Bomber command.........never thought of this aspect.

[gasbanni]

Reading an auto biography of a bomber navigator that was shot down in Belgium........

Thirty odd years later he goes to visit his helpers and receives an overwhelming welcome......When I protested the thanks should be the other way round.they brushed it aside ( bearing in mind they were risking their lives)

"You (the RAF) kept our hopes alive for four long years.
The sound of your engines night after night was the only sign the battle was still going on and one day we would be free again."

 

[Whitespirit66]

Have heard similar stories about people's sprits lifted in the occupied countries by the sight or even the knowledge that the allies were fighting back and taking the fight to the Gerries. Many in these countries were killed for aiding downed airmen.

You can bet that however tough life was in the UK, it was much, much worse for civilians in mainland Europe.

 

[Diane2]

my ex f.i.l. was in the Lancs, he went to his grave ashamed of what he did in the war.....sad really, as every one else thought he was a hero...

 

[pred]

Probably the most famous bomber pilot ever

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21277358

and who tends his grave? a local person...

 

[wotan]

my ex f.i.l. was in the Lancs, he went to his grave ashamed of what he did in the war.....sad really, as every one else thought he was a hero...

The Americans thought the crew of Enola Gay were hero's after committing the biggest crime against humanity ever.

Digger

 

[gasbanni]

my ex f.i.l. was in the Lancs, he went to his grave ashamed of what he did in the war.....sad really, as every one else thought he was a hero...

The Americans thought the crew of Enola Gay were hero's after committing the biggest crime against humanity ever.

Digger

You might think differently had you been a Japanese prisoner of war,
fastest way to stop them in their tracks.
Nanking...
http://www.nankingatrocities.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

Hiroshima biggest crime yeah right.

 

[conny]

my ex f.i.l. was in the Lancs, he went to his grave ashamed of what he did in the war.....sad really, as every one else thought he was a hero...

The Americans thought the crew of Enola Gay were hero's after committing the biggest crime against humanity ever.

Digger

From another point of view, would it have been more humane if the war had carried on and even more lives been lost?
I'm not saying which way was the right way, if there is such a thing, just trying to show both sides of the coin.

 

[gasbanni]

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml
200,000 fast death

 

[gasbanni]

my ex f.i.l. was in the Lancs, he went to his grave ashamed of what he did in the war.....sad really, as every one else thought he was a hero...

The Americans thought the crew of Enola Gay were hero's after committing the biggest crime against humanity ever.

Digger

From another point of view, would it have been more humane if the war had carried on and even more lives been lost?
I'm not saying which way was the right way, if there is such a thing, just trying to show both sides of the coin.

They should have bombed Tokoyo, with just one bomb.

They would have got The imperial lot at one strike, anyone whose read accounts of the time and how the japanese treated conquered peoples would know they deserved no pity at the time.

 

[wotan]

I do appreciate that argument, and have thought hard and long about it, but in my opinion it was an experiment to determine the effects of an atomic explosion, why else choose two sites of different topographical difference.

Wotan

 

[conny]

If they had surrendered after Hiroshima then they wouldn't have needed to bomb Nagasaki. Their masters knew they couldn't possibly win but they were too self centred(?) to issue the order. Read somewhere once that some of the high ranking officials declared the rest of the world may think the Americans had over stepped the mark and would condemn them, thereby coming to the aid of the Japanese.

 

[gasbanni]

Hiroshima is well and truly in the past, however Nanking still rates as a problem in the far east even today it causes tensions.


The point is at the time the Japanese were fanatical and fought to the death
virtually never surrendering, the bomb hit them hard enough to save all the allied soldiers who would have died having to fight them from island to island until in the end they would have been wiped out.

 

[ellal]

One can't but help think that if the americans wanted to they could have said...

'See that unihabited area? We will destroy it with one bomb. After that, we will do it again. After that, it will be Tokyo'...

Ok, so they apparently only had two bombs. But the threat worked...

Could of also worked without the hundreds of thousands of deaths imo...

 

[Deleted member 174758]

my ex f.i.l. was in the Lancs, he went to his grave ashamed of what he did in the war.....sad really, as every one else thought he was a hero...

The Americans thought the crew of Enola Gay were hero's after committing the biggest crime against humanity ever.

My father served in the RN throughout WWII as a medic (naval nurse), the last 3 years of his was service being spent in the Pacific supporting landings by both Anzac and American forces on many small islands often opposed to the last man by the Japanese forces. At the end of the conflict he spent many months in the task of repatriating PoWs formerly held by the Japanese to hospitals in the Darwin area of Australia for treatment before they returned home. Many died on that trip and more at Darwin because of the treatment meted out to them by their captors. He refused to speak about it until the last few years of his life, but held a lifelong hatred of the Japanese. Japanese treatment of PoWs was no worse than their treatment of occupied peoples in the entire Pacific "Greater Prosperity Zone". At this distance in time it is very easy to moralise about what one side did to the other, but you really need to learn a bit more about what happened before making such a shallow, one-sided stament.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

One can't but help think that if the americans wanted to they could have said...

'See that unihabited area? We will destroy it with one bomb. After that, we will do it again. After that, it will be Tokyo'...

Simply put, in military terms that doesn't work. The Japanese were told in plain terms that if they didn't surrender then unimagineable force would be used on them. They didn't. It was. Even then they didn't surrender and it took the destruction of a second city to bring them to the table. The purpose of using the bombs was not "an experiment" as you blithely put it - it was to minimise the deaths of potentially 300,000 to 500,000 allied troops and millions of Japanese citizens which a landing would have provoked because of the Japanese (the military government, that is) intention to fight to the last person, be that a man, woman or child, as many had done at Okinawa.