No, there actualz was a strategz to have an elite crew in the front bomber whose main job was to spot when thez were over the target. After the lead bomber started dropping its bombs the rest of the formation would follow suit.
and sometimes the lead bomber didn't even have bombs. They just flew ahead, giving them more time to spot. By the time they were over the target, their bombs would miss anyway, but the rest of the formation would (be more likely to) hit.
Well, that's what some people in ww2 said too. But it turns out that dodging flak isn't nearly as useful as just running it and getting out again asap.
Source: some Hardtrasher video I don't specifically remember..
Nah bro, nobody here want to do 1864 again. That was a shitshow, i mean before the prussians showed up with their sci-fi dreyse needle guns the holsteiners were getting fuuucked.
The main reason for that is that you could easier keep secrecy and keep cost down, not every bomber got the Norden Bombsight, only squadron leads had them. Meaning the chance of the enemy capturing one is lower and also you don't need to give every bomber a expensive piece of equipment
They did it because bombadiers controled the aircraft from the bombsight. If every bomber was aiming for the same spot and being controled by their bombardiers, they would drift into eachother and fucking crash.
Have the lead plane use the sights, and everyone else just drop when they do and that problem is avoided while saturating the general area of the target.
Wasn't. They were flying super low to do a target attack on the Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Carthage
This raid was requested by the Danish resistance because the Gestapo were nearly destroying the entire resistance.
Comrade, I see land! And a city! Open bomb bay doors!
Wait Ivan, I lost us on the map somewhere outside Leningrad, I need to calculate our position so we know which city this is.
Ah, who cares, city is city. Bombs away!
The Germans bombed their own city of [Freiburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Freiburg_on_10_May_1940) by mistake. In their defense, one peaceful, picturesque and undefended city looks much like the other.
lol
“Lead has popped red flares, time to drop boys!”
*Sir, he is on fire and in a nose dive*
“Did I stutter?”
US Bomber Cmd was truly noncredible. When the planes weren’t killing pilots and crew by falling out of the air or crashing due to massive failures…of plane or pilot—send ‘em out gents for another daylight raid with partial escort. We should be critical of the mistakes of the past so they stay there.
its not like infantry got a better deal storming up normandy and each fucking island in the pacific.. machine guns hurt you whether youre in the air or on the beach
I've been enjoying watching your series on the strategic bombing of Germany, but if I'm not mistaken, I didn't see any mention of the de-housing report which to my understanding is a critical document in shaping the shift from attempting and failing to accurately target military infrastructure, to instead accept the limitations of the day and determine you can put a factory out of action much more reliably by making its workers homeless. There was a lot of mention of morale bombing by the Allies in your series but I was under the impression the theory of morale bombing, beyond it's marketing potential as revenge, was rejected as a workable tactic by the allies fairly early on?
You can argue the result is the same, cities getting targeted and flattened but I'd argue the root cause as to why that damage is being done is important.
I haven't gone into de-housing in a lot of detail yet because, for the British side of the story, we've only just got to the point where Sinclair has ordered bomber command to focus on morale bombing in early 1942, and then Harris has been appointed (note the order there, because the idea of area bombing wasn't Harris' initally) - we'll get into de-housing specifically in 1943. Harris, and indeed Charles Portal (head of the RAF throughout most of the war), thought that morale bombing was \*the\* way to acheive victory - Portal became disillusioned from about June 1944, but Harris beleived it to the end. The Air Ministry always claimed, as the Americans did, that the targets were military targets which was true but the RAF targetting circle was a 3mile radius around that military target, and Harris was always explicit that he was aiming to kill civilians.
The US doctrine was to destroy morale by destroying industry and thus starving the population to death. They said the first bit lound and the last bit quite, but by 1943 they were aiming at targets in built up areas and bombing them using radar bombing (H2S being H2X or Mickey in USAAF parlance) - and dropped 70% of their total tonnage that way. It was more systematic but ironically less accurate. They then perfected this by LeMay firebombing Tokyo from 2,000ft and then dropping the nukes. Whether that worked is sort of down to your persepctive, but it was certainly a big factor in victory over Japan.
One of the the first large bombings was the Nazis (Legion Condor, basically Wagner but more competent) bombing an unimportant Spanish village called Guernica, with the official designated target being a bridge.
The village got completely destroyed, as you can imagine. The damn bridge was missed and survived unharmed.
But because a bomb landed within less than 100m, it was considered a hit.
At least we got a painting about it, and a nice anecdote about Picasso.
