Yuki Tanaka - Bombing Civilians

Table of Contents

Also edited by Marilyn B. Young from The New Press

Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past
(with Lloyd C. Gardner)

The New American Empire: A 21st Century Teach-In on U.S. Foreign Policy
(with Lloyd C. Gardner)

INTRODUCTION

Yuki Tanaka

This passage from a poem by Hiroshima victim Sadako Kurihara graphically depicts the horror experienced not only by A-bomb victims but by all who have suffered air raid attacks: fire, smoke, flight. Yet the attackers, hundreds of meters in the air above, have little sense of what is happening down below. For the bomber crews, the people on the ground are entirely abstract; they are targets. By contrast, the experience of their victims is of the most terrible concrete reality. The sharp juxtaposition of abstract and concrete is a phenomenon unique to aerial bombing.

The premium placed on aerial bombing in modern warfare owes much to the relative safety of the attackers and the complete vulnerability of the victims. The psychological remoteness of pilots and bombardiers from the reality of the horror on the ground is well described by Charles Lindbergh, who flew the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic, in 1927. Lindbergh also flew combat missions in the Pacific theater as a consultant for the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, General Henry Arnold, during World War II:

The origin of aerial bombing can be traced to the use of hot-air balloons in warfare in the late eighteenth century. Initially, balloons were used simply to determine the size and position of enemy forces, but militarists soon realized their potential for dropping grenades and other harmful objects on enemy troops. The use of airplanes in the early twentieth century led to a drastic change in war strategy: the wide expansion of war zones to include indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

Aerial bombing of civilians was first conducted by German planes against Parisians in August 1914eleven years after the Wright brothers successfully flew the first aircraft in 1903. By the end of 1914, the Allies were also making serial air raids into German territories. Thus, by the time World War I ended in 1918, both sides had engaged in indiscriminate bombing, killing or injuring several thousand civilians.

Shortly after World War I, planes from the British Royal Air Force (RAF) were sent to the Middle East to engage in a new type of operationthe bombing of what an RAF document refers to as rebels of uncivilised tribes who refused to submit to British rule. Over several years from 1920 onward, the RAF attacked rebel groups in Iraqfor which Britain was the trustee nation at the timeby dropping bombs, including incendiary bombs, on remote villages and tent encampments. The same technique of indiscriminate bombing was also used in other territories of the British Empire, such as India and South Africa. Yet British administrators recommended this use of airpower as outstandingly effective, extremely economical and undoubtedly humane in the long run.

As in World War I, at the beginning of World War II, both Britain and Germany initially refrained from aerial attacks on civilians. However, in a repeat scenario, both sides deliberately increased their revenge bombing of civilian quarters in major cities following inaccurate bombings of military targets. The German forces conducted Operation Blitz for almost nine months from September 1940, attacking London, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, and many other English cities, killing 60,000 civilians and destroying more than 2 million houses. On September 11, 1940, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that this aerial bombing operation would be decisive in forcing the British government to surrender.

In revenge, the RAF started night raids on industrial cites in the Ruhr region in October 1940. However, aerial attacks on German civilians really expanded in February 1942 when Arthur Harris took over the RAF Bomber Command. Lbeck, a cultural city with no military importance, became the first target of Harriss new strategy, area bombing. Cologne was then attacked by more than 1,000 planes. Other cities, such as Essen, Kiel, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Rostock, and Berlin, were also targeted. In February 1943, Harris pronounced that the morale of the German population in the bombed areas had reached an all-time low and that, if the RAF continued bombing, surrender could be expected in the very near future. Night raids continued on many German cites, including Hamburg, where 7,000 tons of bombs were dropped and about 45,000 people were killed. Yet there was no sign of surrender by the Nazi regime.

The RAF then began to target Berlin, bombing the city sixteen times between November 1943 and March 1944, while continuing to bomb other German cities. Still Harriss expectation of Nazi surrender was not fulfilled. On the contrary, the Germans started employing new weapons of indiscriminate killingV-1 and V-2 rockets. More than 9,500 V-1 rockets were launched killing about 6,200 people. About 1,100 V-2 rockets reached various parts of England, killing 2,700 and injuring 6,500 people. Claiming again that the Germans were on the verge of a collapse in morale, Harris stepped up aerial attacks. In February 1945, the Bomber Command flew 17,500 sorties and dropped 45,750 tons on German cities. Between February 13 and 15, Dresden was heavily bombed for the first time by the RAF, this time together with the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF). During the fourteen-hour raid, massive quantities of incendiaries burned large areas of this city, which housed no military facility, and killed an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people.

The USAAF, led by Ira Eaker, entered the bombing campaign in Europe in August 1942. Despite repeated RAF requests to join it in low-altitude night bombing, the USAAF adhered to its traditional strategy, i.e., so-called precision bombing in daylight from a high altitude, using the Norden bombsight. In reality, precision bombing was a euphemism, as the bombs regularly fell at least a quarter mile from the target. It is not surprising, therefore, that the USAAF killed not only German civilians, but also many Allied civilians of German-occupied cities such as Paris, Nantes, Lille, Lorient, and Amsterdam. From November 1943, U.S. bombers started blind bombing, by which was meant that advances in radar technology would enable even a blind bombardier to accurately hit the desired target. In fact, due to technical limitations, the bombing became yet more random and indiscriminate. Eaker shared the optimism of Arthur Harris that the British and U.S. cooperative bombing campaign was destroying German morale. Dissatisfied with the results of precision bombing by the 8th U.S. Bomber command, however, General Henry Arnold reorganized the USAAF in Europe and set up the United States Strategic Air Forces in December 1943. Eaker was demoted, and Carl Spaatz became head of the USSF.