Whereas the bombing of Hamburg and Dresden --- city block by city block --- is a different situation altogether.
Not really, not in war and not in context. The Germans began the bombing of civilians in London during the Battle of Britain and on into the Blitz. The Germans bombed London on Christmas Day, 1940. Those of you who wail incessantly about civilian causalities give no thought to the fact that it was the policy of the German government that precipitated the inclusion of the innocent in warfare. In short, don't start what you can't finish and don't use tactics on your enemy that you don't want used against you. The actual blame for the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne lies with Adolph Hitler and the German High Command. Not the Allies.
Furthermore, what you think of as deliberate targeting of civilians is nonsense. Those of you who know nothing of aerial bombing just can't, or won't, understand that in WWII bombing was incredibly inaccurate. The only way for the RAF to hit its intended industrial/military target was to drop a lot of bombs all over the place. The idea of precision bombing is only in the imagination of the ignorant. Even today, with modern laser guided munitions, the expectation of precision is beyond the reality.