Town Buster bombs pulverized German cities

[2RHPZ]

Town Buster bombs pulverized German cities

The destructive force of the new weapons hastened war's end, writes MURRAY CAMPBELL

They called it the Grand Slam and the Town Buster, and for a few months, until atomic weapons were dropped on Japan, it was the deadliest armament humans had ever invented.

The 11-tonne bombs dropped over Germany on the night of March 14, 1945, were nearly twice was big as anything used previously in the Second World War. The weapons, developed by the British government, were eight metres long, more than a metre in diameter and combined great power of penetration with massive explosive force.

They were so big that the four-engined Lancaster bombers carrying them had to be reinforced, their bomb bays cut away and two crewmen left behind to save weight. And the pilots found their planes bounced 500 feet higher at the moment the massive bombs were released.

One bomb dropped that night took out more than 60 metres of a concrete viaduct near Bielefeld. A Canadian flight engineer in the attacking Royal Air Force squadron said the new weapon made anything he had witnessed before seem "like babies in comparison."

Flying Officer L. T. Inglis, an air gunner from Pictou, N.S., said when he returned to England: "It was as if the earth had opened up."

For many Germans, the destructive force of the new weapons piled insult upon injury. For more than a month, massive fleets of Allied planes rained destruction, day and night, on Germany.

On March 15, for example, 2,100 U.S. warplanes -- part of the 7,000 planes in the air that day -- sowed 3,500 tonnes of high explosives and incendiaries near Berlin. The raid knocked out the general headquarters of the German army.

After the initial raid, the RAF continued to hurl the Town Busters at western Germany, but in some cases their power was redundant. Essen and Dortmund, in the industrial Ruhr Valley, were written off that week as "dead cities" after two of the war's mightiest aerial attacks.

Winston Churchill confidently predicted victory over the Nazis by the end of the summer. "Victory lies before us -- certain and perhaps near."

Reports indicated the same level of hopefulness among Allied soldiers struggling to cross the Rhine River, but it was mixed with a realization they were fighting a political and military war.

"The Nazi Party controls the army more firmly now than it ever did before the attempt on Hitler's life last July and does not show the slightest sign of throwing in the towel," Canadian Press correspondent Ross Munro wrote.

Despite this, the U.S. 3rd Army swept through the Saar Basin in southwestern Germany. Backed by fighter planes, troops roamed the region almost at will, and headed toward Coblenz at the confluence of the Mosel and Rhine rivers.

Roads were jammed with German troops and civilians fleeing east toward the river. U.S. troops, who 10 days earlier had broken out from a bridgehead at Remagen (when the Nazis failed to demolish a bridge), had advanced far enough to cut in two places the six-lane "superhighway" between Frankfurt and Cologne.

The collapse of the weakened Ludendorff bridge on March 18 did not impede the shipment of arms and men across the Rhine, however, as engineers had built a number of pontoon bridges. (A U.S. Army sergeant who was there the day the bridge was crossed told reporters that the German soldier assigned to blow it up was drunk when U.S. forces captured it.) The Nazis were determined that such a blunder would not happen again.

On March 19, retreating forces blew up three bridges over the Rhine at Mainz, near Frankfurt. Until that time, German soldiers, indulging in a hasty rout that The Globe and Mail described as "sauve qui peut," were abandoning arms and equipment and legging to the temporary safety of the river's east bank, every man for himself.

But in their hurry to forestall the capture of any intact bridges, the Germans trapped about 2,000 of their soldiers on the river's west bank, leaving them with the choice of swimming or being captured.

As the area under Nazi control shrank, diplomats from the Allied countries said they were bracing for a wave of informal peace bids as Germany attempted to sow dissension.

One U.S. soldier, meanwhile, had made his own, separate peace.

A March 16 Associated Press dispatch told the story of a 22-year-old sergeant who took over the military government of three suburbs of München-Gladbach, near Düsseldorf, issued passes to German civilians and billeted officers in the choicest of rooms. Commissioning himself as a lieutenant, he also "acquired the best-looking blonde he could find" and, when he discovered she was a nurse, appointed her as head of his health and welfare department.

The U.S. soldier, who had been awed by the elegance of German homes and decided to have "a helluva time," eventually was unmasked by a (real) U.S. lieutenant and sent to the brig.

There was sparse news from the eastern front, but Moscow radio was warning that the battle for Berlin was coming very soon. On March 18, Soviet troops captured the battered German Baltic naval port of Kolberg (now Kolobzreg) after a 13-day siege. Berlin reported, however, that fierce battles were raging along the 600-kilometre southern portion of the front.

The nearing victory sparked consternation in Britain after the United States announced on March 18 that shipments of meat under its Lend-Lease program would be cut by 87 per cent in the second quarter of 1945. London newspapers treated the announcement as sensational news. They reported that the new allotment of 25 million pounds in the subsequent three months would provide just one ounce weekly per person.

In Canada, the butter ration was raised an ounce to seven ounces weekly, but returning soldiers were causing huge problems in Toronto. The city's chief housing officer said the shortage of accommodation was six times as severe as it had been in 1944, because soldiers and their families were coming back to claim apartments and houses they had sublet years earlier.

A naval petty officer who returned on leave to find his wife and child facing eviction from their sublet flat threatened to desert, saying he didn't want to fight for a country that couldn't provide accommodation for his family. Even sadder was the tale of a woman who, within the space of five minutes, received a notice of eviction and a telegram notifying her that her husband had been killed in the Netherlands.

