Re: Was The American Bombing Campaign In World War II A War Crime?



WaltBJ wrote:
I remind all these 'moralists' that they were not around in the early
days of WW2 when the Allies were most definitely losing the war and
Something Had To Be Done. RAF tried daylight bombing and found out
right away it was suicide. They switched to night bombing and took a
long time to get the technical aids to become effective. Meanwhile they
HTDS (see above). USAAF experienced the same problem finding that
without escort fighters it was suicide. As for the 'pickle barrel',
with experienced crews and known winds some fair accuracy was
attainable. With green crews in combat over enemy territory with
inaccurate winds - scatter was inevitable, as also was the case with
'Palace Cobra' yclept 'fighter crews' in Vietnam. The old TAC pilots
could hit their targets; the 'converted' crews had problems due to lack
of true experience. In the Pacific the goal was to end the war as
soon as possible hopefully without an invasion of Japan. After Iwo Jima
and Okinawa nobody wanted that to happen, and it certainly appeared
that Japan would fight to the bitter end. Hence the bombing campaign to
reduce their combat capability to an absolute minimum. Comment - it is
easy to look back 60-65 years and say 'y'all did it all wrong.' without
taking into account all the factors bearing on the problem. And if the
choice of survival is between 'them' and 'ours' I'll go for 'ours'
every time. So be it.
Walt BJ

Remember also that in the early days of WW2 Britain didn't have many allies, apart from the Commonwealth - the US were keeping their distance, their ambassador to the United Kingdom said they were finished, and British cities were being bombed nightly.

During the first phase of the Blitz, an average of 200 bombers attacked London every night but one between mid-September and mid-November. By mid-November, the Germans had dropped over 13,000 tons of high explosive and over 1 million incendiary bombs.

From November 1940 to February 1941, the Luftwaffe attacked industrial and port cities. Targets included Coventry, Southampton, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Swindon, Plymouth, Cardiff, Manchester, Sheffield, Portsmouth, and Avonmouth - Bristol's port. By this time, the German effort was aimed as much against civilians as against industrial targets and the raids were intended to provoke terror.

Ricardo
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Was The American Bombing Campaign In World War II A War Crime?
    ... RAF tried daylight bombing and found out ... with experienced crews and known winds some fair accuracy was ... In the Pacific the goal was to end the war as ... soon as possible hopefully without an invasion of Japan. ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: why did Hitler Kill jews ?
    ... > Mr. Hanyok said analysts had been looking for information about internal> security, impacts of bombing and prisoners or war rather than potential> evidence of war crimes and probably would not have grasped the enormity of> the Nazis' plan. ... The Nazis were sensitive to exposure of these activities - they went to lengths to keep the information from detection. ... The question of bombing Auschwitz first arose in the summer of 1944, more than two years after the gassing of Jews had begun and at a time when more than 90 percent of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust were already dead. ... They made contact with Slovak resistance forces and produced a substantive report on the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. ...
    (soc.history.war.world-war-ii)
  • Re: Morals Around the World
    ... because Bin Laden seems to want to cause mass casualties. ... invaded had it not been for the threat of nuclear war. ... Research Group attributed approximately 6,616 civilian deaths to the ... Shock and Awe bombing campaign on Baghdad. ...
    (misc.writing)
  • Re: Death sentence 4
    ... The war was already won. ... Attitudes to the Dresden bombing, ... "bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror." ... There would then have been no German counteroffensive. ...
    (uk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Death sentence 4
    ... The war was already won. ... Attitudes to the Dresden bombing, ... the head of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, in 1984, and ... There would then have been no German counteroffensive. ...
    (uk.politics.misc)