The firebombing of Dresden - 60 year anniversary

[Alexander's Horse]

nope, the US airforce used area bombing

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


Still, the US kept up "precision" daylight bombing the entire war.

Note also that when a bomber did not release its load over target, it had to wait 'til it was over water to dump its bomb load.

No they didn't, as anyone who knows anything about the war in the Pacific could tell you.


Your attempts to continually absolve the U. S. Air Force from ever doing anything potentially 'unpleasant' get more and more ridiculous.


I suppose Hiroshima and Nagasaki were loved to death with drops of marshmallows and Hershey bars.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by molly bloom


No they didn't, as anyone who knows anything about the war in the Pacific could tell you.


Your attempts to continually absolve the U. S. Air Force from ever doing anything potentially 'unpleasant' get more and more ridiculous.

They are pretty much the same attempts that he made a few years ago.

[laurentius]

best music video ever ed2k://|file|Paul.Van.Dyk.&.Peter.Heppner.-.Wir.Sind.Wir.(Viva.-.DivX.5.11.2000kbps).avi|60700620|A5FA114FA6E4E04D B7A520D3ADA0D32E|/

[mrmitchell]

Does laurentius have some kind of funky virus?

[Dinner]

No, he's just drunk.

[Lung]

The current crop of German extremists complaining of Dresden sounds like the school bully complaining that someone actually hit him back It's not who wins who's at fault, but who starts it.

Dresden sounds like a lot of overkill, but the article lost me when it claimed the allies to be "imperialist forces" when they were trying to win a war someone else started.

Yes, we should look back and question the tactics used in this instance, but nothing can square up the murdering of millions of jews and other civilians perpetrated by Hitler and his followers.

[Ted Striker]

Wir haben die Schnauze voll von den Scheiss Nazis!

[Ned]

Originally posted by molly bloom


No they didn't, as anyone who knows anything about the war in the Pacific could tell you.


Your attempts to continually absolve the U. S. Air Force from ever doing anything potentially 'unpleasant' get more and more ridiculous.


I suppose Hiroshima and Nagasaki were loved to death with drops of marshmallows and Hershey bars.

Molly, the topic here was the war in Europe. What I said about not dropping bombs randomly over enemy territory is true, AFAIK. My uncle was a B-17 pilot. He told me this himself. Was he lying?

As to Japan, clearly LeMay and McNamara changed the rules. I think they were both racists from the way they behaved both in that war and later during Vietnam.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
nope, the US airforce used area bombing

The US Airforce did not use area bombing in Europe unless it participated in one of Britain's level the city campaigns.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Dauphin


They are pretty much the same attempts that he made a few years ago.

There is no doubt that the way we behaved against the Japanese was barbarous. Perhaps we did so because of Pearl Harbor or because of US racism. But we behaved very differently against the Germans. Very.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Ned

There is no doubt that the way we behaved against the Japanese was barbarous. Perhaps we did so because of Pearl Harbor or because of US racism. But we behaved very differently against the Germans. Very.

One of the reason, germans (civilians as well as soldiers) rather wanted to fall into the hands of the western allies and not into the hands of the russians.
History proves that fears to fall into the hands of the russians were justified.
Often they took revenge for the atrocities the german army commited in russia by commiting atrocities to german civilians themselves (there are especially a lot of accounts of sowjet soldiers raping german women [of all ages]).
The german P.O.W.s also didn´t fare better, as many german prisoners died in russian POW-Camps because of the harsh conditions there.

Things you don´t hear of the american/british soldiers (and POW-Camps)

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ned


The US Airforce did not use area bombing in Europe unless it participated in one of Britain's level the city campaigns.

Ned, they blew up every square inch of Berlin, and a few other cities.

Was that precision bombing?

[Ned]

NYE, as I said. There were exceptions. They joined with the Brits at their request to destroy certain cities. Among them were Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin. Still, I understand that our own command were more than reluctant to participate in such actions, as clearly the targets were not strictly military.

Very telling on this issue was the extreme embarrasment the administration felt when news of Dresden reached the American public. Also consider that when Truman annouced the use of the first atomic bomb, he said it had been dropped on a "military base."

Attacks on civilians went against everything America was purportedly fighting for. While we did it, we did it reluctantly and without public fanfare, and with ruses and disguises so that the truth would not leak to the American public.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Ned
Attacks on civilians went against everything America was purportedly fighting for. While we did it, we did it reluctantly and without public fanfare, and with ruses and disguises so that the truth would not leak to the American public.

I think it's probably worse that a miltary takes 'atrocious' actions and hides or distorts the fact from the public to gain support.