Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.
Most overrated WWII weapon
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The people of England were FAR FAR from the point of wanting to surrender.�
That’s not what I meant by “ripe for invasion”.
The bombing of London’s purpose was to make the English give up, how did that work for the Nazis?
Really? That was THE reason? I really think you’re underestimating Nazi Germany, and this sounds like something from some TV show or opinion piece.�
How did the bombing of Dresdon work as far as making the Germans was to surrender?
I never said strategic bombing will make your enemy want to surrender.
Another thing I was reading about strategic bombing mentioned that it greatly RAISED the morale of the people in the countries SENDING the bombers! That’s significant too, since we’re talking about the effectiveness of strategic bombing.
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334 B-29s took off to raid on the night of 9�10 March (“Operation Meetinghouse”), Fourteen B-29s were lost. Approximately 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died, more immediate deaths than either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Richard Rhodes, historian, put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million. These casualty and damage figures could be low
The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors’ accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile (396 people per hectare) and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile (521 people per hectare), the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.
The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9/10 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II; greater than Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events.So 334 Strategic bombers bomb Tokyo and kill A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE, displace over A MILLION destroying SIXTEEN SQUARE MILES of city in TWO DAYS,
AND ONLY 14 BOMBERS WENT DOWN, out of THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR.Thats a 96% survivor rate on the bombers.
300 deaths and 3 THOUSAND displaced PER bomber.On 14 February 1942, the Area bombing directive was issued to Bomber Command. Bombing was to be “focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers.” Though it was never explicitly declared, this was the nearest that the British got to a declaration of unrestricted aerial bombing � Directive 22 said “You are accordingly authorised to use your forces without restriction”, and then listing a series of primary targets which included Essen, Duisburg, D�sseldorf, and Cologne. Secondary targets included Braunschweig, L�beck, Rostock, Bremen, Kiel, Hanover, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Schweinfurt. The directive stated that “operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civilian population, and in particular, the industrial workers”. Lest there be any confusion, Sir Charles Portal wrote to Air Chief Marshal Norman Bottomley on 15 February "…I suppose it is clear that the aiming points will be the built-up areas, and not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories". Factories were no longer targets.
The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death.“[129]”
Id say mission accomplished
And you call them overrated. WOW yeah thats overrated.
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Here’s something interesting and telling:
In 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō apologized in print, acknowledging Japan’s bombing of Chinese cities beginning in 1938, killing civilians. He wrote that the Japanese government should have surrendered as soon as losing the war was inevitable, an action that would have prevented Tokyo from being firebombed in March 1945, as well as subsequent bombings of other cities. Thereafter, survivors banded together and unsuccessfully sued the Japanese government for compensation; however, efforts continue.
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Uncrustable, our detractors would say that the bombing you cited did nothing to stop the Japanese army, navy, or air force, or something similar - that it just “strengthened their resolve”
Just look at 9/11!
NO COMPARISON
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@rjpeters70:
Well, while I’m a fan of bombers, and think that they can be used to devastating effect either in strategic contexts or in modern uses of close air support, the firebombing of Tokyo was a bit of an outlier in its destructiveness. Weather conditions were perfect (dry, some wind) and the city was largely made out of paper houses… not brick and mortar, stone, or even wood. It was a tinderbox.
So what your saying is the people died because the houses were made out of wood, not because of the bombers,
What a stupid thing to say. So are you also going to say that ships sink because they are in water?
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Even if an outlier, it still happened and the bombers still had that effect.
It’s not like there aren’t numerous other examples of tremendous bomber effectiveness in WWII -
I thought the discussion here wasn’t about the least effective weapon, but the most overrated? Obviously the weapons not used were the least effective, else they would have used them.
I went into this thinking which weapons yielded the least ‘effectiveness/cost.’ The Germans were still a very capable fighting force when the allies landed in Italy and later France. This after a couple years of strategic bombing. Hard to say how much more effective they would have been otherwise.
Strategic bombing in the last year of the war was more effective than the early years because there were less air defenses, particularly enemy aircraft.
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Strategic bombing in the last year of the war was more effective than the early years because there were less air defenses, particularly enemy aircraft.
That’s one reason, but there were MANY more. One is - the B-29’s could fly at 30,000 feet and had major armor plating.
Talking about what is overrated is not much different than talking about what was ineffective. If it was considered nasty/effective but was actually ineffective, then it’s overrated.
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@Uncrustable:
gamerman you are an fn moron to compare 9/11 to strategic bombing in late ww2
that is all i have to say to thatand the japanese surrendered BECAUSE of loss of civilian life from strategic bombing,
you are just trolling at this point
Dude, you are the moron.
You misread both rjpeters and me
We are both agreeing with you.
Dude, I have been the one taking issue with people comparing 9/11 to strategic bombing THE WHOLE FREAKING TIME
How could you misinterpret me so badly?My comment had been removed
My apologies to you gamerman
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@Uncrustable:
On topic I’d say the most overrated weapons system in the war was the battleship.
WWII marked the end of an era on the high seas and the beginning of the new age of aircraft carriers.
Some of the largest and most expensive BBs (Bismarck, Yamamoto) were ineffective and sunk relatively easily by aircraft. -
Thanks - I can remove mine too then
I would have made it clear I was being sarcastic, but thought it was obvious with the line of reasoning I had been continuing
Also, I think rjpeters was only conceding that the wind conditions and combustible materials greatly magnified the effectiveness of the bombers.
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In many of the crucial battles of the Pacific, for instance Coral Sea and Midway, battleships were either absent or overshadowed as carriers launched wave after wave of planes into the attack at a range of hundreds of miles. The primary tasks for battleships in the Pacific became shore bombardment and anti-aircraft defense for the carriers. Even the largest battleships ever constructed, Japan’s Yamato class, which carried a main battery of nine 18.1-inch (460 millimetre) guns and were designed to be a principal strategic weapon, were seldom given a chance to fulfill their potential. They were hampered by technical deficiencies (slow battleships were incapable of operating with fast carriers), faulty military doctrine (the Japanese waited for a “decisive battle”, which never came), and defective dispositions (as at Midway).
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lotta name calling in this thread.
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It seemed to me that you were denouncing the bomber due to conditions (saying it only killed that many people because of x)
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Also, I think rjpeters was only conceding that the wind conditions and combustible materials greatly magnified the effectiveness of the bombers.
Did you not see this, rj? I think Uncrustable misunderstood your meaning and I tried to help clear it up so you wouldn’t have to light into him
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@rjpeters70:
I saw it. I also saw that he apologized to you, but not to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j–tixvta_g
As president of DP oil i want to say, I’m sorry. :D
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I have got to tape me some Southpark again….
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I have got to tape me some Southpark again….
Or just stream them
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@Uncrustable:
Or just stream them
Yeah, that’s better, thanks
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The tiger tank. Great weapon, but insufficient numbers.
I also would say the Tiger tank.
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