Aircrew Lynching

Yes Peter, altho’ a few years younger I can remember my mother running down the garden to the Anderson shelter with me in her arms.The house next door but one got a direct hit.

You all might find the story at the link below interesting…yet another example of hindsight blurring (or trying to) history………….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml

Apologies if you’ve seen it before.

“Hindsight is marvellous – but it isn’t available at the point of sale.”

Excellent daveg4otu, whenever the name Dresden crops up I’m afraid the red mist descends. What about London, Rotterdam, the towns indiscriminately bombed by Zeppelins and Gothas in WW1. Not to mention Wielun, see this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Wielu%C5%84

As an 8 year old I still remember hearing German bombs whistling over our roof as they bombed our village in 1940, still remember a couple of years later seeing the glow of Canterbury burning after being vandalised by the glorious Luftwaffe.
The Germans deserved everything that was coming to them.

Unfortunately Hitler had the idea of the EU and his successors have delivered, ask the Greeks. Our turn will come unless our dozy politicians can wake up, but Cameron still has dreams of being head boy and Millibrained petrifies me. Hopefully I won’t live to see the day we all have to learn German

It is all very well now, 70 years later, trying to rewrite history and cast this person or that person as a criminal(regardless of which side and what they designed – or commanded)…but the simple fact is that their actions were seen as expedient at the time….and the time was war- total war. From the German POV their backs were against the wall (V1/V2s) ..from the allied POV we were facing an agressor who was apparently quite willing to commit genocide to further their aims.

No doubt civilians on both sides died in greater numbers than was strictly necessary….but when a country is at war it include the civilians …they don’t have some magic “get out of jail free” umbrella.

It’s tough…but that’s the way it was, is and probably always will be, and castigating those who fought, whether they be pilots, Air Marshals, bomb designers or anyone else regardless of which side they were on, (with the obvious exception of such as the Final solution organisers) is not only unfair to them but also totally pointless.

Hindsight is marvellous – but it isn’t available at the point of sale.

[QUOTE=J Boyle;1405797]Please tell me how Von Braun as a designer of a weapon…is different from Wallis…who knew his bombs would breach dams causing flooding of civilian areas?
Or did Chadwick think the Lancaster would be used to drop flowers?:rolleyes:

I’ve always thought that designers and the builders of the weapons…like the soldiers themselves…were doing what their national leaders directed.
Von Braun, Wallis and Chadwick were the brains behind the weapons.
If you have a complaint about the war, direct it to the leaders who directed the use of the weapons.
QUOTE]

I don’t think you can simply look at Von Braun as a weapons designer. The thing that made him different from Wallis or Chadwick was his complicity in the use of slave labor for the construction of his weapons. He was a frequent visitor to Nordhausen. In the museum there you can see photos of Von Braun visiting the facilities in SS uniform.

As enthusiastic as I am about the U.S. manned space program, I do have qualms about the idea that this man was so central to its development.

I haven’t quite reached the end of this thread yet; my apologies if I bring up a point already addressed farther along.

Bill Horlor

Hi

Would like to make contact with Jackonicko and the village postmaster relative of Bill Horlor. I am the great nephew of the air bomber in the crew shot down and killed in December 44. My great uncle, Peter Noble, was on his 24th trip, and their skipper George Devereau was on his 27th. The crew feature in Bomber Command: Failed to Return II and I have lots of other photos/info etc on my website that might be of interest. (seanfeast.com)

Rgds

Any thoughts?

Shocking, and well known, evidence of Churchill covering his political back; before Dresden he ordered it to be attacked, afterwards he tried to put as much distance as he could between himself and those ‘responsible’…

…not his finest hour! :rolleyes:

Looking at the “Bomber Command Losses” by Bill Chorley it seems that most of the crews killed that night could be accounted for and were buried together as crews…

I would suggest that the reason that crews could be accounted for and buried together was that they were killed together as a crew in their aircraft and were therefore never separated. I’m sure you are aware looking through BCL that the chances of escape from a shot-down bomber were slim; only about one or two men from a crew of seven would survive on average.

Even where several members of a crew parachuted to safety it was common for them not to know who had parachuted and who hadn’t; often they only met up at a POW camps and even decades later some crews are finding-out whether fellow crewmembers had lived or died.

Bombing of Germany

Can I just add this document for the forum members to digest!

Any thoughts?

Regards,

Melvin

www.aircrewremembrancesociety.com

And what was Dresden then?

I agree with Creaking Door here, and we should not hide from it whether we agree with the industrial slaughter of civilians or not during wartime.

A central aim of the Bomber Offensive was to ….. ermm… “dehouse” the German workforce (population), whether they were in the houses or not. And it is obvious that it was preferred that they be in occupation of their houses at the time. Over and over, examples can be found. But to be lazy and use just your short quote above:

Someone on PPRuNe made the following observation:

The murder of three RAF men is recorded in the book “Footprints On The Sands Of Time” page 210.

Looking at the “Bomber Command Losses” by Bill Chorley it seems that most of the crews killed that night could be accounted for and were buried together as crews. The three men who became separated from their crews were: F/O Leon Milner (460 Sqn Lancaster PB542 coded AR-D2), F/O Michael Gisby (582 Sqn Lancaster PB544 coded 6O-?) and F/Sgt W Horlor (W /Op) (150 Sqn Lancaster NN743 coded IQ-Z).

It seems POSSIBLE that these were the three men who, separated from their crews met their deaths when they were shot, thrown over a parapet, or beaten to death. Two Germans were subsequently hanged and others given prison sentences but the names of the victims were not confirmed but it seems likely that their remains were ‘casually’ disposed of by the enemy and hence they were cremated or buried in unmarked and (postwar) unlocated graves.