Link (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050314/WAR14/International/Idx)

[oregongrunt]

How did those bombers sleep at night after dropping bombs that big on cities? I'm not saying that it was right or wrong, but it's hard to imagine.

[Laworkerbee]

How did those bombers sleep at night after dropping bombs that big on cities? I'm not saying that it was right or wrong, but it's hard to imagine.

Probably pretty well after enduring the "Blitz", and countless V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks

I bet they slept like babies

[gaz]

How did those bombers sleep at night after dropping bombs that big on cities? I'm not saying that it was right or wrong, but it's hard to imagine.

To be truthful I think this article is more than a little misleading. I admit that my knowledge of the Grand Slam bombs comes from reading The Dambusters many years ago so my memory may be hazy but I believe Grand Slam was only ever used against genuine military targets, rather than in the carpet bombing of cities as the article suggests. Primary targets for Grand Slam were often heavily fortified, such as U-Boat pens on the coast of France, bridges and viaducts, V1 launch sites and the battleship Tirpitz. The article refers to Dortmund and Essen being bombed, as I recall the target was a canal (Presumably used for transport).

The author talks about Grand Slam and then throws in this quote -

"On March 15, for example, 2,100 U.S. warplanes -- part of the 7,000 planes in the air that day -- sowed 3,500 tonnes of high explosives and incendiaries near Berlin. The raid knocked out the general headquarters of the German army."

It's very easy to miss the fact that it says US warplanes (I know because I missed it myself the first time) which means that Grand Slam wasn't used in that raid since it was a British weapon.

[Flagg]

Something to keep in mind is that industrial output of war material by the German people was ACCELERATING even AFTER much of Germany's major population centres were turned into parking lots.

If not for Germany's lack of oil to power the weapons it was producing, the war could have dragged on quite a bit longer.

Truly global war, everyone was a combatant or working in support of the combatants....horrible but true.

Weapons like the Grand Slam would be more effective in attacking Germany's production capacity that had been moved into dispersed, hardened, and underground facilities.

My question is how could a target be hit ACCURATELY using traditional high level strategic bombing tactics and bomb sights of the era?

[James]

How did those bombers sleep at night after dropping bombs that big on cities? I'm not saying that it was right or wrong, but it's hard to imagine.

The RAF did their bombing raids during the night, so they didn't sleep - they were flying. They would sleep during the day.

I imagine that they got home from their missions in the early hours of the morning, had a debrief, then maybe had a shower and went to bed.

[The_MadMan]

To be truthful I think this article is more than a little misleading. I admit that my knowledge of the Grand Slam bombs comes from reading The Dambusters many years ago so my memory may be hazy but I believe Grand Slam was only ever used against genuine military targets, rather than in the carpet bombing of cities as the article suggests. Primary targets for Grand Slam were often heavily fortified, such as U-Boat pens on the coast of France, bridges and viaducts, V1 launch sites and the battleship Tirpitz. The article refers to Dortmund and Essen being bombed, as I recall the target was a canal (Presumably used for transport).


The question also springs to mind what the use would be to use bombs that have a penetrating powers of several meters on ordinary houses. Seems like a waste of resources to me.

[Thor]

****ing sick people who did boming runs to kill civilians. And these ****ing war criminals are allowed to walk the streets.

Since they're old one can only hope thay they'll die at nursing homes, lying alone in their fecies. If there's an hell they will for sure burn forever.

[The_MadMan]

f*** sick people who did boming runs to kill civilians. And these f*** war criminals are allowed to walk the streets.

Since they're old one can only hope thay they'll die at nursing homes, lying alone in their fecies. If there's an hell they will for sure burn forever.

:cantbeli:

[James]

f*** sick people who did boming runs to kill civilians. And these f*** war criminals are allowed to walk the streets.

Since they're old one can only hope thay they'll die at nursing homes, lying alone in their fecies. If there's an hell they will for sure burn forever.

Nice blanket statment, jackass. My grandfather was a bomber pilot in the USAAF 8th and 9th Air Force from 1943 to 1945. He probably killed hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.

I am proud to be descended from him.

On a side note - why did you pick the name of "Thor" if warfare is so repulsive to you?

Were you drunk when you wrote your post?

[Thor]

Bomb crews that were ordered to target civilians and did so are war criminals and should be hunted down and prosecuted.

No person who knows right from wrong can oppose that.

[The_MadMan]

http://home.btconnect.com/Boney/alan/images/smilies/trolls.gif

[James]

http://home.btconnect.com/Boney/alan/images/smilies/trolls.gif

Thank you for diverting my wrath.

[Flagg]

Bomb crews that were ordered to target civilians and did so are war criminals and should be hunted down and prosecuted.

No person who knows right from wrong can oppose that.

During the Spanish Civil War it was the German "volunteer"contingent perfecting their strategic bombing tactics that leveled Guernica. Ever heard of Picasso's painting by the same name? That's why he painted it.

During WWII the Luftwaffe was the first combatant to use strategic bombing of population centres as an integral part of their warfighting campaign.

It was only after this that the Allied forces, having garnered enough resources to go on the offensive slowly built up a 24 hour a day strategic bombing capability.

Precision bombing by todays standard simply did NOT exist. It would require multiple bomber wings, multiple sorties to ensure the destruciton of a single large and easily identifiable target. Anything that existed anywhere in reasonable proximity to a target suffered the consequences.

