What’s with the “revenge” angle?
This was in the middle of the war.
I thought the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo was the revenge for Pearl Harbor. It was a great propaganda victory, though of little military value.
The 1944 filmed account, ‘Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,’ based on Ted Lawson’s book and starring Van Johnson and Spencer Tracy, was an excellent WWII film, and is shown occasionally on TV.
The article uses “revenge” in the title and the text, as well as the word “avenge.”
That is why I said to be careful for BBC leftist slant here. The BBC drips of anti-US sentiment, with a good dose of anti-Israeli sentiment thrown in for balance.
I think the use of the words “revenge” and “avenge” are meant to paint the US’s action in 1944 as being emotional and hence irrational. (Of course they were taken as a very logical action in a war to defeat the enemy.) But the irrationality/emotionality aspect plays into the BBC’s recurring theme that fits today’s view of the US: stupid cowboys who do not act rationally.
You see the same thing with the Israeli/Arab conflict. Reports of Hamas lobbing bombs into Israel are “skirmishes” whereas Israeli Army actions are “brutal offenses” or similarly charged language.
And the Brits are forced to pay for the BBC through a “tele tax.”