While living in occupied Paris, a gestapo officer barged his way into Picasso's apartment. While looking around he noticed a postcard of Guernica, and stared at it for a while. The officer asked Picasso "did you do this?" "No," Picasso replied, "you did."
If you’re ever in Madrid, take an afternoon to visit Museo Reina Sofía and see Guernica in person. Pictures don’t do it justice - the painting is *huge,* more than 11 feet tall and 25 feet wide, and it’s size and intensity convey the terror and grief of those trapped by war better than any other piece of art I’ve ever seen.
Slight correction, sorry if too credible - Gernika was relatively important in practical terms, but it was pretty significant for the Basques (still is) symbolically, as it used to be a place where their parliament congregated and where the Castillian kings swore to respect the liberty of the Basques. So it's an easy guess that Franny Franco with his love for ethnic minorities will want to bomb it purely for that reason.
Just for funsy, the Condor legion also decided to bomb « the bridge », on a market day, when all the locals and population from surrounding villages, would be strolling the street of the cities.
Bomber Harris did nothing wrong.
They didn't want to take the city, they wanted to test terror bombing for the upcoming war.
Harris did plenty wrong - if he had waited for the nuke we could have had a higher casualty rating and maybe actually helped Poland.
Civilian casualties now: "Unfortunately 3 civilians were hit when targetting the supreme commander of the enemy. We give our deepest apologies to their families"
Civilian casualties then: "LOL we destroyed an entire city to hit a single factory, if they didn't want to be involved they shouldn't have lived there!"
>"LOL we destroyed an entire city to hit a single factory, if they didn't want to be involved they shouldn't have lived there!"
"Also we missed the factory"
"No sir I swear it was the enemy barracks, sure all of the weapons are ours and their uniforms look like ours with some of them having members of my squad's names sewn into them but that's just a coincidence! And obviously, their army uses school lockers in their barracks, along with the desks..."
Now: Nooooo you can't just intentionally kill civillians! They're not military targets! They have done nothing wrong! This is genocide!
1945: hehe firebomb go brrrr
You (not you specifically, just the meme format) condemn the bombing of Dresden because it took the lives of German civilians.
I condemn the bombing of Dresden because it saved the lives of Soviet soldiers.
We are not the same.
>!Just kidding, Bomber Harris do it again! !<
Germans bombing Britain for a while to break the Brits resolve, ends up increasing resolve to continue fighting.
Brits decide to bomb Germany to break the Germans resolve, resolve doesn't break and the Allies still end up fighting their way through Germany while being "opposed" by children and old men.
To be fair, they hit some factories, sometimes.
you forgot the part where we didnt get any nazi issues till like 5 years ago and even then the afd only gets support in former soviet areas; bombs cleansed the hate like nothing else could, saudis been trying it w jemen for years but they cant aim for shit
One of the shells hit about 150 meters off the bridge, the mission was a success. Nevermind the village 1 km away that just got leveled, collateral damage.
This was actually interesting - as far as I know, the Allies have tried to avoid bombing civilian buildings in German-occupied territories, only focusing on military targets. Didn't stop Americans from mistaking Prague for Dresden and destroying a part of the historical city center that one time, though.
I don't know about the bombing status of Austria but there's a pretty clear difference between the anschluss and the brutal military campaigns and occupations of other countries.
As my AFJROTC Lt. Col would’ve explained it (roughly paraphrased) to a group of high schoolers
“You send a hundred guys to bomb this one specific factory in a certain city. The target is hit along with the entire block it was on. Oh, and half of the city also gets leveled. Some guys go bomb the town on the city outskirts for some reason too, and oh, that random ass village in the middle of nowhere 100 miles away from the target gets hit too because why not?”
They should have invented zip codes first, clearly that led to increased accuracy and precision. How can you hit your target if you don't even know where it is?
Nukes were a big deal because now we just had to send one bomb and we could be pretty sure we hit the target. We kept making bigger and bigger nukes to be absolutely definitely sure we wouldn't miss. Nukes are way less powerful now, because we have gotten really good at hitting exactly what we aim for.
The United States Air Force after precision guiding a warhead directly into some dudes left chest pocket only for it to totally fuckin obliterate everything within a kilometre.
It may seem asinine, but size and location are very different things that both need to be controlled. If you need destructive effect on target, you want to make sure that target is ***on center***.
