I'm not for one second saying that all Luftwaffe pilots were like the B***** that targeted the school,I know some were very honourable and indeed I believe some became friends with RAF pilots after the war.
From a young age I learned about the Horrors of the Blitz first hand from my parents and their parents.From the many talks I've had over the years with dozens of civilian veterans from that time the vast majority I have met wanted the Germans to 'Get it back tenfold' and I must confess its difficult to argue with their point of view. Having had their family killed and homes destroyed to be brutally frank they didn't give a toss when they heard about Dresden and wanted Germany flattened.I'm sure German people felt the same when they heard about V Weapons on London,its human nature. It is indeed very hard to put ourselves in anyones shoes seventy years on but we can all agree on one thing.All bombing of civilians is Terrible and one of the worst aspects of warfare.If someone is blown up or burnt alive in an air raid it matters not if its London,Berlin,Coventry,Dresden.Pearl Harbour,Australia,Stalingrad or anywhere else,its still a tragedy.
I don't want to argue or upset anyone here as I know bombing is a very hot topic,but I want to say the guys in Bomber Command will always have my deepest respect,admiration and gratitude for what they did in shortening the worst war in history. For me Bomber Harris was the right man at the right time and did the right job.For the sake of the world the Allied Nations had to win, terrible as it was for the German people at the time, it eventually freed their country as well as many others.
Plans have just been unveiled for a large new memorial in Green Park London for the men of Bomber Command, and when it opens I'll be there with my camera to share it all with you.
Rob
I too agree that they did shorten the war. I said so in my earlier post, but since revisited my Times Atlas of WW2 from about 25 years ago, which has a good slice of useful information. It is not referenced so I hope it is accurate.
From 1940 to 1945 the USAAF lost 9949 bombers (754,818 sorties), RAF 11965 (687,462 sorties), USAAF lost 8429 fighters (991,750 sorties), RAF 10045 (1,695,049 sorties). I am not sure if these figures are just ETO or not, but think they may be.
The USAAF lost 79,265 personnel, the RAF 79,281. Presumably the USAAF figure relates to the larger crew numbers in the B17 etc?
The other interesting thing from this article points out that only in 1944 did the bombing campaign become able to inflict serious damage. This was after firstly Operation Pointblank, to hit the Luftwaffe and its manufacturing and supply chain, secondly the destruction of bridges and other tactical transport targets before DDay. N.B. The bomber chiefs argued against such diversion, but the view in this article was that the attack on the Luftwaffe (highlight 'big week' in Feb44) with destruction of plant and aircraft in the supply chain, plus transport targets, all helped the subsequent bombing offensive.
New navigational aids, Mustangs with drop tanks and a weakened defence allowed the air forces to run riot, weakening Germany for the last attacks from East and West. The combined offensive from April 1944 to 1945, with RAF bombing mainly area targets at night and the USAAF with more precision targets by day, dropped 906,000 tons of bombs on France and Germany, most on industrial targets - 224,000 on oil, 319,000 on transportation and 57,000 on the aircraft industry. The RAF dropped a further 674,000 tons on German and Italian cities mainly at night.
By March 1945, the 8th USAAF had 7100 aircraft, the RAF Bomber Command 6900. In terms of numbers and size of aircraft compared with the earlier Luftwaffe attack on Coventry they did indeed reap the whirlwind.
Estimated 650,000 civilian casualties, mainly women, children and old men, but V1s and V2s were raining on Britain, pitiful in comparison of scale but..............
Bombing diverted 2m Germans into AA defence, more than in the entire aircraft industry. One third of artillery and one fifth of shells went to AA defence. Half of electro-technical and a third of optical production was used for AAD. Germany was short of fuel and found it difficult to transport it. It still made 36,000 aircraft in 1944, but had planned for 80,000.
