Text 36077, 53 rader
Skriven 2006-08-06 06:18:52 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
  Kommentar till text 35536 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Ärende: Stupid Lebanese!
========================
Replying to a message of Ward Dossche to Joe Delahaye:

 WD> On April 5th 1943 the US 8th Air Force flattened my town with 2 direct
 WD> hits on 2 schools. High-altitude bombing, never done before, so there
 WD> was no alert, everybody figured they were on their way to Germany.

 WD> 940 people about perished, 2 complete schoolpopulations aged 6-12
 WD> gone.

 WD> We're still waiting for compensation or at least a kind of appology
 WD> ... even an "Oooops" would have been nice.

 WD> The official report of the 8Th Airforce still available via their
 WD> website is that this day they scored an impressive victory. When
 WD> pointed-out they actually missed their target completely the
 WD> webmaster became very abusive.

I may have the date wrong - July 9, 1945 - but on that date Curtis LeMay
firebombed Tokyo, resulting in more civilian casualties than either Hiroshima
or Nagasaki.  The details are in James Bradley's book "Flyboys."

LeMay was rather proud of the fact that his firebomb campaign against Japan had
burned,
baked and boiled more (Japanese) civilians than any other military campaign in
history.  Far
more, in total, than the casualties caused by the nuclear bombings of both
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.  Years later, it was pointed out to him that this campaign was
probably a war
crime and his response was that that was probably true but fortunately his side
had won
the war.

As for USAF bombing accuracy, during one of the B-52 bombing campaigns against
North
Vietnam, one group of (3) aircraft was tasked against a specific target (and
I've forgotten
what it was).  Of course the crews claimed to have hit their assigned target
(they all did).  Next day reconnaissance of the target (a photo swath about 10
miles wide by 50 miles long) revealed no evidence of any bomb explosions
anywhere in the area.  Note that each aircraft carried several dozen bombs and
would leave a trail of craters a couple of miles long - yet no craters were
visible within miles of the target.

I've always contended that AF pilots will claim to have hit their target if the
bomb
impacts the planet someplace; by and large IMO they can't hit the side of a
barn -
from the INside.  OTOH, Navy pilots generally manage to hit whatever they're
aiming at.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:2905/3)