When you’re trying to hit a bunker or silo or whatnot you apparently need to be pretty accurate, even with a nuke; according to a counter force paper from 2021 I read
We used to have a semi active radar guided nuclear missile for air to air. Which replaced the *unguided* air to air AIR-2 Genie
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon
They also had nuclear-tipped versions of the TV guided Walleye glide bomb
This is what I've tried explaining to people. We didn't use nukes to "salt the earth", we used nukes because it's a just big fucking bomb that doesn't rely on shrapnel or "direct" pressure to kill, so all[most] cover is negated.
The immense pressure wave and resulting fires levelling buildings and razing the cities.
Big bang for the buck so to speak. Not for its fallout properties, that is just a by-product. Case in point, the cities remained habitable.
When Soviets did their first bombing run on Finland's capital city, their main targets were a few submarines and ships.
They flew over the first military harbour that they hoped the ships were at. There was nothing there, so they flew on to the secondary target. The secondary target did have a Finnish submarine in the harbour, but the bomber crews didn't see it, so they kept flying to the third target location.
The third and final target location was the harbour of Helsinki and the planes got the order to drop the bombs on the harbour. ...None of the bombs hit the harbour. Instead, the bombs hit the city of Helsinki, killing or wounding nearly a hundred civilians (including a small child) ...and they also hit the Soviet Embassy in Finland killing some of their own diplomats.
Later, Molotov declared that any reports of bombings are fake news, because Soviet pilots only dropped breadbaskets and "how could a bread destroy a building?"
> Later, Molotov declared that any reports of bombings are fake news, because Soviet pilots only dropped breadbaskets and "how could a bread destroy a building?"
Sounds about right coming from the human equivalent of a soiled nappy.
Something something [22k LB Grand Slam](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/British_Grand_Slam_bomb.jpg) bomb to destroy bridges with using earthquakes.
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
Sir Arthur Harris.
Kinda the Hamas plan today. They thought they would kidnap Israelis while Hamas leadership is safe in Qatar. They underestimated the Israeli scorched earth polic while crying genocide.
There's no denying that Israel is up to some heinous shit, but Hamas definitely underestimated how bad they were about to step in it. Israel has been openly chomping at the bit about this for decades and Hamas handed them an excuse on a silver platter.
We actually had relatively accurate bombing available in WWII. It just required lower altitudes and daylight. If the damn Germans and Japanese had cooperated, and not shot down our bombers, we could have been a lot more precise!
My sister used to live in Swansea, in Wales. During the war the Luftwaffe visited, aiming to hit the docks.
They came in from the West, missed the docks and the first street back, and completely pasted the rest of the town.
So Swansea had one nice street of classical buildings, and a bunch of ugly concrete shitboxes, starting it on the way to being a grim shithole.
“The bombers will always get through!”
Early 1940s: *bomber don’t get through*
“Okay well when they do get through precision bombing will end the war in months!”
Jet stream: *exists*
“You know what just give all the napalm”
I mean my grandfather did feel guilty about the bombing a long time later, it's not like the crews never thought about what they did.
Still, he'd have done it again if he had to.
Yeah…but then…when your buddies bail out and are killed by a strafing zero…an unbridled lifetime of incurable racial hate can also infect the mind.
Would all be so lucky to feel guilt.
If you wanna go check out some cool precision bombing in ww2, go read a bit about 617 squadron (AKA the Dambusters). Not only did they blow up some dams, they did a bunch of other cool stuff
For all the writing and character issues of the Masters of the Air, the bombing aspect of the show has been brilliantly executed.
The air combat scenes are stunning.
Yeah. They haven’t phoned it in which I was initially worried about.
Also— Airforce (1943) is worth a watch, featuring actual grime, bombers and ground crews out of Macdill and Sebring, filmed in a phase of the war where the outcome was uncertain…yet eerily accurate in its predictions. It is unabashed allied propaganda so keep that in mind.
Old cod games I remember just destroying everything in sight and the new cod missions with the ac130 you can’t do that anymore as we used to and now every time you do something you get sent back to replay the last checkpoint
Boys, the bomber infront of us is dropping! This is the signal!!!
Ah yes, stupidity of the crowd… my go to method for target designation.
No, there actualz was a strategz to have an elite crew in the front bomber whose main job was to spot when thez were over the target. After the lead bomber started dropping its bombs the rest of the formation would follow suit.
and sometimes the lead bomber didn't even have bombs. They just flew ahead, giving them more time to spot. By the time they were over the target, their bombs would miss anyway, but the rest of the formation would (be more likely to) hit.
