Percy Dalton 6:19 Mon Oct 9
Bomber Command
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My daughter was running in yesterdays royal parks half marathon.So took the opportunity to go to the Bomber Command memorial at Green Park.
Now I'm not an emotional person I don't get upset to easily but I must confess I had to swallow hard viewing the statues and when I looked at the Mrs she was shedding a few tears.
I told her that I was surprised too see her like that,she told me that her uncle Ed was in Bomber Command and was killed on his fifth sortie.
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Replies - In Chronological Order ( Show Newest Messages First)
bruuuno
6:39 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Cool story bro
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chim chim cha boo
6:41 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Great, isn't it?
I was lucky enough to know Dougie Radcliffe who was the chairman of the Bomber Command Memorial Fund who died a few weeks ago.
He did more to secure a permanent memorial for the nigh-on 57,000 Bomber Boys who never came back than anyone and was a Wellington Bomber radio operator.
He's getting a proper send-off at St Clement Danes next month but the sad thing is there are fewer and fewer of the old boys left now. Even Harry Irons, famous for his 60 missions as a Lancaster tail-gunner walks with a stick- inconceivable a couple of years ago.
It's a beautiful monument though.
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Percy Dalton
6:55 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Chim
That's remarkable regarding Harry Irons apparently more rear gunners were killed than any other crew as they were sitting ducks to the German fighter planes.
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bruuuno
7:15 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Shame that so many British fliers were killed, women children and refugees burned alive and cities razed to the ground all because of one mans ego
Harris - war criminal
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Far Cough
7:18 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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If Harris is a war criminal, then Truman must be also?
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Far Cough
7:19 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Oh, by the way, they are not
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Northern Sold
7:29 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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They reaped the whirlwind....
Agree fantastic memorial to Bomber command.... changing the subject slightly see the last bit of the HBO WW2 trilogy (after band of Brothers and the pacific) has been given the green light... going to be all about the USAF (the Mighty 8th)
http://www.doddlenews.com/news-room/hbo-spending-half-billion-tom-hanks-third-world-war-ii-mini-series/
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bruuuno
7:29 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Not sure on your point re Truman but Harris ignored all evidence to the contrary that area bombing did not work and pigheadedly tried to win the war on his own. The bloke wasted thousands of lives because he was too stubborn to accept that he was wrong. Cunt
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Far Cough
7:32 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Truman gave the go ahead for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan
Germany were raining V1s and V2s on civilians in London right until the end of the war are you saying we shouldn't have responded in kind?
It was total war then, civilians unfortunately get killed
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Whitester.
7:35 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Great thread.
Other than the Russian T34tank (in my my opinion won war) the blanket bombing of the German cities Cologne, Dresden and Hamburg etc was although dreadful it was also a necessity to enable us to beet the Nazis.
My cat is called bomber after bomber Harris.
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bruuuno
7:36 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Harris had the choice to divert his resources to the bombing the synthetic refineries; something that the yanks had shown was achievable and would have shortened the war
Trumans alternative to dropping the bomb was a land invasion of Japan which would probably have resulted in millions of American casualties
I don't see how you can compare the two - Harris had options but pig headed to refused to even consider those options despite the masses of evidence to the contrary. Truman had one other very poor option
Harris = cunt
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Far Cough
7:47 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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"Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers.
To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier."
Sir Arthur Harris
and agreed
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chim chim cha boo
8:09 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Whatever the merits or demerits of Arthur Harris I know that on Remembrance Sunday Dougie would go alone and put a wreath of poppies at the foot of Harris' statue.
My own take on it was that for two solid years you could have lived in Germany and not known there was a war on if it wasn't for Bomber Command.
This quote for me is the clincher in the area bombing debate:
“The real importance of the air war consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion of Europe. That front was the skies over Germany. The unpredictability of the attacks made the front gigantic; every square meter of the territory we controlled was a kind of front line.
Defense against air attacks required the production of thousands of antiaircraft guns, the stockpiling of tremendous quantities of ammunition all over the country, and holding in readiness hundreds of thousands of soldiers.… As far as I can judge … no one has yet seen that this was the greatest lost battle on the German side.
The losses from the retreats in Russia or from the surrender of Stalingrad were considerably less.”
Albert Speer
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Problem Child
8:43 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Anyone know who Frederik Lindemann was?
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Far Cough
8:47 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Haha, you rascal
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Sven Roeder
9:01 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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You’ve obviously been married a fair while .... has her Uncle’s war record NEVER been mentioned before through all the years of commemorations of Remembrance Day etc etc?
Have you asked her if she has any other secrets?
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Far Cough
9:07 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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A V2 narrowly missed the Boleyn ground:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#/media/File:Bomb_Damage_in_London,_England,_April_1945_CH15111.jpg
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Percy Dalton
9:22 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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sven
Coming up to forty years.Her side of the family never mentioned the war, whereas my old man god bless him had me and my brother marching up and down Valletta grove in Plaistow.
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yngwies Cat
9:23 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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Reply Northern Sold 7:29 Mon Oct 9
Nice one Northern
With work I go to Germany quite a bit, tucked up in the pressurised can of an air bus. Obviously coasting a bit at a
Higher attitude, them those bomber boys.
Hard to imagine the cold, noise and fear, as they flew on and if lucky got back home in flak or night fighter riddled planes.
All of them so young.
Salutes and thanks.
PS
I would have got myself posted to Costal Command and flown
In the Flying Porcupine
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Side of Ham
9:35 Mon Oct 9
Re: Bomber Command
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It's quite simple that whatever bomber command did to those German cities was akin to cutting out a cancer which was the Nazis. As always with a cancer it has its expendable elements but i justify it to myself by remembering we the allies did stop killing innocent Germans relatively quickly after the Nazis we defeated.Those Nazis would still be exterminating races and the disabled to this day it would have just got more procedural.
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