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SOMEONE CHALLENGE THE NEUTRALITY OF THIS ARTICLE PLEASE!!! Iraqi civilians were killed by "aerial bombardment of cites"?!? Would whoever posted this please look up the definition of bombardment?? Nothing but super-precise, laser-guided Tomahawk missiles were used in Iraq--to pinpoint SPECIFIC targets (the OPPOSITE of bombardment). Also, the 10,000 figure is total B.S. That's almost half the number killed in Hamburg during WWII (which actually WAS bombarded, with the express purpose of killing as many civilians as possible).

I removed the above recent addition because the author seems confused between "Aerial bombing of cities" and "Aerial Area bombardment" of cities.

• I agree that the 10,000 figure needs a source.
• But Hamburg was not bombed with the "express purpose of killing as many civilians as possible". It was that "Operations should now be focussed on the morale of the enemy civilian population and in particular, the industrial workers" Air Ministry directive issued to RAF Bomber Command on 14th February 1942 Philip Baird Shearer 12:17, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are a little bit "blue-eyed" - the consequence out of: "Operations should now be focussed on the morale of the enemy civilian population and in particular, the industrial workers" was to attack the residential areas of Hammerbrook, Hamm, Eilbek etc. etc. to destroy their homes, but these houses were occuppied by civilians - therefore the task was to kill as many civilians as possible - I invite you to show you around here in Hamburg - which areas had been bombed.

Citius Altius Fortius 08:26, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Semantics, Lord Cherwell and Churchill, explicity said that they wanted to germany to become smoldering ruins, the way that you siad it is everithing, but still it dosent change the fact that the were responsible for the death of thousens of innocent civilians, to focuse on the moral of the enemy civilians, that is totally againts the international ruling of war, to involved in military operations the death of inocent civilians. Erick Muller 14:16, 11 June 2007.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.245.246.116 (talk • contribs) 20:31, 11 June 2007

Actually the rationale behind the Area Bombing of the German cities was a policy known as de-housing, and meant what it said. The intended effect was to burn out the housing of the workers in the industrial areas leaving the German Government with a massive housing problem, which would demand considerable resources to be transferred from other areas of the Nazi war economy, i.e., armaments, etc. Whether the workers were present at the time of the attacks was immaterial, evacuation of these civilian workers to safer areas being a matter for the German Government, and not under the control of the British.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.96.202 (talk) 21:24, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know this is nitpicky, but there is a photo with the following slightly erroneous caption:

"The remains of German town of Wesel after intensive allied area bombing in 1945 (destruction rate 97% of all buildings)"

97% is the level of destruction, but it's not a rate. From the wiki article on "rate":

"A rate is a special kind of ratio, indicating a relationship between two measurements with different units, such as miles to gallons or cents to pounds."

What then, is a small error of writing, grammatical, thecnical, call it what you want, the fact is that during all the bombings that Wesel suffer during the war, about 97% of the city was level. Erick Muller, 14:30 11 June 2007. {{subst:unsigned2|20:31, 11 June 2007|148.245.246.116}

An article called "Bomber Boys: Good men doing an ugly job" by Patrick Bishop, in BBC History magazine Vol 8 no 3, March 2007 page 17 first paragraph, states that:

Hugo Sperrle, commander of the German Air Fleet Three, was not charged at the Nuremberg trials with war crimes relating to the Blitz, for fear of drawing attention to the damage done to German Cities.

