Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Harrowby Hall on May 16, 2018, 06:17:38 PM
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Today is the 70th anniversary of the most celebrated airforce operation of World War 2 - Operation Chastise: The Dam Busters.
This has a particular resonance for me. After I left school I worked for the Air Ministry Works Directorate at the headquarters of No 1 Area. The building in which we were housed, St Vincents, had been the operation centre for the Dam Busters raid and was where Barnes Wallis waited for reports of the outcome of the raid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-lincolnshire-22563345/the-lincolnshire-hub-of-the-dambusters-operation
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Today is the 70th anniversary of the most celebrated airforce operation of World War 2 - Operation Chastise: The Dam Busters.
This has a particular resonance for me. After I left school I worked for the Air Ministry Works Directorate at the headquarters of No 1 Area. The building in which we were housed, St Vincents, had been the operation centre for the Dam Busters raid and was where Barnes Wallis waited for reports of the outcome of the raid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-lincolnshire-22563345/the-lincolnshire-hub-of-the-dambusters-operation
It is amazing the number of books and articles slagging off the blokes who flew the raid have been written.
The raid's effectiveness or otherwise, the number of casualties, etc, was not down to the crews, brave men all!
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Indeed they were - but it cannot be denied that the raid was largely a failure. Not all of the dams were breached, and the ones which were did less damage than expected. The flooded arms factories were operational again within a fortnight.
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I didn't think the crews were blamed for the German deaths, and deaths of POWs, were they? Well, I suppose some Germans did, but the criticism in the UK was presumably directed at various politicians and military, as with Dresden. In fact, the Geneva Conventions eventually outlawed attacks on dams, with some exception (if they are being used for military purposes).
The Germans threatened to flood much of Holland at the end of the war, but I think, if my poor old memory still works, that that was considered then to be a war crime. Anyway, they flooded some areas, but not all of them.
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It is amazing the number of books and articles slagging off the blokes who flew the raid have been written.
I've read a lot of books praising the Dam Busters and a lot that were critical of the tactical success of the raid but that also praised the men who took part but I have never seen a book that slagged them off.
For the record, in military terms, the raids were a failure as was most of the British bombing offensive. However, the propaganda benefits of the raid were undeniable.