Originally posted by rshubert
Crumpet,
I have read that report about the Thames being run dry before, and believe it.
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You are free to believe in whatever you wish, you can believe in Buddha, Santa Claus, the Martians, that the our world is flat or that the Thames run dry...
There are areas of the Thames that acan be very shallow at low tide, under certain circumstances.
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The fun thing is, the 'thames run dry' arguement was orignally brought up by the apologist poster to exaggrevate the ferocity of the 1940 LW bombings of which he already described in a false manner. The arguement was that the bombings were so severe, that even the thames run dry, an event which would be seen as extreme by most able minded persons.
Now the same poster actually claims emptying the thames would be a simply thing, as 'proof' he brough up some minor waterfall which he claims he could even empty with his garden lawnmover. He now contradicts with his original statements. You also seem to contradict him, as you seem to be on a more logical approach, connecting the alleged emptying of the thames rathe more to the natural low tide rather than the alleged extremeity of the alleged 'terror bombings'.
The night bombing of London and other British targets is an established fact. It is also an established fact that London's east end was bombed back to the stone age during those raids. There were thousands of casualties, I have seen pictures of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, and films made by both sides.[/B]
Yes its and established fact, as well as it was not meant to be terror bombing. The goal of terror bombing is to systematically exterminating the population of the area with massive bombings of residental areas. The specific goal is mass murder itself, it`s not just a side effect due to technical limiations. Something very different than strategic bombing of pre-definied targets that are of great importance to the enemy`s war economy, which was what the Luftwaffe was doing over Englad in 1940.
Strategic bombing aimed at the enemy`s industrial potential, and accepted high civillian casulties as a side effect. Most if not all countries that were capable of it employed this kind of warfare in WW2.
Terror bombing on the other hand is aimed at the enemy`s population, damage done to the enemy`s industrial potential was only a side effect.
Since the only country employing such long-term 'strategy' of mass murder in the air war over europe was Britain, many modern day british apologists/revisionst, the like of Angus try to make up excuses for it. Hence the extremely distorted stories on certain events, with which they seek to relativize these crimes. The idea is to find, or better, since no they don`t exist, make up a (or many) precedent.
Yet the fact is that the historical LW orders given to units task them with attacking specific targets of industrial or economical nature. I find it hard to believe that the nazis would have destroyed such orders for 'terror bombing', had they existed (typicial apologist theory due to the lack of their existence), if they didn`t bother to destroy all those careful documentation on the destruction of 6 million european jews.
Now, unless you can tell me how the luftwaffe magically picked out pinpoint targets at night, you must admit that night bombing was area bombing. Area bombing does not provide target selection capability. [/B]
There was no magic involved, it was advanced radio guidance employed on all LW bombers in 1940 to navigate and find their targets during the night with a few hundred meters of accuracy. Three such radnav blind bombing systems existed, the Knickebein was employed on all LW bombers and could guide the bomber within several meters of it`s target. Specialized target-marker units like the KG 100 employed more sophisticated systems like the 'X' and 'Y' systems, which could allow for a 90m accuracy under good conditions, such as hitting the Spitfire factory hard in the automn. They preceeded the main bomber force and marked the targets for the rest with fires. There are several papers from British leaders, and observers from the US who were very impressed with the results. They planned the reported bomb pattern on large city maps, and found that the bomb pattern was in the near vicinity of the targets of strategic importance. The RAF even copied these systems for their own bombers later on, I guess they were impressed with the accuracy they provided over the old methods.
The description of these systems are below :
http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2833/general/tactics/knickebein/knickebein.htmlhttp://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2833/general/tactics/xgeraet/xgeraet.htmlThe site notes :
"The actual accuracy of the system was roughly 100 yards at 200 miles, which was near enough to hit a large individual factory when the ballistics of individual bombs and the different wind gradients were factored in. It was certainly the most accurate method of night bombing yet devised by any air force up to that time."Certainly the LW was not bombing blindly during 1940, they had choosed their targets, and made their best to hit them. Of course their aiming systems were not perfect (they are not perfect even today, ie. modern 'blue on blue' incidents), and many bombers missed their targets, because of their own mistakes or because of the british countermeasures like radio jamming or 'false' fire markers. (Some of these had rather 'interesting' results, like guiding german bombers over irish cities where they jettisoned their bombload... an 'honest mistake', according to the official british historywriting...hmm.)
