Ever heard of "fan pattern" bombing?
"Toward the fall of 1944, as the Allies achieved supremacy in the skies over Germany and could concentrate their fire undeterred, they succeeded with regularity in provoking firestorms - in Kassel, Würzburg, Darmstadt, Heilbronn, Wuppertal, Weser, Magdeburg, and culminating in the incredible butchery of Dresden. The Allies experimented on the best way to provoke the desired effect. Different bombing patterns were tried to give the deadliest concentration of incendiary bombs (the optimum was found to be a "fan" pattern which was then used on Dresden)."
The effect was like nuclear bomb, only without radiation.
THC had something on WMDs Wednesday night.
Dresden got off easy. 25K-40K killed. Tokyo lost 100K in its firebomb raid. All told, I think the piece
said Japan had over 200mi2 burned by firing bombing.
Oh, and the Dresden raid was made up of 3 waves: pathfinders, convention bombs intended to blow off the roofs
of buildings for access and to provide kindling, and finally the thermite.
The Dresden raid's "success" sparked the firebombing of Japan. Also more effective at disrupting
industry, since a lot of Japan's production came from cottage industries in the cities.
My understanding is that those fires were not even on the level of Dresden.. The Dresden fire storm happened because several weather factors being present not just the dropping of incendiaries as i remember.. But, No I am not completely aware of those fire storms.. maybe you were correct in the motive of it.. or we both were correct at different levels of hindsight.. or some other motive or motives have dropped off a really accurate Motive'ometer looking at this 60 years later.. Hindsight appears to be 20/20 but hindsight don't include the smell of the dogs of war.. nasty creatures dogs of war.. They don't smell good.. maybe thats a good thing..
I read that Dresden was not a critical military target, not so with the other citys maybe.. Even so, payback is a b!tch.. Lucky the Germans fought such a christian country that generated the Marshall plan.. any other country (like England, France) would have let them stew in their juices.. OR raped them during recovery..
The error of the Marshall Plan only became evident 40 to 60 years later.. No good deed goes unpunished.. Most of the country's the United States has "helped" over the years only ended up hating us.. Germany, France, a good part of England.. Canada.. Russia for sure.. for many reasons.. Still the U.S. has not learned that lesson.. Now, the Iraqis will end up hating us.. even more than they do already.. us being infidels like we are..
Germany and France and England too are black holes of Christian love. There may be a little gratitude there but the black hole won't let it get out.. The "HOLE" absorbs all effects of residual decency and gratitude to any benefactor.. Must be the socialist brain washing and didactic materialism.. that pervades those places.. Socialism is defacto slavery by government, we'll probably have to go save their asses from THAT too.. The work is never done for a "Doo gooder" nation... pity..
I have often thought that the systematic firebombing of the German cities had a retributive aspect as well as a "warning" to other potential enemies (Soviets?), that is, a demonstration of our air abilities. I don't think there is any question that the decision to use nukes in Japan had, however small, an aspect of " observe our capabilities".