The gloves had been taken off by the Nazis. The rules of warfare had been changed, EVERYONE, including civilians had become legitimate targets of war as they provided the support structure for the Nazi war machine.

It was NOT a limited conflict, it was total war.

Taking the moral highground could have(and likely would have) resulted in far higher Allied casualties.

Russia had been leveled and bled dry and desperately needed the US and UK to open a second front. Until, and even after, the Normandy invasion the most effective second front was taking place from the air.

[The_MadMan]

http://home.btconnect.com/Boney/alan/images/smilies/trolls.gif

Thank you for diverting my wrath.

Yeah, it's pointless to reply to him.

[James]

http://home.btconnect.com/Boney/alan/images/smilies/trolls.gif

Thank you for diverting my wrath.

Yeah, it's pointless to reply to him.

So... It was a nice day in Seattle today - clear and about 60F. What about where you live?

[Kitsune]

Nice blanket statment, jackass. My grandfather was a bomber pilot in the USAAF 8th and 9th Air Force from 1943 to 1945. He probably killed hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.

I am proud to be descended from him.


This is an utterly execrable and offensive remark. If any Americans wonder why some people displayed glee because of 9/11, here is a possible answer. Simply disgusting.

[Thor]

Bomb crews that were ordered to target civilians and did so are war criminals and should be hunted down and prosecuted.

No person who knows right from wrong can oppose that.

During the Spanish Civil War it was the German "volunteer"contingent perfecting their strategic bombing tactics that leveled Guernica. Ever heard of Picasso's painting by the same name? That's why he painted it.

During WWII the Luftwaffe was the first combatant to use strategic bombing of population centres as an integral part of their warfighting campaign.

It was only after this that the Allied forces, having garnered enough resources to go on the offensive slowly built up a 24 hour a day strategic bombing capability.

Precision bombing by todays standard simply did NOT exist. It would require multiple bomber wings, multiple sorties to ensure the destruciton of a single large and easily identifiable target. Anything that existed anywhere in reasonable proximity to a target suffered the consequences.

The gloves had been taken off by the Nazis. The rules of warfare had been changed, EVERYONE, including civilians had become legitimate targets of war as they provided the support structure for the Nazi war machine.

It was NOT a limited conflict, it was total war.

Taking the moral highground could have(and likely would have) resulted in far higher Allied casualties.

Russia had been leveled and bled dry and desperately needed the US and UK to open a second front. Until, and even after, the Normandy invasion the most effective second front was taking place from the air.
So what you're saying bascially is that you have no arguments, just the same excuses as nazis and other totalitarian regimes used back then (and Usama and his crew uses today).

It's really simple so I'll say it again: you don't wage war by exclusively target civilians. If you do so you should be hunted down and prosecuted for war crimes.

If I was a soldier at war and my CO told me "men, this it total war, therefor we are going to find and kill a thousand civilians every day [or actually we're going to burn them alive]", I would to say the least question that order.

[The_MadMan]

http://home.btconnect.com/Boney/alan/images/smilies/trolls.gif

Thank you for diverting my wrath.

Yeah, it's pointless to reply to him.

So... It was a nice day in Seattle today - clear and about 60F. What about where you live?

I live in Arnhem but work in Zeist, it's not too warm today 14C (don't know how much that is in F).

[Turhapuro]

Swedes are so naive :lol:

Spirit of Olof Palme is still powerful...

[Thor]

Swedes are so naive :lol:

Spirit of Olof Palme is still powerful...
I would probably have killed him myself if he still was alive..

How about your rotten socialist president?

[oldsoak]

rant on
Guys, lets be aware of German sensitivities here - theres an old Jewish saying that goes "Do not talk of rope in the house of a man who has been hung". The war was fought by our fathers and Grandfathers, so lets not start where they laid off. I've got German friends, and I dont like talking about events where my relatives made their relatives go through all that fear and pain that was WWII when they are around. The only nations that should have any right to talk about it are those that fought. Yes I'm glad we won, and its right to remember sacrifice but its sixty years on so lets drop the tub thumping and breast beating and move on.
rant off

[2RHPZ]

People, I would appreciate only civil discussion in my threads. Otherwise I will ask mods to lock this one ... and any other in the future if this happens again. Thank you very much.

PS: Troll, think twice before you express your point of view or try to put it by more intelligent way ...

CAG 147

[Flagg]

Bomb crews that were ordered to target civilians and did so are war criminals and should be hunted down and prosecuted.

No person who knows right from wrong can oppose that.

During the Spanish Civil War it was the German "volunteer"contingent perfecting their strategic bombing tactics that leveled Guernica. Ever heard of Picasso's painting by the same name? That's why he painted it.

During WWII the Luftwaffe was the first combatant to use strategic bombing of population centres as an integral part of their warfighting campaign.

It was only after this that the Allied forces, having garnered enough resources to go on the offensive slowly built up a 24 hour a day strategic bombing capability.

Precision bombing by todays standard simply did NOT exist. It would require multiple bomber wings, multiple sorties to ensure the destruciton of a single large and easily identifiable target. Anything that existed anywhere in reasonable proximity to a target suffered the consequences.

The gloves had been taken off by the Nazis. The rules of warfare had been changed, EVERYONE, including civilians had become legitimate targets of war as they provided the support structure for the Nazi war machine.

