lumps in throat and hardly a dry eye in the house

[britfrog 180]

BBMF and Canadian Lancasters flypast over Lincoln

 

i especially like the sepia colour at the end

 

[ddavid 149]

+1 on the ending, Nigel, and thanks for sharing.

It's strange, isn't it, how we currently laud the 100 th anniversary of the first World War, where hundreds of thousands were massacred indiscriminately, yet find the sacrifice of more than fifty thousand crew in Bomber Command almost an embarassment because 'Bomber' Harris carried out the Cabinet's directives so effectively. [/rant]

Cheers - Dai.

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Last info I had (yesterday)was that VeRA was currently stuck in Iceland with some sort of problem. Lets hope she gets home safely.

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Agreed Dai. The three books by Kevin Wilson, "Bomber Boys", "Men of Air" and "Journey's End" describe what the crews did, with several references to the 21 VC's given to Bomber Command crews. Dresden, held up by many as the worst act of the bomber war was not ordered by Harris, but Portal and above. Whilst Churchill gave his idea away, Portal and Harris stuck by it.

 

And if Dresden was bad, what about Hiroshima and Tokyo, by supposedly precision bombers? Harris wanted the public to know exactly what the Command was doing but the War Cabinet didn't. There is a lot about the bomber war that the public don't know, or seemingly want to know, about

 

Anyway, superb video there Nigel - very appropriate

 

 

[J G 927]

...

 

And if Dresden was bad, what about Hiroshima and Tokyo, by supposedly precision bombers? Harris wanted the public to know exactly what the Command was doing but the War Cabinet didn't. There is a lot about the bomber war that the public don't know, or seemingly want to know, about

 

...

 

Initially the death toll in the Dresden firestorm was thought to be as high as 500,000, but more likely it was 25,000.

 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined the toll was 135,000 killed.  This figure includes civilians, POWs and about 20,000 soldiers, and was not limited to the initial detonation but includes those that subsequently fro the effects of radiation.

 

God alone knows what the death toll would have been if Japan had not surrendered, both in terms of further nuclear attacks and repeats of Iwo Jima as the multitude of Japanese Islands were taken.  To put it in perspective, 19,000 Japanese soldiers and 6,800 US soldiers died in the taking of that single Island of 8 square miles.  At that rate of attrition, the taking of all of Japan would have cost many many more lives than the two atom bombs dropped.

 

Iwo Jima is only about twice the size of Dresden.

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Another project that everyone seems to have forgotten about was the 1,000 bomber plan. They threw everything that Bomber Command and OTUs had into the ring for a few massed raids. They had asked for Coastal Command aircraft but were refused. It was those that finally convinced the Germans that we meant business. The raids caused massive damage and the mindset of many German civilians was altered when they realised they had been lied to by the politicians who'd been telling them that Germany was invincible.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/bombercommandthethousandbomberraids3031may.cfm