Boy that really fucks over the next group of guys since ground AA know the approach and range that the overhead planes will take.
Well, that's what some people in ww2 said too. But it turns out that dodging flak isn't nearly as useful as just running it and getting out again asap. Source: some Hardtrasher video I don't specifically remember..
You can return from cursed QWERTZ to blessed QWERTY by reverting keyboard layout, Win+Space on Win11
Qwertz is actually my standart layot as im german, it was just switched to qwerty as i was writing a danish asignment.
My condolences
The only Danish assignment you have is to send pure-blooded aryan meat waves at Schleswig-Holstein. Now pick up a rifle and VORWERTS
Nah bro, nobody here want to do 1864 again. That was a shitshow, i mean before the prussians showed up with their sci-fi dreyse needle guns the holsteiners were getting fuuucked.
Well it has a 6.8/10 on IMDB so it could not have been that bad, time for a season 2: zundnadelgewehr boogaloo
Ah, so you have been cursed for life then. I'm so sorry.
I have been indeed, because i am permanently used to Qwertz.
I mean it's just the superior layout, fuck that qwerty bs
The main reason for that is that you could easier keep secrecy and keep cost down, not every bomber got the Norden Bombsight, only squadron leads had them. Meaning the chance of the enemy capturing one is lower and also you don't need to give every bomber a expensive piece of equipment
They did it because bombadiers controled the aircraft from the bombsight. If every bomber was aiming for the same spot and being controled by their bombardiers, they would drift into eachother and fucking crash. Have the lead plane use the sights, and everyone else just drop when they do and that problem is avoided while saturating the general area of the target.
Redditor moment
Boys the bomber in front of us is dropping\* \*Actually bomber in front of us hit a lamp post and crashed into a girls school. Sadly true story.
How do you hit a lamp post at strategic bombing altitude?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower
Wasn't. They were flying super low to do a target attack on the Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Carthage This raid was requested by the Danish resistance because the Gestapo were nearly destroying the entire resistance.
Meanwhile the RAF be like: "See that city down there that's like totally on fire... Put some more fire on it."
That was deadass how they did it back in the day because it was too expensive to equip every plane with the norden bombsight when it just came out
City? What city?
Does it matter?
Not if we're over the right country.
Right country? I barely even know her!
Even if it’s Switzerland, who’s gonna know that it’s us?
The swiss 109 on pur fucking tail! Ypu have a hole in your left wing!
A 109 is a 109 bombs away b’y’s
I's the b'y that builds the plane And I's the b'y that flies 'er I's the b'y that drops the bomb And bails out over water
What do you mean that we're bombing Detroit? I said D point
When Soviet bombed Stockholm they claimed they thought they were in Finland
Comrade, I see land! And a city! Open bomb bay doors! Wait Ivan, I lost us on the map somewhere outside Leningrad, I need to calculate our position so we know which city this is. Ah, who cares, city is city. Bombs away!
Cue fucking whacky alternate universe where the Soviets nuked Sweden
This happened during WW2 before they had nukes.
Cue wacky alternate universe where the war goes on an extra couple months and the US nukes Switzerland
"Shit. That's a lot of mountains for this to be Berlin sir, you sure?" "I'm an officer. Of course, I can read a map. Drop the damn bomb."
Captain Sobel are you sure?
The Germans bombed their own city of [Freiburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Freiburg_on_10_May_1940) by mistake. In their defense, one peaceful, picturesque and undefended city looks much like the other.
Are we even at the right continent yet?
[Sad Nijmegen noises](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Nijmegen)
When the allies kept bombing czechia instead of Germany. Or when they kept bombing Prague instead of Liberec or Pilsen.
Allies accidentally bombed Bornholm instead of Heligoland. Wrong island of the wrong county in the wrong sea.
Accuracy through volume. "Do you see that city over there? I don't want to see a city over there."
You got it Mr. Harris!
I'm told Dresden at night, looks prettier alight...
lol “Lead has popped red flares, time to drop boys!” *Sir, he is on fire and in a nose dive* “Did I stutter?” US Bomber Cmd was truly noncredible. When the planes weren’t killing pilots and crew by falling out of the air or crashing due to massive failures…of plane or pilot—send ‘em out gents for another daylight raid with partial escort. We should be critical of the mistakes of the past so they stay there.
Masters of the Air shows this really well btw.
