1940, what would you have done?


 I would not have started WW2 in the first place, but that's another story. About the invasion of Holland, that's truly a strange story. I believe that ultimately the Germans decided to go through The Netherlands when a small aircraft (ME108 ) got lost and landed in Belgium, carrying the German plan to attack France through Belgium. Hitler panicked and decided that the Plan had to change. The change they made wa htat they were now going to occupy the whole of the NL instead of only the south point (Limburg) to protect a push through the Ardennes.



Kurfürst said:


> Agreed. Now, how about all Germans? Because I see a distinction between ordinary Germans and Nazi party functionaries. And you?


No, I don't consider the Germans, then and now as evil. If you read back my posts, you can see that I always refer to 'Nazi's' if I'm talking about crimes committed by the Third reich. My grandfather was in the resistance and in 1942 his life was saved by a German officer when the Nazi's wanted to execute him. I ow my existence ultimately to that German officer since my mother was born only 2 years later.


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

BombTaxi said:


> I am not claiming that the British were innocent, and I am, of course, aware that Boers died in the camps. But the camps were not expressly set up to kill civilians.



You make it sound like it was mere coincidence. Almost as if they were struck by a random lightning or something.



> But for Kurfurst to draw a direct comparison between the South African camps and Auschwitz is monstrous and unfair



I am not. You are.


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## bobbysocks (Oct 5, 2010)

those who fail to listen to reason are doomed not to escape the trappings of folly. to debate with you about a subject as thus is futile. you will believe whatever wish...but i believe you take great delight in playing devil's advocate and stirring up the pot to see what boils. as this "debate" actaully will go no where except the down to road to enrage everyone's emotion...i too vote for locked.


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## Marcel (Oct 5, 2010)

bobbysocks said:


> i too vote for locked.


On the contrary, if everyone would behave civilised, this could be a highly interesting discussion. Both parties should lay their feelings aside and discuss this on a more academic level (leave the passion). I find the discussion with Kurfurst on European history as much enjoyable.

And please remember: all countries did their bad thing in history. WW2 is just one of the more recent incidents. And yes, both parties committed crimes during ww2 although I think the Nazi's won that game together with the commies.

War isn't black-and-white, 'not good against evil'. It is evil answered with evil. The one that is most effective wins this. Nazi barbarism like concentration camps were, although very evil, contra-productive, thus they lost. Th area bombing was also evil, but more productive (especially in Japan), thus the Allies won.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

bobbysocks said:


> those who fail to listen to reason are doomed not to escape the trappings of folly. to debate with you about a subject as thus is futile. you will believe whatever wish...but i believe you take great delight in playing devil's advocate and stirring up the pot to see what boils. as this "debate" actaully will go no where except the down to road to enrage everyone's emotion...i too vote for locked.



I agree, and so it shall be done. 

There is no point in discussing this thread any further.

*Some people need to tread lightly in this forum, they are being watched.*


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

Kurfürst said:


> You make it sound like it was mere coincidence. Almost as if they were struck by a random lightning or something.
> I am not. You are.



Most died from insanitary conditions not malice as happens in a refugee camp today.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

Marcel said:


> On the contrary, if everyone would behave civilised, this could be a highly interesting discussion. Both parties should lay their feelings aside and discuss this on a more academic level (leave the passion). I find the discussion with Kurfurst on European history as much enjoyable.



The problem is that this discussion happens every few months and it never stays civil.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 5, 2010)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I agree, and so it shall be done.
> 
> There is no point in discussing this thread any further.
> 
> Some people need to tread lightly in this forum, they are being watched.



damn I was just getting warmed up with my fish jokes


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 5, 2010)

tail end charlie said:


> damn I was just getting warmed up with my fish jokes



Those I surely enjoyed...


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## Kurfürst (Oct 5, 2010)

RCAFson said:


> No insults, just statements of fact./QUOTE]
> 
> Oh well I guess you will excuse me if I care little about it.
> 
> ...


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## Matt308 (Oct 5, 2010)

And that will be the all of that. Alrighty then!

Forum members: This sad end has occurred not because of the last post. In fact, it has not occurred due to the last many posts in this thread. Rather, the Mods have been entirely too patient with some members (now past) who have taken tones, directly insulted other members, or were arguing for the sake of "stirring the excrement". This latest action by the Mods was not an emotional response out of nowhere. This action has been contemplated for months... if not years.

What is done, is done.


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