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Dresden: The World War Two bombing 75 years on

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TomSea:

--- Quote ---Dresden: The World War Two bombing 75 years on
 By Toby Luckhurst BBC News      13 February 2020

"The firestorm is incredible... Insane fear grips me and from then on I repeat one simple sentence to myself continuously: 'I don't want to burn to death'. I do not know how many people I fell over. I know only one thing: that I must not burn."

On 13 February 1945, British aircraft launched an attack on the eastern German city of Dresden. In the days that followed, they and their US allies would drop nearly 4,000 tons of bombs in the assault.

The ensuing firestorm killed 25,000 people, ravaging the city centre, sucking the oxygen from the air and suffocating people trying to escape the flames.

Read more at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51448486
--- End quote ---

Fishrrman:
Good article and pics.

It was all-out, total war.
It was... what it was.

skeeter:
I do not believe it was ever proven that bombing civilian populations had any effect other than increase the intransigence of those bombed.

Although an argument can be made it helped where industrial capacity had been decentralized and spread among the population in the form of hundreds of small shops, as in Japan.

EdinVA:
Monday morning quarterbacking using current technologies to bash past actions.
In those days, we had to drop hundreds of bombs to take out a target, not just one or two.
Bombing accuracy was 50% luck and 50% prayer.

PeteS in CA:

--- Quote from: EdinVA on February 13, 2020, 11:45:13 pm ---Monday morning quarterbacking using current technologies to bash past actions.
In those days, we had to drop hundreds of bombs to take out a target, not just one or two.
Bombing accuracy was 50% luck and 50% prayer.

--- End quote ---

A Mosquito or P-47 could probably be pretty precise against a single target, but Dresden had multiple industries plus being a major rail hub (extremely important in shuttling of forces between the two fronts). So B-17s and Lancasters were pretty much it (though Mosquitos were used to mark targets).

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