There's a lot of really good documentaries on tonight on the National Geographic channel. One in particular is "Hero's of the Sky's. The Mighty 8th Air Force" a new one that I've not seen before which says it was first shown last week. A 2 hour documentary that covers the 8th from conception. Starts again at 1 am Pacific Time. Its the best I've seen on the air battle over Europe. Mentions the orders and cover-up of deliberate bombing of civilians pretty good also.


Phil

Mighty 8th Air Force museum is about 5 miles from my house.
Some of the vets are volunteers at the museum, though fewer and fewer as time goes on.

Very cool museum.

Close by to me as well. I’m near Pooler (Where it’s located) everyday.Taken my kids a few times and used to have an lot of functions there from where I work.

Yep.
It was quite a presentation.

wish that was there in the mid 80's when i was stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah ,would love to seen that

My dad went to England with the 8th. He worked for the civil service as a airplane electrician. When he returned to the US he was drafted into the Army. Hasbeen

The 8th was used as a terror force. The commanders were war criminals responsible for more civilian death and suffering than the SS.

My Grandpa was in the 8th though...a navigations officer on a 17 and later 24. Brave bunch of guys...it’s a shame they were used the way they were

They didn’t start it.

26,000 KIA. That's more than the Marines in the Pacific.

And they were doing what it took to finish it.

Civilians do bear responsibility for the actions of the government they select and support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebombing

Does Quak even realize he just called his grandfather a terrorist?

My Grandfather is the one who told me about what they did. The airmen were not terrorists...they had no idea what they doing to the people 10000ft below

Blame those that gave the orders and picked the targets. Absolute war criminals

FYI...Hitler was not elected

The 8th didn’t finish [bleep]. German production ramped up all the way until the end. Russia did what it took to finish the job make no mistake

US “Jabos” on the other hand were highly effective

Until one has actually been in combat, it would be wiser to with hold judgment.
My father was with the 8th AAF as a bombardier on B-24 heavy bombers.
Thirty (30) missions over Germany. He saw many of his friends shot down and lost.
The 8th AF Museum at Barksdale AFB, LA. now holds his uniforms, escape maps, and cold weather gear.
Barksdale is the home of the 8th AF current Global Strike Force-(B-52s).

Whether "Bomber" Harris or Curtis LeMay, the idea was to crush the enemy
and force a settlement or surrender. Ask the Belgians what they think of having to endure German
troops raping their women for two separate wars-or the Russian women.
Most Americans have not endured combat, and are not up on their own history
much less WWl or WWll in-depth military history.
Truman made the right decision to finish Japan's war fighting capability. A pox on those who think that
an invasion of Japan would not have cost a large number of American lives.

Lt Col HR Marriott
Vietnam 71-72
MACVSOG 5th Special Forces Gp(ABN)
NRA-Life

"Only the dead have seen the end of war".- Plato

How many Belgian civilians did the Wehrmacht Intentionally kill?

For the last time...I’m not blaming the airmen. The murder of civilians falls on the part of command.

Yes those poor Germans, they would never bomb civilians.
Ever hear of the blitz? 40k to 43k civilians killed by the Germans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz

So that makes it ok for us to do it? Seems it initially was a mistake of bomb scuttling by a German pilot that led the Brits bombing german cities...it escalated quickly.

The German mistake to bomb the cities likely cost them the war imho. Had they have destroyed the RAF and taken England...they would have been a stronger position to confront communism.

Whatever it took to bring both Germany & Japan to their knees was justified.
They were psychopathic regimes that had to be stopped at any cost.
If that meant killing them all, so be it.

The fire bombing of Dresden (which was undefended) was meant to be just that, to "terrorize" the population into submission. If you watch the documentary, General Doolittle was totally against it and was over ruled by none other than FDR himself. The documentary also bring to light all records of the fire bombing of Dresden and other non-military targets were expunged after WWII. UNLIKE Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these were completely unnecessary .

Bingo...murder

EXACTLY.

These were war crimes. No way around that.

A very good doc on the 8th is "The Cold Blue."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaynFMDdNsk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmwm4VPW7RY

I would attribute FDR's support of the Dresden bombing to both his being an anglophile (he probably used phrases like "in hospital" and "Doctor will see you now", as well as the so-incorrect "graduated prep school") and the almost hypnotic control that Churchill held over him.