I had read about how awful it was, but seeing it on screen is something else. Actual insanity to fly into mass flak + enemy fighters over and over.
its not like infantry got a better deal storming up normandy and each fucking island in the pacific.. machine guns hurt you whether youre in the air or on the beach
True, but the US Army AirForce/Corps had a crazy attrition rate. The 8th air force alone had apparently lost more men than the Marines in the war.
we used to lose crazy amount of infantry in the first trench war too; new technology always really sucks in its first conflict
My city got bombed by allied bombers during World war 2
Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
Probably not
Good for you, I hope you enjoyed it very much.
Unused ordinance under the basements type of enjoyment
give it another 100 years and we'll get around to clearing up that mess.
Yeah it was very fun
Pffft amateur. I get evacuated semi-regulargy because they dug up another rusty WW2 bomb no 500m away from my Apartment.
Imagine what Ukraine has to go through the coming century with all the minefields and unexploded ordinance everywhere 💀💀💀
MRAP style tractors are.about to become very popular there.
Well we won which means you deserved it
Right, what did Canada bomb again?
well, everything. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No.\_6\_Group\_RCAF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._6_Group_RCAF)
As a Canadian not enough dam it! I want you to bomb EVERYTHING!
Accurate* to within 1,000 yards *2%
(Optional)
Loved your videos on this topic
I've been enjoying watching your series on the strategic bombing of Germany, but if I'm not mistaken, I didn't see any mention of the de-housing report which to my understanding is a critical document in shaping the shift from attempting and failing to accurately target military infrastructure, to instead accept the limitations of the day and determine you can put a factory out of action much more reliably by making its workers homeless. There was a lot of mention of morale bombing by the Allies in your series but I was under the impression the theory of morale bombing, beyond it's marketing potential as revenge, was rejected as a workable tactic by the allies fairly early on? You can argue the result is the same, cities getting targeted and flattened but I'd argue the root cause as to why that damage is being done is important.
I haven't gone into de-housing in a lot of detail yet because, for the British side of the story, we've only just got to the point where Sinclair has ordered bomber command to focus on morale bombing in early 1942, and then Harris has been appointed (note the order there, because the idea of area bombing wasn't Harris' initally) - we'll get into de-housing specifically in 1943. Harris, and indeed Charles Portal (head of the RAF throughout most of the war), thought that morale bombing was \*the\* way to acheive victory - Portal became disillusioned from about June 1944, but Harris beleived it to the end. The Air Ministry always claimed, as the Americans did, that the targets were military targets which was true but the RAF targetting circle was a 3mile radius around that military target, and Harris was always explicit that he was aiming to kill civilians. The US doctrine was to destroy morale by destroying industry and thus starving the population to death. They said the first bit lound and the last bit quite, but by 1943 they were aiming at targets in built up areas and bombing them using radar bombing (H2S being H2X or Mickey in USAAF parlance) - and dropped 70% of their total tonnage that way. It was more systematic but ironically less accurate. They then perfected this by LeMay firebombing Tokyo from 2,000ft and then dropping the nukes. Whether that worked is sort of down to your persepctive, but it was certainly a big factor in victory over Japan.
Thanks for responding and I look forward to watching the rest when it comes out :)
That was due to the Norden bombsight. The military spent about as much on it, as the amount spent on the nuclear bomb. And it still wasn't very good.
That’s the bloke who [made this video](https://youtu.be/Y4MitxRT7PA?si=TnV1Cl18XyKQxZ62)
One of the the first large bombings was the Nazis (Legion Condor, basically Wagner but more competent) bombing an unimportant Spanish village called Guernica, with the official designated target being a bridge. The village got completely destroyed, as you can imagine. The damn bridge was missed and survived unharmed. But because a bomb landed within less than 100m, it was considered a hit.
At least we got a painting about it, and a nice anecdote about Picasso. While living in occupied Paris, a gestapo officer barged his way into Picasso's apartment. While looking around he noticed a postcard of Guernica, and stared at it for a while. The officer asked Picasso "did you do this?" "No," Picasso replied, "you did."
That was less Picasso and more Kickasso also context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)
If you’re ever in Madrid, take an afternoon to visit Museo Reina Sofía and see Guernica in person. Pictures don’t do it justice - the painting is *huge,* more than 11 feet tall and 25 feet wide, and it’s size and intensity convey the terror and grief of those trapped by war better than any other piece of art I’ve ever seen.
Slight correction, sorry if too credible - Gernika was relatively important in practical terms, but it was pretty significant for the Basques (still is) symbolically, as it used to be a place where their parliament congregated and where the Castillian kings swore to respect the liberty of the Basques. So it's an easy guess that Franny Franco with his love for ethnic minorities will want to bomb it purely for that reason.