Since the men were handed over to Hauptmann Heyer by the Police, there must have been a record of their identities.

His name was William Horlor http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=1800478

Looking at the entry in BCL, I would say he died in the crash and was not identified.

My village postmaster just asked me an interesting question.

His uncle (surname Horlor or Horler) was lost on the night of 12-13 or 13-14 December 1944 during a raid on Essen. His 150 Squadron Lancaster was shot down, and the other six crew are buried in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery on the German-Dutch border.

His uncle has no known grave.

Could said uncle have been one of the three RAF aircrew lynched in Essen (and apparently never named) the following day?

Were they ever named?

Bombing Germany

Those who think the Allied bombing ofGermany was wrong should tell us what alternative action we could have taken to achieve the same result. If as they advocated in 1940, we had sat on our hands and done nothing, we would not have been able to bomb Germany because we would have been suffering beneath a teutonic jackboot.
The RAF and USAAF bombing campaigns were very effective in carrying the war home to the German nation. Not to have responded to their provocation would have been a mistake of unimaginative magnitude. During the period from early 1941 to June 1944, Allied air raids were the only large scale offensive actions that took place in the European theatre.

Remember Winston Churchill’s words “we will never surrender”. It must not be forgotten that for 2 years after the Battle of Britain the United Kingdom as the unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, fought on alone against the advances of the Third Reich in Westen Europe, albeit with the status of a favoured customer of the USA, whose proficient production Engineering experiences were used to our advantage

IMHO I feel that “Bomber” Harris was justified in his decision to bomb Germany as a strategic objective

Dai Lee

If we don’t argue about history we’ll never truly understand it.

I should have thought a discussion would have done the job just as well.

Argueing about history is rather like shouting at the TV.:diablo:

If we don’t argue about history we’ll never truly understand it.

The fact that we still consider the idea that any war can be ‘civilized’ probably has a lot do to with why they continue to occur.

Interesting to note people talking about how it was seen ‘back then’ as to what is acceptable ‘now’.

I’d suggest people are just as dead now as they were then. Because we continue to try and sanitize it, doesn’t make it cleaner death.

Argueing about history is rather like shouting at the TV.:diablo:

Best comment so far 🙂 but I’ll give it a try…

Comparing Wallace to von Braun and British concentration camps to German mass extermination camps is like comparing oranges to space shuttles – designed to do different things even if the results are sometimes the same.

The Germans have undoubtedly set the pace in the two twentieth century global conflicts. In WWI, the first use of poison gas, first aerial bombing of civilians, Lusitania. They got a head start on WWII at Guernica and used that experience on Rotterdam, London, and all the rest. God knows how much worse it could have been if they’d had a successful strategic bomber design.

At least Harris was ‘sporting’ enough to warn them what to expect in return – before the large scale bombing started. I don’t think Harris and Bomber Command or even the war leaders have a case to answer. I’m sorry, Dresden was as legitimate as Warsaw – I’m not aware of it being a particular centre for anti-nazi resistance and right-minded Germans.

Now, here’s a notion (I’m playing devil’s advocate here so don’t take it that these are my beliefs) but what if the strategic bombing campaign was designed not to be too concerned about civilian casualties?

It worked didn’t it? They haven’t done it again…

The anti-war mindset of Gotterdammerung is so deeply entrenched in the German psyche that Western Europe has known peace for 65 years – unheard of in recorded history. A return to arms and jealous glances West and East seems unthinkable.

Same thing in Japan – from Pearl Harbour and Bataan to ground zero to peace-minded, robot & My Kitty obsessed chill-axers in a generation.

Thousands died so that millions were saved – is that justification enough?

Please feel free to discuss, shoot back or tear me a new one for going O/T!

Argueing about history is rather like shouting at the TV.:diablo:

In WW1 a loss of 10 troops was viewed as nothing to get concerned about, 10,000 before lunch was just bad luck. Thankfully attitudes have changed.

I think this is because any conflict anywhere in the world now is broadcast live to a television and internet-viewing public. There is no shortage of self-proclaimed experts to make comment, criticise and condemn the actions of others (in many ways this is a good thing!!)

The world has changed the way it views war. Filmmakers now spare no expense in detailing the bloodshed, maiming and horrific death suffered by soldiers and civilians alike. Truth be told, I don’t believe any filmmaker would dare make a film glorifying war as was so popular decades ago.

The end result of this is the general public are probably now more than ever ready to say “not to my son, you don’t”.

I have to say the thing that surprises me most after learning of the high-profile official position of protecting (or rather, not protecting) baled-out aircrew is that there seem to be relatively few cases where aircrew were harmed; and certainly there are far more numerous cases where aircrew were saved from harm by police or service personnel.

I think that this shows that in a case where an individual could make a difference most chose to do the ‘right thing’ (as opposed to, for example, the holocaust, where an individual really couldn’t affect the general outcome). Many Germans would have served on the Russian front, they’d have known how far into hell war could descend, and I think that, given the choice, most would have wanted to keep the war as civilised as was possible.

Rocketeer has it spot on. Simply put the Nazi’s and the Japanese officially sanctioned mass murder and the killing of POWs as a matter of course.

Perhaps what is forgotten is the treatment of coloured French soldiers after the defeat of France in 1940 and the murder of coloured members of the American forces during the Battle of the Bulge, singled out from their white comrades and shot .and that ignores Malmedy.

If lynchings took place early in the war it was the reaction of people who were facing the danger of an invasion by a bunch of murderers. It is hardly a wonder that in some cases normal restaints were forgotten.

With regards to what went on in Germany is it any surprise given the mind control tactics that was going on or for that matter the weight of air attacks that was happening especially from late ’43 onwards?