The country got what they deserved. The 8th commanders job was to end the war as quickly as possible.

Reminds me of when your POS bud Slick Willie Clinton (our first black pres) was our POS POTUS and cut military spending drastically, up to 48% in many essential programs and justified it because there were no dangerous foreign enemies threatening the US or world piece.

When your bud Sean Hannity asked him about Osama Bin Ladens declaration of war on us in ( iirc) 1996, Clinton just laughed..
Thankfully, Bush worked overtime rebuilding the military you apparently lie about appreciating, just as Trump has had to do after your hero the Zero.enacted detrimental policies and financial cuts.

BTW, which former WW2 allies of ours did Slick Willey bomb to help the moslems defeat the Christians in central or eastern Europe, Gayghost?

The Nazis were elected by the populace of Germany :Economic distress contributes to a meteoric rise in the support for the Nazi party. As a result, the Nazi party wins the votes of almost 40 percent of the electorate in the Reichstag (German parliament) elections of July 1932. The Nazi party becomes at this point the largest party in the German parliament.

Public pressure drove the President of Germany to appoint Hitler as Chancellor: Adolf Hitler agrees to a coalition with conservatives. After months of negotiations, the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, will appoint Hitler chancellor of Germany in a government seemingly dominated by conservatives on January 30, 1933.

Twelve years later, the people of Germany had still not thrown Hitler out on his ear, despite the horrendous oppression perpetrated upon his own populace.

The people of Germany are every bit as responsible for the actions of the German Army as is the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or any of the rest of the extensive list of Japanese cities fire bombed in WW II responsible for the actions of the Japanese Emperial Army.

Shall we also name LeMay and the brave men of XXI bomber group as terrorists? The devastation of Japan was horrendous. It is called WAR for a reason. It is not supposed to be pretty. Lucky for us, War Criminals are decided by the winning side.

I attempted to make this list easier to read, but it did not transition well to the forum.

Name of Japanese city firebombed Percentage of the city destroyed Equivalent in size to the following American city
Yokohama 58 Cleveland
Tokyo 51 New York
Toyama 99 Chattanooga
Nagoya 40 Los Angeles
Osaka 35.1 Chicago
Nishinomiya 11.9 Cambridge
Siumonoseki 37.6 San Diego
Kure 41.9 Toledo
Kobe 55.7 Baltimore
Omuta 35.8 Miami
Wakayama 50 Salt Lake City
Kawasaki 36.2 Portland
Okayama 68.9 Long Beach
Yawata 21.2 San Antonio
Kagoshima 63.4 Richmond
Amagasaki 18.9 Jacksonville
Sasebo 41.4 Nashville
Moh 23.3 Spokane
Miyakonoio 26.5 Greensboro
Nobeoka 25.2 Augusta
Miyazaki 26.1 Davenport
Hbe 20.7 Utica
Saga 44.2 Waterloo
Imabari 63.9 Stockton
Matsuyama 64 Duluth
[bleep] 86 Evansville
Tokushima 85.2 Ft. Wayne
Sakai 48.2 Forth Worth
Hachioji 65 Galveston
Kumamoto 31.2 Grand Rapids
Isezaki 56.7 Sioux Falls
Takamatsu 67.5 Knoxville
Akashi 50.2 Lexington
[bleep] 80.9 Macon
Aomori 30 Montgomery
Okazaki 32.2 Lincoln
Oita 28.2 Saint Joseph
Hiratsuka 48.4 Battle Creek
Tokuyama 48.3 Butte
Yokkichi 33.6 Charlotte
Uhyamada 41.3 Columbus
Ogaki 39.5 Corpus Christi
Gifu 63.6 Des Moines
Shizuoka 66.1 Oklahoma City
Himeji 49.4 Peoria
[bleep] 24.1 Rochester
Kochi 55.2 Sacramento
Shimizu 42 San Jose
Omura 33.1 Sante Fe
Chiba 41 Savannah
Ichinomiya 56.3 Sprinfield
Nara 69.3 Boston
Tsu 69.3 Topeka
Kuwana 75 Tucson
Toyohashi 61.9 Tulsa
Numazu 42.3 Waco
Chosi 44.2 Wheeling
Kofu 78.6 South Bend
Utsunomiya 43.7 Sioux City
Mito 68.9 Pontiac
Sendai 21.9 Omaha
Tsuruga 65.1 Middleton
Nagaoka 64.9 Madison
Hitachi 72 Little Rock
Kumagaya 55.1 Kenosha
Hamamatsu 60.3 Hartford
Maebashi 64.2 Wheeling

Hitler was not elected

Murder of civilians is not excusable


To disagree would make someone what you all are claiming bad about the Nazis?