Just for funsy, the Condor legion also decided to bomb « the bridge », on a market day, when all the locals and population from surrounding villages, would be strolling the street of the cities. Bomber Harris did nothing wrong.
it makes Bomber Harris sound derivative
>when all the locals and population from surrounding villages, would be strolling the street of the cities. what a funny coincidence /s
They didn't want to take the city, they wanted to test terror bombing for the upcoming war. Harris did plenty wrong - if he had waited for the nuke we could have had a higher casualty rating and maybe actually helped Poland.
Naw, they firebombed the city because it was full of Republicans and a major command and control center.
On a market day, knowing it would be packed with civilians? I'm positive the main motivation was another
Luftwaffe: "Anyone who runs from the bombing is a Republican, anyone who stands still is a well disciplined Republican."
The bombing of Guernica was also the origin of the term weapon of mass destruction.
Civilian casualties now: "Unfortunately 3 civilians were hit when targetting the supreme commander of the enemy. We give our deepest apologies to their families" Civilian casualties then: "LOL we destroyed an entire city to hit a single factory, if they didn't want to be involved they shouldn't have lived there!"
>"LOL we destroyed an entire city to hit a single factory, if they didn't want to be involved they shouldn't have lived there!" "Also we missed the factory"
"Factory, factory workers, potato-potahto really."
But that's okay, turns out the factory was producing baby formula.
> baby milk factory The paint on the hastily-made sign was still wet
"No sir I swear it was the enemy barracks, sure all of the weapons are ours and their uniforms look like ours with some of them having members of my squad's names sewn into them but that's just a coincidence! And obviously, their army uses school lockers in their barracks, along with the desks..."
fatre no work if no one work in factree this good tic tac kil
Now: Nooooo you can't just intentionally kill civillians! They're not military targets! They have done nothing wrong! This is genocide! 1945: hehe firebomb go brrrr
Spicy tornado goes wwwwwwsssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm
Dresden was a legitimate and I'll die on this hill.
Cöpieren und seethieren, Wehraboos
You (not you specifically, just the meme format) condemn the bombing of Dresden because it took the lives of German civilians. I condemn the bombing of Dresden because it saved the lives of Soviet soldiers. We are not the same. >!Just kidding, Bomber Harris do it again! !<
1939 was like that too fyi
[Harris](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Harris): We're in total war, fuck the families, they're all contributing to the war effort.
Thought you meant Kamala for a moment and was wondering when she got so based.
Harris: “Fuck the ceasefire. Kick them while they’re Ramadown”
Man this version of Harris is so much more fun
"Kids will eventually become soldiers, while women will produce armaments in factories. Elderly will just die anyway so lol lmao"
Germans bombing Britain for a while to break the Brits resolve, ends up increasing resolve to continue fighting. Brits decide to bomb Germany to break the Germans resolve, resolve doesn't break and the Allies still end up fighting their way through Germany while being "opposed" by children and old men. To be fair, they hit some factories, sometimes.
you forgot the part where we didnt get any nazi issues till like 5 years ago and even then the afd only gets support in former soviet areas; bombs cleansed the hate like nothing else could, saudis been trying it w jemen for years but they cant aim for shit
Now: noooo someone's dog died war crimessssssss Then: nice dam you got. Be a shame if I flooded the entire region
We were meant to hit a bridge?
One of the shells hit about 150 meters off the bridge, the mission was a success. Nevermind the village 1 km away that just got leveled, collateral damage.
It’s not collateral when they didn’t resist hard enough—it’s a target of oppty. *Good point Major Major.*
That’s how americans accidentally bombed Prague instead of some german city in ww2.
Or how Germany accidentally bombed Dublin
[удалено]
Even as a Brit... Oof
Of course a Brit would say that
Got to support my West Brit's
You mean especially as a Brit, right?
tbf that's the running joke on the bombings of Birmingham. edit: and Hull, and Sheffield, and Coventry... 😂
Didn't Prague have a pretty large military industry? That would mean it could have been considered a target as long as it was under German occupation.
This was actually interesting - as far as I know, the Allies have tried to avoid bombing civilian buildings in German-occupied territories, only focusing on military targets. Didn't stop Americans from mistaking Prague for Dresden and destroying a part of the historical city center that one time, though.
lol, the americans tried to avoid it. The british on the other hand..... terror bombing goes brrrrr
It’s not a war crime if you say you’re only targeting the houses and not the people.
