[discostu]

Nobody is. You talk about targeting limitations. That’s got nothing to do with what we were talking about. The Dresden raid came in phases:
fragmentation bombs to get people in shelters
Incendiary bombs to light those shelters on fire
Fragmentation bombs again to get the people fighting the fires

There is only one reason for that kind of timing for a bombing of the middle of a populated city: kill civilians.

[dfwgator]

Is this not precisely what the Germans did in London and Coventry?

[Captain Walker]

I think anyone in this discussion who is old enough to have an immediate family member who served in the Second World War should simply identify himself or herself; because the rest of us are never going to reach that person.

The Americans were the good guys who could never do anything wrong, the "Krauts" and the "Nips" were the bad guys who could never do anything right, and that's all there is to it.

Just please don't bring up anything that might indicate that our hands were not as clean as I grew up believing them to be. < /s>

[CodeToad]

“There is only one reason for that kind of timing for a bombing of the middle of a populated city: kill civilians.”

So? War is Hell.

[Captain Walker]

Don't forget that the fires started by the incendiaries (Brandbomben) also consumed the oxygen.

There were bodies found in the shelters that were untouched by the flames; the cause of death was asphyxiation. The raging fires at street level and in the buildings above left the "sheltered" with no more oxygen to breathe. (They wouldn't know it until it was too late, but hunkering down in the shelters would cost many people their lives.)