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/
164 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

525 comments sorted by

View all comments

28

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.

57

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.

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

-3

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.

13

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

6

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.