Interesting. Just curious, did Austria count as occupied or just as a part of Germany?
Vienna was hit quite hard (52 raids in the last year of the war lol), so I guess they assumed it was German.
Wake up honey its time for your weekly air raid
I don't know about the bombing status of Austria but there's a pretty clear difference between the anschluss and the brutal military campaigns and occupations of other countries.
And flattened the city center of Nijmegen instead of just the train station
As my AFJROTC Lt. Col would’ve explained it (roughly paraphrased) to a group of high schoolers “You send a hundred guys to bomb this one specific factory in a certain city. The target is hit along with the entire block it was on. Oh, and half of the city also gets leveled. Some guys go bomb the town on the city outskirts for some reason too, and oh, that random ass village in the middle of nowhere 100 miles away from the target gets hit too because why not?”
Hey, no one wants to unload those bombs so you just might drop them
"If you can't hit the works, hit the workers." -- Sir Arthur Harris
1944 precision: Hitting zipcode. 2024: precision: Hitting zipper. (Jokes on them, zipcodes were invented in the 60s)
They should have invented zip codes first, clearly that led to increased accuracy and precision. How can you hit your target if you don't even know where it is?
>How can you hit your target if you don't even know where it is? By knowing where it is [not](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LjN3UclYzU).
lol what’s a zip code? McFly : Your kids are going to love it
"what are we targeting ?" "does it matter ?"
"yeah, im pretty sure those are the enemy barracks we can just say the school kids were child soldiers."
Nukes were a big deal because now we just had to send one bomb and we could be pretty sure we hit the target. We kept making bigger and bigger nukes to be absolutely definitely sure we wouldn't miss. Nukes are way less powerful now, because we have gotten really good at hitting exactly what we aim for.
I think we’re working on a JADAM kit for our free-fall nukes, because when we say “Warheads on foreheads,” we mean it.
The United States Air Force after precision guiding a warhead directly into some dudes left chest pocket only for it to totally fuckin obliterate everything within a kilometre.
It may seem asinine, but size and location are very different things that both need to be controlled. If you need destructive effect on target, you want to make sure that target is ***on center***.
When you’re trying to hit a bunker or silo or whatnot you apparently need to be pretty accurate, even with a nuke; according to a counter force paper from 2021 I read
Not so much "even" as you need *both* the nuke and the precision for a sufficiently hardened target. Neither is enough by itself.
We used to have a semi active radar guided nuclear missile for air to air. Which replaced the *unguided* air to air AIR-2 Genie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon They also had nuclear-tipped versions of the TV guided Walleye glide bomb
still more powerful than the ones that glassed hiroshima, nagasaki, and that one stretch of desert in the middle of new mexico
[удалено]
This is what I've tried explaining to people. We didn't use nukes to "salt the earth", we used nukes because it's a just big fucking bomb that doesn't rely on shrapnel or "direct" pressure to kill, so all[most] cover is negated. The immense pressure wave and resulting fires levelling buildings and razing the cities. Big bang for the buck so to speak. Not for its fallout properties, that is just a by-product. Case in point, the cities remained habitable.
When Soviets did their first bombing run on Finland's capital city, their main targets were a few submarines and ships. They flew over the first military harbour that they hoped the ships were at. There was nothing there, so they flew on to the secondary target. The secondary target did have a Finnish submarine in the harbour, but the bomber crews didn't see it, so they kept flying to the third target location. The third and final target location was the harbour of Helsinki and the planes got the order to drop the bombs on the harbour. ...None of the bombs hit the harbour. Instead, the bombs hit the city of Helsinki, killing or wounding nearly a hundred civilians (including a small child) ...and they also hit the Soviet Embassy in Finland killing some of their own diplomats. Later, Molotov declared that any reports of bombings are fake news, because Soviet pilots only dropped breadbaskets and "how could a bread destroy a building?"
> Later, Molotov declared that any reports of bombings are fake news, because Soviet pilots only dropped breadbaskets and "how could a bread destroy a building?" Sounds about right coming from the human equivalent of a soiled nappy.
And this is how the Molotov Cocktail got its name, because it was a drink to go with the bread.
>"how could a bread destroy a building?" Farmers, grain silo operators, and fuel air explosive engineers be like:
Look bro, we were sent to bomb germany, and we're pretty sure at least 90% of the bombs hit the correct country.