It was NOT a limited conflict, it was total war.

Taking the moral highground could have(and likely would have) resulted in far higher Allied casualties.

Russia had been leveled and bled dry and desperately needed the US and UK to open a second front. Until, and even after, the Normandy invasion the most effective second front was taking place from the air.
So what you're saying bascially is that you have no arguments, just the same excuses as nazis and other totalitarian regimes used back then (and Usama and his crew uses today).

It's really simple so I'll say it again: you don't wage war by exclusively target civilians. If you do so you should be hunted down and prosecuted for war crimes.

If I was a soldier at war and my CO told me "men, this it total war, therefor we are going to find and kill a thousand civilians every day [or actually we're going to burn them alive]", I would to say the least question that order.

Where did I state civilian targets were EXCLUSIVELY targeted?

I didn't

Turhapuro wrote:
Swedes are so naive Laughing

Spirit of Olof Palme is still powerful...

I would probably have killed him myself if he still was alive..

How about your rotten socialist president?

?!?

troll......
:roll:

[Thor]

Where did I state civilian targets were EXCLUSIVELY targeted?

I didn't
You don't have to (they were).

I think I can rest my case.

?!?

troll......
Olof Palme was a swedish socialist prime minister who was murdered in 1986 (some say by rightwingers who regarded him as being on the soviets payroll). Turhapuro compared my view to that of an alledged traitor, and then I asked him about his current president.

[Flagg]

Where did I state civilian targets were EXCLUSIVELY targeted?

I didn't
You don't have to (they were).

I think I can rest my case.

Then go somewhere else to bask in the glow of your "moral superiority."

?!?

troll......
Olof Palme was a swedish socialist prime minister who was murdered in 1986 (some say by rightwingers who regarded him as being on the soviets payroll). Turhapuro compared my view to that of an alledged traitor, and then I asked him about his current president.

I'm quite aware of who Olof Palme was, how he died, and your desire to assassinate him if he were still alive.

[Belrick]

Yep if someone comes to your home or drops a bomb killing civilians you can under American moral law go there country and murder babies still within there mothers womb, set fire to the elderly in resthome and tear apart children at school with explosives.

However the rest of us are of the moral belief that we dont stoop to there (whoever the enemy is) level.

[Thor]

There's a difference though between collateral damage, when some civilian casualties can be justified, and when someone actually wants to kill civilians.

[Kilgor]

There's a difference though between collateral damage, when some civilian casualties can be justified, and when someone actually wants to kill civilians.

You cant view ww2 through todays moral standards and call it a war crime.

Back then it was commonly accepted if you demoralized and dehoused a enough of the population, industrial and therefore war production would end. If you cant understand that concept, go away.

[Kilgor]

Nice blanket statment, jackass. My grandfather was a bomber pilot in the USAAF 8th and 9th Air Force from 1943 to 1945. He probably killed hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.

I am proud to be descended from him.


This is an utterly execrable and offensive remark. If any Americans wonder why some people displayed glee because of 9/11, here is a possible answer. Simply disgusting.

If it took the deaths of german civilians to end ww2, then so be it.

Comparing it to 9/11 is emotional and infantile.

Strange how the germans and japanese went into ww2 thinking they were going to bomb everyone and no one was going to bomb them. Then they started crying like babies when they got their own medicine back.

[James]

Nice blanket statment, jackass. My grandfather was a bomber pilot in the USAAF 8th and 9th Air Force from 1943 to 1945. He probably killed hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.

I am proud to be descended from him.


This is an utterly execrable and offensive remark. If any Americans wonder why some people displayed glee because of 9/11, here is a possible answer. Simply disgusting.

I fail to see ANY link between WWII and 9/11... maybe that's just me.

As for Americans being proud of what we have done, and what people in our families have done (esp. during the 1940s)... well, get used to it.

[Thor]

You cant view ww2 through todays moral standards and call it a war crime.
So, is your last name Hitler or did your mum just drop you once to many?

There's no difference, deliberately targeting civilians was a war crime then and it is a war crime today. The difference being that only the war criminals from the losing side were prosecuted after WW2.

Back then it was commonly accepted if you demoralized and dehoused a enough of the population, industrial and therefore war production would end. If you cant understand that concept, go away.
No, in democratic countries it has never been accepted to target and massacre civilians, no matter if they were jews, poles, germans, brits, russians or japanese.

If it took the deaths of german civilians to end ww2, then so be it.
You're clearly just a nazi that wants to go out and deliberately massacre women and children. I'm sure you enjoy hurting pets as well. You're a very sick person.

Comparing it to 9/11 is emotional and infantile.
It's the same thing – and that's why it isnt ok.

If Usama would have targeted only the Pentagon (a rather legitimate military target) there wouldn't have been that much fuzz.

Strange how the germans and japanese went into ww2 thinking they were going to bomb everyone and no one was going to bomb them. Then they started crying like babies when they got their own medicine back.
Boy, you're just dumb. The german regime knew pretty well about the risks, they just didn't care about their own population. Hitler didn't cry, but the burning babies for sure did cry when you killed them.

Collateral damage is sometimes justified but targeting civilians is never acceptable.

[Thor]

I fail to see ANY link between the bombings of civilians in WWII and 9/11... maybe that's just me.
Yeah, that's just you.

To deliberately target and massacre civilians is a crime.

