The Dambusters

Here are photos of two of the targets that night, the Eder and Mohne dams.
 

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I am not sure why it was considered a controversial raid, many people believe that had the allies focused on Germany's power and fuel systems from the onset of the war could have ended it by 1943.

Les Munro is an interesting guy, I have seen a number of interviews with him and they are always well thought out.
 
I am not sure why it was considered a controversial raid, many people believe that had the allies focused on Germany's power and fuel systems from the onset of the war could have ended it by 1943.

Les Munro is an interesting guy, I have seen a number of interviews with him and they are always well thought out.

I believe they did focus on the German fuel to quite an extend. I.e.: Ploiesti, Romania, the synthetic fuel plants, any truck or train hauling fuel. In fact my uncle took part in bombing runs over Ploiesti, Romania. By 43 the Germans were struggling to meet their fuel demands. According to my father in law who was in Germany at wars end they had to pull tanks up to the front using teams of horses at this late stage in the war.
This was one of the reasons they had to rely so heavily on horse drawn transport even in the early stages of the war. Unlike the Allies who were fully mechanized. And the Soviets who became mechanized with help from the lend lease.
I agree I don't know why destroying these dams was controversial this was done in the Ruhr. An area that was key to the German war industry.
 
I think it was Adolf Galland that said had 1% of the bombs that were dropped on German Industry had instead been dropped on power plants Germany would have collapsed in 1943.

Problem is that I can't find a reference that links him to the comment.
 
I am not sure why it was considered a controversial raid, many people believe that had the allies focused on Germany's power and fuel systems from the onset of the war could have ended it by 1943.

Have read opinions that questioned if the end result justified the time and effort expended on the effort. Not to mention the loss of what must be considered elite air-crew.
 
I think the difference is that at the time of the raid the war was in the balance and as such I think it was an excellent plan given the time and resources available, by comparison Dresden was in my opinion a war crime the war was over and there was no need for the attack it was simply a revenge attack.
 
Always felt that Dresden was one of the last targets available for the strategic air forces to prove their worth. They had already destroyed every other sizeable city in the Reich, so they might as well flatten it too.
 
Always felt that Dresden was one of the last targets available for the strategic air forces to prove their worth. They had already destroyed every other sizeable city in the Reich, so they might as well flatten it too.


If the excuse "Because we can" wont get you off a speeding ticket why should it get you off killing tens of thousands of people and flattening a city, it is an excuse used by those without a valid reason.
 
I have read that these medals are expected to be sold for close on £200.000. There is often a lot of talk that this raid did not achieve the results expected. Tens of thousands of slave labourers were pulled of building the Atlantic wall to rebuild the dams and help repair the damage making D Day easier than expected. Also a huge amount of German industry was badly affected by the flooding and other raids lost for more aircrew than the dam busters one. My father was stood down in 1940 on a raid that took place in France and the whole squadron did not come back from that raid.
 
If the excuse "Because we can" wont get you off a speeding ticket why should it get you off killing tens of thousands of people and flattening a city, it is an excuse used by those without a valid reason.

Some claim the death tally at Dresden was > 100,000. Whole building were sucked into the firestorm. The pavement caught fire. The real number may never be known.
 
Hamburg, as well as many other German cities, suffered the same fate but don't have the same controversy attached to them. I think that it was a matter of timing. Earlier in the war, in the eyes of many, it was justified to attack cities, but by the time that Dresden was destroyed the war was winding down and its destruction seemed like a case of hitting it merely because it hadn't been hit yet. Destruction for destruction's sake.
 
Some claim the death tally at Dresden was > 100,000. Whole building were sucked into the firestorm. The pavement caught fire. The real number may never be known.
I suspect the answer is about 35,000, David Irving's book claimed 100,000 plus but he is a bit of a German apologist and tends to quote at the high end of the scale.

But really we are just talking magnitude we could just agree that it was a huge number and leave it at that.
 
Bomber Harris was running out of targets Dresden had been spared for the most part but Harris had a thousand bombers and the will to bomb something anything Churchill agreed so there went Dresden , more Germans died in one night than all the Brits during the entire Blitz .
 
There were NO military targets in Dresden .

Not true, Dresden was a major rail hub (which they never hit) and it also had small scale cottage industry that by then was being used for military purposes.

I think it fairer to say that there was nothing in Dresden that by February 1945 was going to change the outcome or even prolong the war.
 
The Rail hub was some 6 miles out side the City it was bombed by the Americans the day after the night raid by the Brits , many Americans were appalled by the destruction to the City .
 
The Rail hub was some 6 miles out side the City it was bombed by the Americans the day after the night raid by the Brits , many Americans were appalled by the destruction to the City .

That rail hub was fed by the Marienbrücke rail bridge which you can tell from the picture is not 6 miles outside the city in fact it is less than 2 kilometers from both the Frauenkirche and the Dreikonigskirche both of which were flattened.

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General Hampe the commander of the Engineers who was sent to carry out salvage and repair work commented in his reports that the destruction of that bridge alone would have disrupted rail traffic for many weeks and that the capacity of Dresden as a rail hub was not diminished by more than a few days even after the 3 days of bombing that destroyed the city.

The reality is Dresden was destroyed as a last ditched act of revenge and little else.
 
tevet

You say that many Americans were appalled at the destruction at Dresden, Yet when America fire bombed the cities in Japan it made Dresden look like a sunday school picnic.
The Japanese cities were bombed with napalm and around 100.000 died in Tokyo, more people died in this attack than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Yet they will happily have a go at the RAF for carrying out the raid on Dresden.
 
tevet

You say that many Americans were appalled at the destruction at Dresden, Yet when America fire bombed the cities in Japan it made Dresden look like a sunday school picnic.
The Japanese cities were bombed with napalm and around 100.000 died in Tokyo, more people died in this attack than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Yet they will happily have a go at the RAF for carrying out the raid on Dresden.

LeEnfield you are wasting your time with tetvet, he is anti British and admitted he supports the IRA. That says enough quite frankly.

He's not worth your time or mine.
 
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