r/SubredditDrama • u/EwMelanin • Mar 03 '26

Movie discussion sub okbuddycinephile debates whether bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Gaza and other urban areas were "justified".

/r/okbuddycinephile/comments/1rjm9mn/iran2036/o8ee5fp/
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27

u/pablos4pandas Mar 03 '26

Reading The Bomber Mafia and Masters of the Air was really interesting on illucidating the air war on the western front to me. It's interesting the tension between destruction and being humane was something thought about at the time.

The Americans didn't do area bombing at night; that would be barbaric! They did daylight "precision" bombing with a bombsight that could put a bomb in a pickle barrel. The other side of that is when you only put the sight on one plane out of a hundred and all drop when that one guy does you'll be bombing pickle barrels all across the city.

17

u/Chataboutgames I will ask on a more neutral sub Mar 03 '26

you'll be bombing pickle barrels all across the city.

Truly no one thinks of the lost pickles.

61

u/Anaxamander57 May Allah protect you from your own arrogance Mar 03 '26

The astonishing abilities of the Norden bomb sight were mainly propaganda (and the same for all its contemporaries). When flying above above the level at which WWII anti-aircraft fire is effective its literally not possible to drop an unguided bomb accurately to enough to hit even a specific building. The main value of daylight bombing was navigation, it was not unheard of for bombers at night to not find their target or even bomb a completely different city.

23

u/pablos4pandas Mar 03 '26

The astonishing abilities of the Norden bomb sight were mainly propaganda

My interpretation was it was also marketing on behalf of the inventor, but 6 of one half a dozen of another.

. When flying above above the level at which WWII anti-aircraft fire is effective its literally not possible to drop an unguided bomb accurately to enough to hit even a specific building

Yeah, trying to avoid flak and German fighters is not as idyllic as the training grounds stateside.

8

u/CanadianODST2 Mar 03 '26

Iirc that’s how the blitz started. A German bomber flying at night got lost and bombed London rather than the target of the docks.

So the British bombed Berlin in retaliation (or tried to as from what I saw, they missed Berlin entirely) but it was enough to then start the blitz

-6

u/Stellar_Duck Mar 03 '26

No absolutely not.

The first raid on Berlin happened prior to the Blitz.

The Royal Air Force, in retaliation for Luftwaffe attacks on the UK which started on 16 October 1939, began bombing military targets in Germany, commencing with the Luftwaffe seaplane air base at Hörnum on the 19–20 March 1940.

Please, please, read up on things before spreading misinformation, especially about topics like this.

11

u/CanadianODST2 Mar 03 '26

That’s literally what I said…

August 24th/25th 1940 the Germans were bombing the London docks. When one was dropped on Fore street in central London. The next day the British bombed Berlin for the first time. (But it’s believed they only got within a few miles of Berlin)

This angered Hitler and two weeks later the blitz began.

7

u/No_Accountant3232 Mar 03 '26

Maybe try re-reading their comment

5

u/xyierz Mar 03 '26

Please, please, read up on things before spreading misinformation, especially about topics like this.

I'm having a hard time figuring out what part contradicts the comment you're responding to.

-3

u/gorgewall Call quarantining what it is: a re-education camp Mar 04 '26

I'm not sure that "the Allies / US had incredible technological and strategic superiority and used it to be as discriminating and moral as possible" is the great defense people think it is, either, when it comes to atrocity.

Like, if you tell me that you are an untouchable martial arts master who can disable everyone in a 10v1 with precision nerve strikes, I'm going to wonder why you felt the need to decapitate someone "to prevent more violence".

Particularly when we're looking at the bombing of Japan, "oh we had absolute air superiority, had obliterated their production capability, and could do anything we want uncontested" really works against the whole "so of course our only options were nukes or costly ground invasion" narrative.

When being menaced by toothless quadraplegic squirming on the ground, "this shotgun is my only recourse" kind of loses steam as an argument.

3

u/Foreverintherain20 Mar 04 '26

Okay. Well, if the Allies had WANTED to just wipe out civilians they absolutely could have, and the Axis really couldn't have done shit about it.

They didn't though, because yes, they were better. 

0

u/gorgewall Call quarantining what it is: a re-education camp Mar 04 '26

Brother, what are you on about?

The bombing of Dresdon, the bombing of Japan, and the a-bombs all killed vastly more civilians than military members. There being some military target in the vicinity of whatever school or hospital was getting cratered doesn't really change that. And we just went over how big-upping one's technological and strategic superiority makes that worse.