Soldiers sign up or are drafted and are trained and paid to die...to think civilians deserve the same fate...women, children, the elderly, speaks to many things. I won’t go into it further

Idaho...the German people were less responsible for Hitler than you and I were responsible for Obama

Slight misconception there. At the end, the Germans had to spend 40% of their economic potential trying to defend the Reich against the the 8th Air Force. That's what let the Russians beat them, or at least beat them when they did.

My cousin had a German exchange student a few years back. He was always complaining about Dresden. He said they were innocent people. My only response was so were the Jews.

I also met some pretty anti American college students in Tokyo that were letting me have it because my country nuked them 3/4 a century ago. One of them said in my country we have a saying and then rattled off something. I said in my country we say paybacks are a bitch.

It is rediculous that military leaders deliberately target civilians all the time and get away with it but when a soldier makes a bad call in the heat of battle and offs a civilian he goes to Leavenworth for decades.

Bb

Exactly the same! Hitler was selected by popular acclaim as was Obama. And no person in either nation did anything to change the situation.

Still no comment re Curtiss LeMay and the systematic destruction of Japanese cities! Is there a difference between Dresden and Tokyo? Or the other 65+ cities in Japan which were reduced to dust and ash along with their inhabitants.

Were we not as much at war with Germany as we were with Japan?

Today we call it "Shock and Awe". The desire is to convince the general population that war with us is not a wise choice. It is not 1650 anymore where two enemy nations line their soldiers up on a field and allow them to slaughter each other as a means of population control. The idea today is win the war with the least possible loss of life on your side. We do what it takes to accomplish that. "Total War". If you do not wish to participate in total war, don't start schitt with America.

And yes, I am well aware that often Rules of Engagement are placed upon our troops, and total war is disallowed. This is a mistake in my opinion.

I had an Uncle who fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and was just a few lines back in the column behind Patton when they walked into the first concentration camp. He would have disagreed about the Russians being responsible for the defeat of Germany.

They played their part. But so did we and the Brits. Russia would have never prevailed alone.

If the atomic bomb would have been ready earlier, would FDR have used it in Europe?

I had a dear friend who was a flight operations officer in the Eighth Air Force during WWII. He would sit and tell me stories that would blow your mind. A tail gunner blown out of the sky who had time to light and smoke a cigarette before he landed, a pilot shot down behind Russian lines and rescued by a tank column of Russian women, a bombardier missing his mark and taking out French castles, a last mission facing a ME 262.... amazing group of men!
GreggH

The 8th AF and the submariners in the Pacific had the highest loss rate of our forces in WW2.

Wow

Dude... There's something seriously wrong with you...

If the rain lets up this afternoon (and if not, tomorrow) I will visit my Uncle Jim's grave and place a flag there, as I do every Memorial Day. He was KIA on his 28th bombing mission with the 34th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force, on 01/20/1945. He was not a "terrorist". May the sacrifices of those brave men never be forgotten.

My dad flew a thunderbolt in WW2.

He was stationed in England got shot down i germany taken prisoner and escaped. He said his first missions were bomber support. His plane had " Easys Angels" painted on the tail. His issued plane was so shot up, he told my brother he was flying a different one when he got shot down. It had Maj Mac painted on the fuselage. I found a picture of that plane on the internet. It's a pretty cool deal to see the plane my dad got shot down flying. I would suppose he flew for the eight?

Our fighter/bomber close support was absolutely fantastic. Very brave men...American fighter pilots were the most underrated of the war. Everyone talks about the luftwaffa and the RAF but for my money we were the best in the air over Europe.

The Germans lived in absolute fear of the Jabos.

Sounds like your father was a hell of a guy...would have loved to know him.

