73 years ago tonight

I like ‘revenge’ – preferably cold. It gives opportunity and impetus to ‘biff the bully’.

Were city bombings simply revenge …. like an honest assessment from WWII aviation fans.

With aircraft called Vultee Vengeance and V2 rockets called Revenge weapons then it is obvious that ‘an eye for an eye’ is a big part of the mix. The bombing of Coventry certainly allowed British thought to move towards mass bombing of cities. The Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942 could not be described as anything but a mix of revenge aimed at the psyche of Japan as much as the US. What is not commonly recalled is Soviet bombing of Germany and Nazi occupied territory in the later part of the war which was indiscriminate, widespread and traveled on the wings of vodka and vengeance.

You can’t tell me the Jordanian airforce lifted its delivery of munitions on ‘is’ after one of its pilots was burnt alive in a cage because more strategic targets suddenly became available…

Total war is now ubiquitous. It is normal for you to see visions of total civilian devastation on the news in war zones today. Between these visions and the concept of total nuclear war it has the perverse but welcome affect of keeping most functional nations from entering into mass conflict, because expressions of simple scoudrel patriotism in front of your TV might soon see you lifted into the air by a return missile strike.

I figure the real problem is that today’s operators of drones do not have the pure protection of revenge lust to allow them to mentally slot away their daily work, which is dressed more in the way a soda salesman might report his daily footwork.

The best thing for all of us is to ensure that at least some veterans get pulled into politics afterwards to communicate some perspective to other politicians too keen to sound the bugle and get us to stumble down the inevitable path to our darker natures. To me the preservation of a warbird contributes to the education of future generations who might not know when WW2 started or why, showing them an aluminium, cordite toting, consequence of ignorance.

Were city bombings simply revenge for the blitz (or even Gotha and airship raids in WWI)?
In my various readings, at times it seems any military considerations: civilians putting pressure on political leaders for peace, reduction in armament production because workers were displaced or dead, trying up troops as defenders, were secondary to “an eye for an eye”. Although the city raids get most of the publicity and history pages, the RAF also obviously attacked industrial targets…anyone have a fair idea of the breakdown of each?

I ask this not to start a flame war, but would like an honest assessment from WWII aviation fans.

The answers to these and related questions about Britain’s war effort in all departments, are answered in a comprehensive book wriiten by David Edgerton and titled: “Britain’s War Machine”. Published by Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14102-610-7. Price, £9.99. Can: $16. 00

Cologne was chosen due to it being a fairly easy target to navigate to. The decision to de-house the German population and thus affect armament production was not taken lightly but as one Bomber Command commander stated if you couldn’t get them in the factories then you could get them in their beds.

Were city bombings simply revenge for the blitz (or even Gotha and airship raids in WWI)?
In my various readings, at times it seems any military considerations: civilians putting pressure on political leaders for peace, reduction in armament production because workers were displaced or dead, trying up troops as defenders, were secondary to “an eye for an eye”. Although the city raids get most of the publicity and history pages, the RAF also obviously attacked industrial targets…anyone have a fair idea of the breakdown of each?

I ask this not to start a flame war, but would like an honest assessment from WWII aviation fans.

Indeed an unsafe moment from any perspective. I figure this was a point of inflexion in the war, the point where total war became ascendent. Like when Lincoln put Grant in charge of burning his way through the South in the US Civil War, the point where the anglo pysche has had enough of being reasonable and resorts to basic instincts.

What is most interesting to me are the political battles fought by Harris to be allowed to do this. Then the fact that almost 110% of the resources of Bomber Command were used in this raid, an immense risk to take. Certainly he was one of the most clear minded, practical and effective commanders of WW2, whose legacy was soured by the distaste the concept of clear eyed total war has to all reasonable people. While Einsatzgruppen, slave labourers and concentration camps were all too much for a reasonable person to compute I think Harris resolved the only way to address these issues promptly. With respect to those who fought at Tobruk and in Kursk, it was a proxy war to the Nazis in the Fatherland, until Harris came through. In 1943, nothing else was really hurting Nazi Germany.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

One of the happiest men I have ever met turned his hobby of antique platform scales into a cashcow that allowed him to retire and travel the world. Back in the 1980’s, as part of the usual modernisation drive, Vicrail, the local train operator, stripped hundreds of cast iron ‘penny’ scales off its station platforms and auctioned them off for scrap. As a lover of scales, he bought the lot to save them from the scrap man. These were 19th Century scales, Evretts patent, clever things with triple wheel bearings and water filled weights that would last forever. In the great scrap drives of WW2 these were stripped from the UK rail system to make bomb casings, so no longer existed.
Struggling with what to do with hundreds of antique scales, he restored one and placed it in a local zoo. Word spread and before he knew it, shopping centres and other zoos wanted them, especially in the US. After a few years all the scales were distributed around the world, and every three months he or a family member would travel around the world emptying coins. His best machine in a US zoo would net $10,000 every three months. Happy is he who turns a hobby into a cashcow!