History Channel

"Neil Hoskins" wrote in message
...




B17's being used during the day in Europe as they were precision bombers
not carpet bombers as the RAF were ?

Covered better than I could do by Robert. Personally, I feel very
uncomfortable when the Dams Raid is celebrated: it did very little to
hamper German industry

German industry was seriously affected. The quick recovery
was because of the resources used to repair the damage.
The Todt Organisation was used inside Germany for the
first time, leaving the defences on the French coast
incomplete.
Agricultural land was scrubbed of all top soil for
miles below the dams and never again during
WW II did they produce any food for the Reich.


but did kill an awful number of civilians; largely French slave labourers
IIRC. Arguably a terrorist attack.

John Sweetman in his book The Dambusters Raid states that
approximaely 1,200 civilians were killed, most of them Russian
slaves, as well as citizens of occupied Europe.

The dams were repaired rather more quickly than the
British expected, made the more easy because
the RAF did not attempt to bomb the dams under repair.
Bomber Command, in spite of claims to the contrary,
was able to hit small targets from high altitude, and could
have bombed the dams from altitude whenever they wished.
Maintenance of aim was lost.


Revisionist history should, in my view, like all forms of debate, be
encouraged. My own approach, though, is to keep my voice down when the
people who lived through it are still around. By modern standards,
Harris's "reap the whirlwind" policy

The policy that governed the targetting of Bomber Commands raids
was formulated and dispatched to Bomber Command before Harris
took up his post at BC. He had NO input into that policy.


was terrorist and genocidal,

Some author asked in his book about the air war against Germany
asked the question whether there is any difference between attacking
and killing men and women in Wermacht uniforms using the war
material and men and women in I.G.Farben/Ford/Opel uniforms, turning out the
war material.

IIRC his answer was NO!





but then again, my parents lived through the blitz, lost friends, saw
civilian bodies being dragged out of bombed buildings, etc, and therefore
have a completely different point of view.