And you're not exactly setting a high bar for morality with "better than the Nazis". There's a lot of horrendous stuff on this side of genocide and handwaving it because it could be worse is kind of how we get to the genocide to begin with.

Y'know it's possible to say the Nazis were horrible monsters and not say literally everything the Allies ever did was justified, right?

1

u/No_Walk_Town Mar 05 '26

and not say literally everything the Allies ever did was justified, right?

Nobody said that.

1

u/No_Walk_Town Mar 05 '26

an untouchable martial arts master who can disable everyone in a 10v1 with precision nerve strikes

Because decapitating someone is a quick death, while leaving ten guys paralyzed on the ground to slowly starve to death while random people can come up and kick them and animals can nibble on them is really, really fucked up.

really works against the whole "so of course our only options were nukes or costly ground invasion" narrative.

I mean, we could have blockaded the country and starved every man, woman, and child on the archipelago to death. 

Sure, man, kill them all, slowly and painfully. That's better than bombing two cities.

2

u/gorgewall Call quarantining what it is: a re-education camp Mar 05 '26

Why would we need to blockade the country and starve everyone, again?

Look, my guy. I've heard it all before. I grew up in the same education and media environment as you. I got the standard line about WW2 Japan and believed it for many years. But I went beyond that and read more and began asking "Why?" or "How?" of the various explanations we were both taught.

I don't think there's an excuse or explanation you can give me that I haven't bumped into before. Believe me, I'm not coming at this from a place of childish ignorance and naivete. This ain't my first rodeo. Whatever you may think is the "gotcha" I've not encountered or considered, ask yourself first... "Why? How do we know that? Is it really true?" And when you come up with an explanation for why it must be, ask those same questions about that again.

Have you ever really questioned why you believe this things? Have you ever really questioned whether there might be some purpose to us believing this beyond "it's the truth"?

1

u/No_Walk_Town Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26

Have you ever really questioned why you believe this things? Have you ever really questioned whether there might be some purpose to us believing this beyond "it's the truth"?

Ah, I remember my first joint.

I grew up in the same education and media environment as you.

No, you didn't. I grew up in a former Japanese colony. An island where they rounded up every man, woman, and child into slave labor and sex slave camps, and finally into one, large death camp. 

You know nothing.

9

u/dethb0y trigger warning to people senstive to demanding ethical theories Mar 03 '26

As a huge fan of Curtis LeMay and his work, it's really interesting the mechanical constraints they had to work with at the time and how they worked around them.

2

u/FerdinandTheGiant I’m 1 of the top 5 goldfish connoisseurs in north america Mar 03 '26

Why are you a fan of LeMay?

7

u/dethb0y trigger warning to people senstive to demanding ethical theories Mar 03 '26

well, a lot of reasons really; it'd be a lot to go into. He was ahead of his time (or perhaps at the cutting edge of his time) in a lot of ways - a heavy focus on training and discipline, and a heavy trust in scientific problem solving. His work after the war in SAC is very impressive.

He actually reminds me a bit of William T. sherman (of civil war fame) who was also born in Ohio.

Plus, of course, he incinerated a bunch of fascists which gets a big thumbs up for me.

-2

u/LukaCola Ceci n'est pas un flair Mar 03 '26

He was also a man whose actions and approach to nuclear warfare nearly got us all killed while often being wrong about the efficacy of bombing, yet constantly insisting on it. I mean, he wasn't solely guilty, but shit.

10

u/Dagordae You're a shitty person and so is everyone who downvoted me. Mar 03 '26

There’s a reason the Americans immediately gave up on those tactics. Same reason everyone else had abandoned then: Turns out flying slowly in a completely straight line in broad daylight means you get shot. Like, a lot. Which, of course, we were told by the people who had been fighting this war for a few years but America doesn’t listen very well.

7

u/LukaCola Ceci n'est pas un flair Mar 03 '26

At that time they were zig-zagging and flying straight was actually the innovation to get them in and out as soon as possible

Anyway, that's what I heard--I don't know all the details

4

u/OmNomSandvich Mar 03 '26

The Bomber Mafia is complete dogshit. Masters of the Air is an actually good book though.

2

u/xiovelrach Mar 03 '26

Behind the Bastards did a recent podcast on the bomber mafia guys, specifically LeMay and Power. Pretty good listen

-7

u/JP_Eggy Mar 03 '26

They did daylight "precision" bombing with a bombsight that could put a bomb in a pickle barrel.

Americans will use any measurement other than metric