Was the US & Britain justified in flattening German& Japanese cities with bombers in WW2?

[Drewtate]

To me they were as cities were industrial hubs for manufacturing war materials & military personnel. This had a massive strategic effect in the field when it came to Germany or Japan supplying their militaries with arms and fuel. It was very effective and a big factor in ending the war.

Updates

+1 y

Liberals say we should have dropped leaflets on gender and the lgbtq on the nazis and Japanese instead of bombs.

[RebelinSteel]

Fully agree with @KrakenAttackin on this. One thing to remember is the accuracy back then. The average circular error in 1943 was 1,200 feet, meaning that only 16 percent of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. If you think of a large factory, you needed a lot of bombers just two damage that factory. A 500lb bomb then was lethal out to about 90ft and craters circa 2 feet but a bit wider. That circle of probability / circular error and how inaccurate bomb sights were means hitting targets was hard. Precision bombing started a bit later in the war with pathfinders etc. one of the major applications was the use of heavy bombers in a tactical role, DDay say heavy bombers used on troop concentrations which was really a game changer. Back then the entire logisitics picture was not really thought about to the same level it is now, hitting the energy centres as mentioned would have cut off power required by factories, such as hitting Dams lol.

was it justified, it was total war, you had to do it or be defeated.

[KrakenAttackin]

Excellent post.

[KrakenAttackin]

And the COE assumes the lead bombardier has correctly identified the target and releases at the correct time.

[RebelinSteel]

@KrakenAttackin thanks, 2nd bottle of wine frees up your thought process. Seriously though, these days we use precision low yield bombs, LGBs etc with a release only authorised by say 3 seniors and then the media is all over it. An attack by a WW2 heavy bomber is in a league of its own on the collateral damage and casualties. Warfare is now expected to be very clinical, down to killing the 5 people in the car, building but no one else. Random thing how many years between first flight of the Lancaster and the Vulcan, now that’s progress.

[RebelinSteel]

@KrakenAttackin yep and flak was not causing movement or the heat from the fires not causing excessive lift, that the QFE was really accurate for altimeter

[KrakenAttackin]

@rebelinsteel. Absolutely agree. Loon at the casualty figures from Iwo Jima, Tarawa, D-Day, etc. How would we handle casualty numbers like that today?

If you want an interesting read/audio book, check out "Americans at D-Day".

[KrakenAttackin]

@rebelinsteel. I never considered the heat causing updrafts, but that makes perfect sense. Another book you might like is "flying from the black hole", which goes through the history of bombing accuracy.

[KrakenAttackin]

Ther was justification but the strategy was flawed. The U. S. Army Air Corps had a policy of "de housing" as a way to kill productivity of the German industrial base. The idea being, if you kill the workers, and leave other workers homeless, their productivity will decrease. Which was true, but not effective overall. A post war story revealed the Allies did not pay sufficient attention to energy production and distribution (coal mines, tail roads, electrical generation), which wound have had a much more drastic effect on German productivity.

[KrakenAttackin]

As for Japan, the Japanese quickly realized the Pacific War could not be won, so they focused on inflicting massive U. S. casualties and had a policy of "absolute resistance". This "fight to the last man" policy was meant to deter the U. S. from invading the Japanese homeland. The result is the policy worked and the U. S. dropped two nuclear weapons instead.

[Drewtate]

I believe the problem the USAF & RAF had was up until late in the war they were unable to bomb effectively until they had an escort fighter able to go all the way. After that they were able to go mine canals and rivers which was a major part of the Germans transporting materials.
Japan lost about 1 million in the firebombing bombing of Japanese cities alone, much more than both atomic bombs combined. The two atom bombs were a display of power, there was only two at that point. If the Japanese had of fought on between the us military, British empire and Soviet Union would have wiped put half the Japanese population in an invasion and all the millions of Japanese troops in China, indochina and Mayla would have been wiped out

[KrakenAttackin]

@drewtate. Concur, the fire bombing was known as the "LeMay treatment" (I am sure you one of Curtis LeMay, the father of SAC).

As for escort fighters, you are referring to the mighty P-51 and. P-38! Had the P-38 arrived sooner I think it would have stolen the P-51's thunder (although I love me some P-51's).