As for Americans being proud of what we have done, and what people in our families have done (esp. during the 1940s)... well, get used to it.
Well, I'm sure many germans who had grandfathers are proud of them as well. But at least it's a bit harder when you imagine your grandfather doing terrible things.

[Thor]

You wish.

[James]

Enjoy your life.

Goodbye.

[Flagg]

I fail to see ANY link between the bombings of civilians in WWII and 9/11... maybe that's just me.
Yeah, that's just you.

To deliberately target and massacre civilians is a crime.

As for Americans being proud of what we have done, and what people in our families have done (esp. during the 1940s)... well, get used to it.
Well, I'm sure many germans who had grandfathers are proud of them as well. But at least it's a bit harder when you imagine your grandfather killing infants with a bayonet.

Sweet dreams. I hope your grandfather died a very painful death.

So your desire to wish a "very painful death" on someone you never met differs from your belief that unnecessary suffering is abhorrent how exactly?

Or is your contradictory support for unnecessary suffering somehow acceptable?

[Thor]

I was trying to make a point. Sometimes you can't do that by being nice.

[Para]

British bombs, The Grand Slam was designed by Barnes Wallis who designed the Wellington bomber and the bouncing bomb. The Grand slam was made of case harden steel, the tail fins where of set to make it spin and go faster than the speed of sound, rather like a shell. The detonators where set on the fins so that the bomb would be well into the ground before it exploded. the idea of this weapon was to cause large earth tremors and collapse the structures around them. It brought down huge viaducts, and it could smash it's way into the underground U boat pens on the west coast of France, it was the same bomb that they used to sink the Tirptiz Battleship and it was not to be wasted bombing cities. The Grand slam bomb was only ever used against military targets and with great effect. Now the Blast bomb, this was a development of the German landmine but was even better. The land mine was a huge drum filled with explosive and would explode just above the ground and the huge shock wave from the explosion would demolish everything close to that explosion.

[TheKiwi]

Para is correct. Both the Grandslam and the Tallboy were designed to attack high value targets such as U-boat pens and railway tunnels. They were both made out of especially hardened steel, and were very difficult and expensive to manufacture. There were none to spare for carpet bombing of cities, especially when conventional bombing was doing a more than adequate job of that. (At the very end of WW2, the US had just set up a production line for maing Tallboy copies and were going to use them on Japan, before even more 'special' bombs made that redundant).

They were only used by 'elite' RAF squadrons like 617, who had specialist targetting support Pathfinder units assigned to assist them.

On a different tangent, my reading of history indicates that the RAF and USAAF bombing campaigns were of very limited use in bringing about the downfall of Nazi Germany. The RAF's own history boasts that over 400,000 Germans were involved in air defenses (and thus that partially justifies their campaign), yet almost that many were involved on the UK side of things building the bombers and manning them. Sounds like a zero sum game to me.

[LeMat]

Small polish city Wielun. It is 1 IX 1939 4:02 am. Suddenly german dive bombers are attacking city.
Hospital before attack
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/szpital-przed-zniszczeniem.jpg
And after attack (32 victims including 26 sick people who couldn't escape)
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/szpital-przed-zniszczeniem.jpg
Hospital was well marked but germans wanted to kill civilians so they aimed hospital and houses. They used dive bombers to bomb with maximum accuracy.
Synagogue before attack
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/synagoga-przed-zniszczeniem.jpg
After attack
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/synagogazniszcona.jpg
There were 3 attacks. German fighters were using board cannons to murder fleeing people.
City was ruined in 70%
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/ruiny.jpg
1200 people were killed (almost 10% of population).
There was no single AA gun in that city. Even no single soldier! Just civilians.
German "heroes" after that "battle".
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/ju87ottoschmidt2.jpg
http://www.historia.wielunia.webpark.pl/ju87ottoschmidt1.jpg
Germany can be proud because of so great warriors.
Any questions?

[Thor]

LeMat:

What's your point?

[Roger Rabbit]

LeMat:

What's your point?

Lets edit one of your previous posts slightly

So what you're saying bascially is that you have no arguments

It's really simple so I'll say it again: you don't wage war by exclusively target civilians. If you do so you should be hunted down and prosecuted for war crimes.

If I was a soldier at war and my CO told me "men, this it total war, therefor we are going to find and kill a thousand civilians every day [or actually we're going to burn them alive]", I would to say the least question that order.

[FabeYond]

Funny, I don't remember any Germans ever prosecuted for warcrimes rofl

But, according to Kilgor:

You cant view ww2 through todays moral standards and call it a war crime.

Back then it was commonly accepted if you demoralized and dehoused a enough of the population, industrial and therefore war production would end. If you cant understand that concept, go away.

So this leads to the question: Does this (what Kilgor said, targeting civilians is ok) apply only to the allies, or does it apply to Germany, as well?

Or is it that Germany started the bombing of civilians and so it is ok for the allies to do it, too. Like when someone kills my child, I can go and kill his child, too.

[Heinzi]

How did those bombers sleep at night after dropping bombs that big on cities? I'm not saying that it was right or wrong, but it's hard to imagine.

Probably pretty well after enduring the "Blitz", and countless V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks

I bet they slept like babies

Here in Germany there are many documentaries about the bombing of our cities. Many RAF personnel are intervieved, too. NO one was untouched by their actions. Some were crying and told that they today still have nightmares watching the burning cities.

Every sane person knew that the civilians in Cologne or Berlin were not responsible for V2 rockets.