Patrick Bishop who writes in the Daily Telegraph has written a book called "Bomber Boys: Fighting back 1940-45" that is scheduled to be published in April 2007. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This conflicts with our articles on Sperrle and the High Command Trial where Sperrle was indicted on four counts but was found not guilty. The High Command Trial article links to the UN law report of the case and indeed Sperrle was a defendant. I think Bishop is wrong on this point. Lisiate 22:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AFAICT he was tried for other war crimes not the Blitz: see talk:Hugo Sperrle#Nuremberg trials for the full quote by Jörg Friedrich about this: "who as commander in chief of German Air Fleet 3 led the bombing of London and Coventry. ... But Taylor did not even charge him with that bloody act ... If Charles Portal or Hugo Sperrle had run amok through Berlin or London with a machine gun, then Taylor would of course have charged him for the action. At least that is what he later wrote. According to the legal position in Nuremberg, it was not the willful killing of noncombatants that determined the crime, but the direction of fire. The horizontal fire of a machine gun is illegal; the vertical direction of the bomb munitions, on the other hand, is legal" --Philip Baird Shearer 20:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He couldn't have been charged with War Crimes for attacking London, Coventry or elsewhere - it wasn't actually illegal to attack defended cities, only undefended ones. This is why Göring wasn't charged at Nuremburg for the Luftwaffe's attacks on the UK either. The UK and German cities were all defended, either by AA guns (Flak) or fighters, or, more usually, both. If a city or town was liable to be attacked from the air then it was the responsibility of the governing power to evacuate the civilian personnel to a place of safety, out of harm's way. The UK did this for children in 1940 - see Children's Overseas Reception Board. For whatever reasons, the German Government didn't.

As regards Sperrle not being charged with 'War Crimes' for 'fear of drawing attention to the damage done to German Cities.' I can assure you that in the then-prevailing Allied attitude to the Germans the majority of people felt the Germans got what they deserved, and quite frankly, didn't give a shit about the German citys, the majority having too many more pressing concerns on their minds, such as trying to pick-up their lives from where they had been so rudely interrupted in 1939. The fact that the British in the very bad Winter of 1945/6 sent to Germany food that they could hardly spare themselves, to help the German people, says a lot about the 'evil' British.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.96.202 (talk) 21:46, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a glaring error at the very start of the article. If the section is a history of the aerial bombardment of cities, then Mazatlan is the first instance of that. I don't see why this should be a difficult issue, but I am mentioning it here before editing out or revising the subsection. I think a major problem with this article is that editors may want to write on matters not covered by the article's title, since the title is, frankly, oddly restrictive and just not intuitive. Why 'of cities'? Bombing of 'towns', though, can be discussed, but perhaps not 'villages'? Why not 'aerial bombardment of civilians' as an alternative title, to contrast with 'aerial bombardment' in general, or as a specific military tactic?Haberstr (talk) 21:02, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In most cases civilians are not targeted (very difficult to see them in the dark from 20,000 feet) what are targeted are static targets within cities or until weapon delivery systems became more accurate the cities themselves. In this case cities and towns are interchangeable as the traditional designation of a city having a cathedral (or is it 5 MacDonalds?) is arbitrary. --PBS (talk) 22:10, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I realize you (like me) are trying to figure out how to be all-inclusive without having 5 or 6 main articles semi-duplicating each other. In any case, I didn't mention targeting, but certainly there are words from the planners that demoralizing and dehousing civilians was the intent of area bombardment by Britain. I don't know if we have that for the Nazi attacks in Guernica, but what happened seemed to involve low-level bombardment and strafing where the 'bombers' could see what they were doing. It would usually (but not always) be unwise for an article on 'aerial bombardment of civilians' to speculate much on motive; often readers can be shown results and can speculate on their own whether civilians were targeted. About the cities includes towns but perhaps not villages: the British bombed villages during the 1920 Iraq revolt, so that could be legitimately alleged as terror bombing but would not be allowed into this 'aerial bombing of cities (and towns)" article.Haberstr (talk) 22:42, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Terror_bombing#Request_for_Comment All contributions to the current discussion would be welcome. Sherzo (talk) 12:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

During the Cold War, the Strategic Air Command's 1st Combat Evaluation Group deployed radar bomb scoring units from Barksdale Air Force Base on board military railroad cars to score simulated thermonuclear bombing of cities in the continental United States.^[1]

Maier^[2]

References

--Pawyilee (talk) 17:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article, and the linked article mention Germany bombing Britain and (now) British bombing plan. What of German activities against French towns and vice versa etc.? GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:34, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]