[KrakenAttackin]

@drewtate. Let's also add that the Japanese were flawed in focusing directly on U. S. military warships, when they should have been focusing on U. S. logistics IMHO.

[Drewtate]

They were lucky with the mustang. The Raf had been using it a whole year for ground attack missions before someone decided it would be a pretty decent fighter and bomber escort with a spitfire engine in it. Up on to that all RAF fighters had small ranges, the Royal Navy had the wildcat, hellcat, corsair and Buffalo all of which had superior range to the spitfires, hurricanes and hawker tempests.
The Japanese should have focused on their own logistics. US subs and PT boats were sinking so many Japanese supply ships that would give german uboat command wet dreams.
I think the p38 and p47 were expensive and took more time to produce, it was only supposed to be a cheap replacement for the p40 and other types. It would be like if someone found a way of turning the f16 into a compable fighter to the f22 today.

[purplepoppy]

The Germans flattened several British cities so its understandable they'd want to do the same. It's not like they could tell people who'd lost everything that they weren't going to strike back.

[KrakenAttackin]

@purplepoppy. The first bombing of London was a mistake made by a Junkers crew that was off course. Until then both Hitler and Churchill had withheld bombing of Capital cities.

[purplepoppy]

London gets too much attention when it comes to ww2. The other cities that got hit rarely get a mention

[Drewtate]

Dublin got bombed by accident

[OlderAndWiser]

If liberals had been in charge in 1941, we would now all be speaking either German or Japanese.

[Drewtate]

Maybe not but we'd have certainly lost ten times the number of Americans in the war.

[Sargentcaptain]

Sure would be nice if the

'your war crimes - gay, cringe

my war crimes - glorious, based'

meme wasn't how 90% of people view combat. I don't hate Nazis cause the government tells me to, I hate them cause they were committing atrocities. Make of that what you will.

[zagor]

The British starting bombing civilian centers after Germans accidentally bombed a 'burb of London when their bombers got lost. The Germans retaliated by bombing London cities.

Militarily it worked to England's advantage because the German shift to civilian targets took the pressure off their air bases.

Japan was bombing civilians in China well before the US was involved.

[strateguy632]

the word city is too vague. they AIMED at factory industry because the goal was strategic bombing, so if "miss it but hit a house", then that was "failing and not desirable" nor intended.

in contrast to mass destructive atom bombs. my country u. s. had alternative but not do it.

and probably not justified for truman dnc to use mass destruction, and large area bomb.

[KostasKouvalis]

They started it. People can argue about the civilians, but the civilians of those countries were behind their leaders, so...

[strateguy632]

in a dictatorship? with no competition in politics?

[KostasKouvalis]

Yes.

[Wraith_Cemetery]

No, not the case at all. Many of them didn't agree with their leaders. However, those who didn't agree were silenced. Hitler, for example, had total control of the media so he was easily able to make himself sound better than he was. He also had eyes everywhere. It was an automatic death sentense to speak out in public.

I can't stand it when people think all of Germany was full of Nazis. It wasn't true at all. Many people were oblivious to what was going on. People didn't have the internet or wide media to find out for themselves. A lot of the soldiers were just average people at not part of the nazi regime.

[SotiCoto]

Carpet bombing doesn't require justification.

[OddBeMe]

No we weren’t. And in my opinion didn’t help in any way.

[Drewtate]

You are wrong. You can't build tanks if there is no factory, no roads, no fuel, no electric, no steel, no food, no workers.

[OddBeMe]

There could be an argument about direct targeting of war factories but our planes weren’t that accurate. So we switched to random or carpet bombing.

[Drewtate]

Take dresden for instance. How much war materials, food, gas etc passed through there on its way to the Eastern front or western front or southern front after it was flattened?

[BoopBoopBeep]

of course... it's war not a ticklefest

[Jamie05rhs]

Did the Germans bomb England? Yes.

[exitseven]

War is hell. the

[exitseven]

idea of fighting a war is to kill the enemy and win the war.

[Roudyrebel8]

Yes they were

[Sharkstealth]

Yes of course!!

[Exterminatore]

I think so.