But we started with warcirmes, maybe its easier then to respond with another one.

[LeMat]

LeMat:

What's your point?

I wanted to show who is a victim and who is a butcher.
Germans started that war so they can't describe themselfes as victims and accuse allies for bombing german cities. They were agressors!!
Remember each day of that war = more victims in Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz...
If bombing Dresden made war shorter for one hour it was a good choice. One hour = many people saved from holocaust.
And I'm sick when I see some neonazi scum who cries "we were victims of that horrible war!".
I'm really sick!!
In Poland we say "who inspire wind later takes thunderstorm"

[beNder]

To deliberately target and massacre civilians is a crime.

ok...just like the luftwaffe pilots were doing their job, so were the allied pilots...you know, rotterdam and dresden as a comparison...

[platform389]

Para is correct. Both the Grandslam and the Tallboy were designed to attack high value targets such as U-boat pens and railway tunnels. They were both made out of especially hardened steel, and were very difficult and expensive to manufacture. There were none to spare for carpet bombing of cities, especially when conventional bombing was doing a more than adequate job of that. (At the very end of WW2, the US had just set up a production line for maing Tallboy copies and were going to use them on Japan, before even more 'special' bombs made that redundant).

They were only used by 'elite' RAF squadrons like 617, who had specialist targetting support Pathfinder units assigned to assist them.

On a different tangent, my reading of history indicates that the RAF and USAAF bombing campaigns were of very limited use in bringing about the downfall of Nazi Germany. The RAF's own history boasts that over 400,000 Germans were involved in air defenses (and thus that partially justifies their campaign), yet almost that many were involved on the UK side of things building the bombers and manning them. Sounds like a zero sum game to me.

Above is the correct answer. They were also used against the ultra hardened V2 facilities constructed in France.

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/wizernes.html

This place is a highly interesting museum available for public tour.

http://www.lacoupole.com/images-site/photos/exterieure_accueil.jpg
http://www.battlefield-site.co.uk/la_coupole001.jpg

http://www.lacoupole.com/en/default.asp

Looking much like a concrete flying saucer, La Coupole was also built to launch the German V2 vengeance weapon. Built in an old chalk quarry the shape and solid design enabled it to withstand Allied bombing virtually unscathed. It was connected to miles of passages running into the hillside. It was overun by the Allies advance in 1944 before La Coupole was used by the Germans to launch V2's at London and Southern England.

The La Coupole Museum was planned and constructed over a ten year period from 1987 to 1997. The Wizernes dome was declared an historical site in 1985 by the French government. The museum resides inside and around the old mining quarry where, in 1943, the German Army began work on the second of several giant hardened bunkers, intended for launching 40-50 V2 rockets at London each day. Inside the museum, the "Historical Centre about the war and development of the rocket," you will now find exhibits that document the German planning and contruction of the bunker, the Nazi occupation of France, mans conquest of space, and one example of a surviving A4/V2 rocket.

http://www.leblockhaus.com

http://www.battlefield-site.co.uk/eperlecques001.jpg

Blockhouse at Eperlecques
Located in the Eperlecques Forest, this was the largest concrete bunker engineered by the Germans in World War 2. Constructed by mainly slave labour, many of whom died in the process. The Blockhouse was originally planned to be a complete fuel production, V2 rocket assembly and launching facility capable of launching 100 V2's a day. The locals thought the structure was to be a power station, but when its true purpose became clear the Allied Airforce bombed it putting paid to the V2 assembly facility. This did not stop work at Eperlecques as a 6 metre thick slab was built and hydraulically jacked up while the walls were constructed. The slab acting like a protective shell during construction.
It eventually reached a height of 22 metres and a liquid oxygen manufacturing facilty installed. Production was short lived as further bombing using the Barnes Wallis "Tallboy" bombs caused dangerous ground vibrations and although the integrity of the bunker was not compromised it made the manufacturing of liquid oxygen too risky.

http://www.battlefield-site.co.uk/12,000lb_bomb.jpg

[Heinzi]

Thanks for the infos platform389, didnt know that these bunkers are still there.

[the_spec]

Well, I'm slightly disgusted by the way that people justify the bombing of civilians and more than worried by people who are proud of their ancestors because they killed a lot of people.

[James]

Well, I'm slightly disgusted by the way that people justify the bombing of civilians and more than worried by people who are proud of their ancestors because they killed a lot of people.

I suspect that comment is directed at me (at least partly...) I should have clarified something in my original post- my grandfather flew medium bombers, not heavies... he bombed German airfields and military formations, not civilians.

His life, like those of 16 million other Americans, was interrupted by something they didn't want to have to do - go halfway around the world to fight in a terrible war. But, he and they did their duty.

Still proud. ;)

[Para]

the_spec
Listen child you needed to have lived through that period to understand it, can you tell me why we should not have bombed the the German Cities after they had bombed the hell out of ours. I can remember the German planes in the 1940 strafing men women and children while they where walking down the road, I can remember some 300 children being killed and wounded when there school was bombed by low flying Me 109's. Lets face they started and we helped finish it, and you can be sure if Hitler had got hold of the Atom bomb first he would have been happy to use it on any one that opposed him. For the life of me I can't understand all these crocodile tears for the poor Germans who got bombed, does any one give a toss for the people that they bombed. All we here is a permanent whine for children who have not the slightest concept of war except from their computer games telling every one just what they should have, or should not have done. As a young lad I used crawl through bombed out buildings looking for survivors as I was small enough to get where no other people could get to, and at a tender age I had already seen more death and destruction than you can imagine

[oldsoak]

War is like a crime of passion - it is perfectly understandable to those engaged in it.