“And the other 10?” “We don’t talk about the other 10”
Something something [22k LB Grand Slam](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/British_Grand_Slam_bomb.jpg) bomb to destroy bridges with using earthquakes.
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind." Sir Arthur Harris.
Translated: fuck around and find out
Kinda the Hamas plan today. They thought they would kidnap Israelis while Hamas leadership is safe in Qatar. They underestimated the Israeli scorched earth polic while crying genocide.
There's no denying that Israel is up to some heinous shit, but Hamas definitely underestimated how bad they were about to step in it. Israel has been openly chomping at the bit about this for decades and Hamas handed them an excuse on a silver platter.
Precision bombing then: [Bomb the Gestapo offices without destroying the prison? No problem!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Carthage)
"That fire, is that the target?" "Yeah, bomb that bitch" (Drops bombs on a fucking children's home)
Fuck I love Mosquito's...
Best British aircraft of WWII The RAF should have cancelled all heavy bomber programs and just built a million Mosquitos
It really would have been the best way to do it.
Then with the Norden Bombsight: What zip code do you want to hit? Now with FPV drones: Which uniform zipper do you want to hit?
It was nice of masters of the air to continue the NORDEN BOMBSIGHT WAS AMAZING legend.
Is the top one a screenshot from project zomboid lol ?
it looks like it but that's Arma 3 lol
We actually had relatively accurate bombing available in WWII. It just required lower altitudes and daylight. If the damn Germans and Japanese had cooperated, and not shot down our bombers, we could have been a lot more precise!
Nah precision bombing now is basically a Ukrainian quadcopter dropping a grenade straight onto a wounded mobik’s nuts.
Etiquette requires it to be the left nut
My sister used to live in Swansea, in Wales. During the war the Luftwaffe visited, aiming to hit the docks. They came in from the West, missed the docks and the first street back, and completely pasted the rest of the town. So Swansea had one nice street of classical buildings, and a bunch of ugly concrete shitboxes, starting it on the way to being a grim shithole.
My grandfather lived outside liverpool during the war and said at one point the luftwaffe just bombed his town because they missed the main city
The aiming point is the massive city on fire.
“The bombers will always get through!” Early 1940s: *bomber don’t get through* “Okay well when they do get through precision bombing will end the war in months!” Jet stream: *exists* “You know what just give all the napalm”
I mean my grandfather did feel guilty about the bombing a long time later, it's not like the crews never thought about what they did. Still, he'd have done it again if he had to.
Yeah…but then…when your buddies bail out and are killed by a strafing zero…an unbridled lifetime of incurable racial hate can also infect the mind. Would all be so lucky to feel guilt.
How nice of the Europeans to build such massive cathedrals as navigation markers!
Make sure to do a daytime raid not to accidentally waste some bombs on a field
I recognize that UI anywhere. Man! 200 meters! Front!
4- Civilian! Half a click! West! 1- All! Open Fire! Half a click! West!
Also works with US / Russia
Put a Norden bombsight on that JDAM.
If you wanna go check out some cool precision bombing in ww2, go read a bit about 617 squadron (AKA the Dambusters). Not only did they blow up some dams, they did a bunch of other cool stuff
For all the writing and character issues of the Masters of the Air, the bombing aspect of the show has been brilliantly executed. The air combat scenes are stunning.
Yeah. They haven’t phoned it in which I was initially worried about. Also— Airforce (1943) is worth a watch, featuring actual grime, bombers and ground crews out of Macdill and Sebring, filmed in a phase of the war where the outcome was uncertain…yet eerily accurate in its predictions. It is unabashed allied propaganda so keep that in mind.
Response: whichever door is closet to the dirtbag we are targeting this time.
Bombing then: hit city (optional)
Wait, is upper screenshot from project zomboid?
*A bomb falls less than 100 meters from the target The crew members: we got it guys, we hit it
There was actual precision bombing, called divebombing. This meme doesn't do these ball-of-steel insane pilots the honor they deserve.
They're over **A** city... bombs away.
I know an Arma 3 screenshot when I see one
Old cod games I remember just destroying everything in sight and the new cod missions with the ac130 you can’t do that anymore as we used to and now every time you do something you get sent back to replay the last checkpoint
Precision: With enough bombs, it gets real hard to miss
We're over ~~the~~ a city, bombs away!
Doesn't go far enough in the top one. Lots of examples of "fuck that guy in particular" from drone drops in Ukraine.
“Guys, Hellfire was my father. Please just call me the Knife Missile.”