Is the entire General Discussion forum against anything fun?!
You have a go at Halloween and now Bonfire Night with the fireworks???, people including me would be incredibly hacked off if fireworks were banned, The blitz? come off it fireworkd are harmless fun when used by “right-minded” people who use them properly.
I admit though there a large number who misue them and fireworks get a bad press.

Your harmless fun cost me a new windscreen and a respray on a two year old car. It costs numerous pets their lives. I’ve seen someone die of heart failure because a firework was thrown at them. I’ve treated people’s injuries in A & E because of harmless fun. Even organised displays are not guaranteed to be safe. Ask the woman at the Wolves ground last year who was hit in the face.

If you consider that to be fun then it says something quite horrific about the state of society today. Where I live fireworks are used as weapons. As for the Blitz, my dad remembers a factory not 200 yards from where he lived which was hit by a stick of bombs. He, and most of those around here who remember the incident all agree that today’s fireworks are louder. Have you seen what the idiots did to that poor dog in one of the papers today? Very friendly dog, obedient, you know? Had a firework tied to its muzzle and lit.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but how can any sick individual (of your generation, not mine) call that fun?

Andrewman… I’m ready for you 😉

Regards,

kev35

Calibration duties are now carried out by Beech twins aren’t they?

The Dan-air 748 brings back memories, flew on one from BHX-MAN-BHX in about 1975. Love the Heralds, always thought them nicer than the F-27’s. Grew up with Viscounts flying overhead several times a day so had a soft spot for them.

The RAF’s Andovers were longer I think and the aircraft ‘knelt’ down at the rear to allow easier unloading through the rear cargo entrance. Much in the same way as an old Citroen does.

Regards,

kev35

If you didn’t rush to your keyboard as quickly as your handbag, then you may be privvy to more pukka gen….!

It is a private company, after all…….!

Can I tell the forum about your new car/cat/boyfriend……?? Hmm…..

Tin hats, everybody!

Come on then Becca, you’ve been rumbled. Tell us about the new cat?

I’ve put a set of blinkers in the post for you just in case you happen to see something you shouldn’t.

Regards,

kev35

Sorry Moggy.

I think it is exceedingly simple.

Germany prosecuted the war to its fullest extant. They did not flinch from using overwhelming force indiscriminately. Be it from the air, on the ground (Oradour-sur-Glane) or in their execution of the final solution.

Dresden was a target in as much as the centre of London was a target, or Coventry, Manchester, Hull and how many other toiwns and cities.

I think it is appalling that people who owe their freedoms to the men of Bomber Command (and others) should use that freedom to decry and indeed vilify the very men with whose lives their freedom was bought.

Yes, Dresden was a target, and yes it was attacked with overwhelming success. Do people honestly believe that the Nazis would have done this degree of soul searching had they achieved that kind of result in a raid on a British city? The very people who casually arranged for the execution of 6 million Jews?

If revisionist historians want to blame anyone for Dresden they should look no further than the regime that led Europe to war.

I had a flight Engineer telling me how he despises himself now for Dresden. He has to carry an unnecessary and unwarranted burden of guilt to his grave. Nothing I can say will ever change how he feels.

The war against Germany had to be prosecuted to its fullest extent otherwise it would have dragged on and on. Try remembering that the Allies were liberating Europe, not conquering it.

Remember also that Hitler was desperately seeking to use ‘revenge weapons’ If they had managed to create an atomic bomb do you really think they wouldn’t have used it?

Regards,

kev35

But, BUT, much of that excess bomload was dropped in the last few months of the war (I don’t have the data on me, but there’s some sort of – every year the bomb tonnage equalled the aggregate of what had been done to date – something like that) and Moggy’s question is whether this degree of overkill was reasonable in February 1945.

I don’t think it was.

How do you equate that with the overkill of tonnage used against the Poles, the Russians, the Dutch, the French and even earlier the Spanish? I wish Bomber Command had been able to drop that kind of tonnage from early on. Perhaps it might have shortened the war. The bombing cannot be taken in isolation, weakening of the German will to resist was an important point. Germany had no qualms about delivering the hardest punch they could. When your enemy is rocking on its heels that is NOT the time to take it easy.

Regards,

kev35

Bomber command Losses shows eight Lancasters lost, each from separate Squadrons. Two collided over england. 49 aircrew were killed, 2 taken prisoner. 6 are not recorded as being captured but not reported as killed either.

Let’s just take one crew, the crew of Lancaster I LM682, PM-O of 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds…. P/O D G Rimmington, RAAF, Sgt G Turner, Sgt G R Gilfillan, F/S E V Staples, Sgt A H Pettman, Sgt W H Swan, Sgt F A Rushworth. Three of the crew were just nineteen years of age, the Skipper just 21.

They were fighting a war not of their making.

They had volunteered for aircrew duties.

They were carrying out a lawfully issued order and in carrying out that order they lost their lives.

Would you, Moggy, care to tell their families that they had died in vain?

Is the RAF’s targeting of Dresden any different to the German targeting of Rotterdam, Warsaw and countless other towns and cities throughout Europe? I think not. How many British Civilians were killed in the Blitz through indiscrimainate area bombing? Around 65,000? Don’t try and blame the RAF for being more efficient than the Luftwaffe.

The only people to blame for the bombing of Dresden are the people that started the war.

Regards,

kev35

good for spotting DHL though

Yes, but some of us saw them all when they first came into service with BA.

Regards,

kev35