[toki]

Bomb crews that were ordered to target civilians and did so are war criminals and should be hunted down and prosecuted.

No person who knows right from wrong can oppose that.

I'm german and i live in a rebuild city that was flatened in 44. You know this war turned to a 'total' war because the german leadership wanted it.
I blame the "halten bis zur letzten Kugel" policy for the civilian deaths.
(hold it to the last bullet)

And btw there are so many reports of british bombers right now in the tv.
(Almost everyday is a 60th anniversary of something) Believe me no one likes to put cities of 500000+ people into living hell. They're always close to tears when they talk about seeing the whole city streets at night because they were bright orange. The moral highground you are talking about doesn't work in total war. I'm not saying there's no moral standards in war. But not at that stage of war.

Believe me i think it's very sad that i live in a very modern city. (because of the lack of historic buildings) but i don't blame soldiers for being at war and following orders. Btw I live in Düsseldorf. The administrative center of the largest industrial center of germany (ruhr valley).

Edit: And when i talked to older people many(not all) just saw the bombing as a backlash of the german aggression. Not really blaming those who piloted the planes. It's more the nature of total war that backlashed

[Kilgor]

Well, I'm slightly disgusted by the way that people justify the bombing of civilians and more than worried by people who are proud of their ancestors because they killed a lot of people.

I dont have to justify it, because I didnt drop any bombs or was someone giving the orders. Im just explaining the mentality. It doesnt matter how morally sicking you find it, this happened.

The fact is, in ww2 mass bombing was the order of the day and many military leaders in the allies, axis and comitern all thought that carpet bombing of cities would reduce industrial output and win wars.

"if you cant kill the hun in the factory, kill him while he sleeps"

[weissent]

Well, I'm slightly disgusted by the way that people justify the bombing of civilians and more than worried by people who are proud of their ancestors because they killed a lot of people.

I suspect that comment is directed at me (at least partly...) I should have clarified something in my original post- my grandfather flew medium bombers, not heavies... he bombed German airfields and military formations, not civilians.

His life, like those of 16 million other Americans, was interrupted by something they didn't want to have to do - go halfway around the world to fight in a terrible war. But, he and they did their duty.

Still proud. ;)

That I can accept. Quite frankly your former comments made me doubt my previous conclusion to perceive you a valuable contributer to this forum (says sb. who scratches the 200 post mark...).
Anyways, my father (and his mother) survived out of pure luck being born during a bombing raid of Nuremberg in '43, which actually gave me a hard time swallowing your comments before. Still it seems pretty useless to me discussing a thread that has turned into an obvious flamewar. I usually turn into an asshole when I do so. So I hold my piece and shut up.

It would be nice if we could discuss such topics (which are by no doubt still pretty sensitive to us Germans) in a civil manner; we are brought up in a tradition (well, only six decades) to question history and discuss it. After all, it was misinformation and propaganda that brought the large majority of the German population to accept being governed by Nazi rule.

I can just repeat myself from what I've said in other threads: We are not enemies anymore. We have our differences in culture (hell, and about everything else as well), but we still have more in common than not.

This should be a good basis for discussing our former differences. (One would think, and this goes to almost everyone who posts in this forum)

[anti_septic]

f*** sick people who did boming runs to kill civilians. And these f*** war criminals are allowed to walk the streets.

Since they're old one can only hope thay they'll die at nursing homes, lying alone in their fecies. If there's an hell they will for sure burn forever.

I'm sure that the RAF's bomber aircrews were better men than you and me.
Over half of them were killed in WW2 doing their duty so that people like me could be free.
If the Germans didn't want to be bombed then they shouldn't have started it.

It would be a war crime now to carpet bomb a city because we have more accurate bombs available that can (usually) hit what they are aimed at.

In WW2 there was no choice but to bomb the whole city to be able to have a realistic chance of destroying a target such as a factory located in the city. IMO if the best technology available at the time was used (which it was) then no war crime was committed.

[usafbalad]

I have to agree with anti septic and others.

Lets be realisitc, both sides bombed each others cities in order to hurt morale. Plus, bombs back then werent laser guided so of course you had to use huge sorties to even get close to destroying the target. And most of the targets were near or in cities. Like Schweinfurt for instance was a ball bearing plant deep in the damn city. No other way to destroy it but carpet bomb the damn thing.

And dont rant about US or RAF crews being war criminals for carpet bombing.....look at the Germans they fire bombed London on many occasions.

[Belrick]

The people on this board only support the actions of bomber command because they lack the mentality to understand the horrors commited by the allies.

If a man comes at you and your family with a gun, you kill him. You dont shoot the pregnant woman who happened to be his neighbour.

Once you grasp the concept you dont have to steep yourself in the blood of innocents to defeat an enemy will you truely understand that the allies didnt need to act like the NAZIS in order to have beaten the NAZIS.

Dont forget the world remembers the horrors of the final solution, how many jews did the allies kill?

Didnt your mumma's ever tell you boys two wrongs dont make a right?

[LeMat]

allies didnt need to act like the NAZIS in order to have beaten the NAZIS.


They didn't act like nazis. Show me any allied death camp.
Remember every day of that war = more victims in Auschwitz, Gross Rosen, Dachau. Every bomb dropped on german city = shorter war = less victims among people conquered by germans.

Germans started war with bombing civilians in Poland and they started to murder Poles and Jews at first day of the war so allies had moral right to bomb german cities.

They wanted total war so they had total war.
It was very good for germans becuse when air raids begun they felt what that war really is. They understood that war is very close - not somewhere in Russia thousand miles away but everywhere and they aren't safe and unpunished. So germans understood that action = reaction. Bombing Warsaw or London = bombing Dresden or Berlin.
I think they should also felt what holocaust was.

BTW I understand horrors made by ****ed germans. Few members of my family were burned in death camps. Do You know why? Because they were Poles.

[James]

Back on topic...

The 11-tonne bombs dropped over Germany on the night of March 14, 1945, were nearly twice was big as anything used previously in the Second World War. The weapons, developed by the British government, were eight metres long, more than a metre in diameter and combined great power of penetration with massive explosive force.

They were so big that the four-engined Lancaster bombers carrying them had to be reinforced, their bomb bays cut away and two crewmen left behind to save weight. And the pilots found their planes bounced 500 feet higher at the moment the massive bombs were released.

One bomb dropped that night took out more than 60 metres of a concrete viaduct near Bielefeld. A Canadian flight engineer in the attacking Royal Air Force squadron said the new weapon made anything he had witnessed before seem "like babies in comparison."


I wonder how these old bombs compare with the U.S. MOAB today?

[Elmo]

Didnt your mumma's ever tell you boys two wrongs dont make a right?

Gee, you'll learn soon enough how things work around here. You've been here, what, 2 months or so. Soon you'll learn that flag waving, Hoo-ahs and high-fives suffocate reason pretty much every time. Quantity over quality.

[James]

Back on topic...

The 11-tonne bombs dropped over Germany on the night of March 14, 1945, were nearly twice was big as anything used previously in the Second World War. The weapons, developed by the British government, were eight metres long, more than a metre in diameter and combined great power of penetration with massive explosive force.

They were so big that the four-engined Lancaster bombers carrying them had to be reinforced, their bomb bays cut away and two crewmen left behind to save weight. And the pilots found their planes bounced 500 feet higher at the moment the massive bombs were released.

One bomb dropped that night took out more than 60 metres of a concrete viaduct near Bielefeld. A Canadian flight engineer in the attacking Royal Air Force squadron said the new weapon made anything he had witnessed before seem "like babies in comparison."


I wonder how these old bombs compare with the U.S. MOAB today?

[beNder]

Back on topic...

The 11-tonne bombs dropped over Germany on the night of March 14, 1945, were nearly twice was big as anything used previously in the Second World War. The weapons, developed by the British government, were eight metres long, more than a metre in diameter and combined great power of penetration with massive explosive force.

They were so big that the four-engined Lancaster bombers carrying them had to be reinforced, their bomb bays cut away and two crewmen left behind to save weight. And the pilots found their planes bounced 500 feet higher at the moment the massive bombs were released.

One bomb dropped that night took out more than 60 metres of a concrete viaduct near Bielefeld. A Canadian flight engineer in the attacking Royal Air Force squadron said the new weapon made anything he had witnessed before seem "like babies in comparison."


I wonder how these old bombs compare with the U.S. MOAB today?

heh, good luck bro...

[James]

Back on topic...

The 11-tonne bombs dropped over Germany on the night of March 14, 1945, were nearly twice was big as anything used previously in the Second World War. The weapons, developed by the British government, were eight metres long, more than a metre in diameter and combined great power of penetration with massive explosive force.

They were so big that the four-engined Lancaster bombers carrying them had to be reinforced, their bomb bays cut away and two crewmen left behind to save weight. And the pilots found their planes bounced 500 feet higher at the moment the massive bombs were released.

One bomb dropped that night took out more than 60 metres of a concrete viaduct near Bielefeld. A Canadian flight engineer in the attacking Royal Air Force squadron said the new weapon made anything he had witnessed before seem "like babies in comparison."


I wonder how these old bombs compare with the U.S. MOAB today?

heh, good luck bro...

THanks man.

[oregongrunt]

the_spec
Listen child you needed to have lived through that period to understand it, can you tell me why we should not have bombed the the German Cities after they had bombed the hell out of ours. I can remember the German planes in the 1940 strafing men women and children while they where walking down the road, I can remember some 300 children being killed and wounded when there school was bombed by low flying Me 109's. Lets face they started and we helped finish it, and you can be sure if Hitler had got hold of the Atom bomb first he would have been happy to use it on any one that opposed him. For the life of me I can't understand all these crocodile tears for the poor Germans who got bombed, does any one give a toss for the people that they bombed. All we here is a permanent whine for children who have not the slightest concept of war except from their computer games telling every one just what they should have, or should not have done. As a young lad I used crawl through bombed out buildings looking for survivors as I was small enough to get where no other people could get to, and at a tender age I had already seen more death and destruction than you can imagine

I think it's less about whether it's the German, Japanese, Russian or English populations on the receiving end of it. It's just a sobering thought when entire residential districts are targeted for fire-bombing. bunker bombs, etc. I personnally saw Baghdad in the spring of 2003 so I know what bombs can do. It's really the historians that'll have to decide which government cause was justified in the reasons.