My Dads father was an Army officer and was killed in 44. My grandmother was also in the army and served with the occupation force until 54. My dad basically grew up in post war Germany. She remarried stateside to the man I called Grandpa...he was an officer in the 8th. Great man...was shot down twice and crashed twice due to mechanical failure. All incidents had fatalities. I remember going to an air museum with him and going inside a B17...we spent the afternoon going through the plane with him telling me stories...incredible day I’ll never forget.

He never flew again once he left the service

Our airmen were not terrorists for the fifth time...but they were used as a force of terror. If you don’t think the intentional murder of Christian women and children while they slept in their beds is terror...well let’s just say we disagree about the definition.

After the 8th got enough P-51s, the P-47s were mostly shifted to the 9th AF, who did ground support work against airfields, trains, troops, tanks, convoys, etc. I think the 8th kept ONE P-47 group, who didn't want to give up their T-bolts.
To find out which AF your father flew for, it would mostly depend on timing. I think the 8th AF was all P-51 by late '44, excepting the 56thFG, who wanted to keep their -47s. If you can find out which Fighter Group he flew for, the rest of the data is easy enough to find out.

Well I guess he must have snapped out of it, because he cut the rug out from under him at Yalta, not to mention Churchill's push to drive into Germany to take Berlin with Patton and Montgomery instead, FDR wanted the Russians to take it...

Yes. In fact some of the Manhattan Project scientists who were perfectly OK with dropping it on Germany didn't think we should have dropped it on Japan after Germany surrendered, Germany being worse bad guys in their opinion.

He must have gone to the ninth because the gun camera film was engaging ground targets.

He said the mustangs took over the bomber support.

I served as a tanker in Germany during the time Ronald Reagan was commander in chief. I was fortunate that such a strong commander in chief there was very little conflict.

As I look at it war is hell. Unless you were there you might best consider keeping your gob shut about what went on.

I am proud of my dad and also proud of my own service. Like my dad always would say

Enuff said.

Thanks rat smaker for the info. I guess the Maj Mac plane has its own video game, I can look it up there.

Oh, is that the difference? The Japanese were not Christians? So it was okay to turn them to dust and cinder, but not the patrons of Nazi Germany?

The fact is, we are all humans down here on this little blue marble, regardless the mythos of choice.

Last Fourth of July I stayed at a friends house in clouqet Minnesota. She had life magazines from WW2. One article was how to tell a chinamen from a jap. The magazines words .....not mine.

I wish I knew how to post smaller photos. I think it was a different world back then.

My Father In Law, who just passed away this past Nov at the age of 98, was a radio operator/gunner in a B-17 for the 401st BG out of Deenthorpe. He completed 35 missions. How lucky was he? We took him to the Mighty 8th Museum in GA several times (he lived in Bluffton SC for the last 7 years of his life). Once he was looking at the model of his base that they have on display and a young English man approached us and he asked my FIL if he served there. This young Brit was from that area and shook his hand and thanked him. Another time we went when a group of young students were at the museum and my FIL walked by with his WWII 401 BG hat and was spontaneously applauded. My FIL once said to me, "On just about every mission we lost 10-20% of our planes, I flew 35 missions. How lucky was I? You do the math." His original crew that he trained with took flak over Germany and had to land in Switzerland. They were interned for the duration and one of his crewman was chosen to star in a movie made during the war called "The Last Chance". My FIL was sidelined for that mission with a cold. He used to say, "If I hadn't been sick, I might have been a movie star." He certainly had movie star good looks. After losing his crew, he was assigned to different crews needing a replacement. He was often in the lead plane with the mission commander. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

While the 8th didn't achieve their goal of strategic bombing bringing the Luftwaffe to it's knees, (there were actually more German fighter planes at the end of the war than at the start), they did help shorten/win the war. The German petroleum shortage that impacted the Battle of the Bulge was due to the bombing of refineries and fuel depots. What defeated the Luftwaffe were the loss of their experienced fighter pilots to Allied fighters. While our fighter pilots could safely train in the States, the new German pilots had to try to train in a war zone. They didn't last long. The Germans had fighters but few experienced pilots to fly them.

Thanks to the OP (Idaho Shooter) for telling us about this Nat Geo program. It makes me think of my late neighbor and friend, Major Jim Sparks, who was a 20 year old B-17 pilot over Germany. He told me that his favorite escort was a B-24, as the Luftwaffe fighter pilots went after them first, being easier to shoot down. He went on to fly in the Berlin Airlift and later worked for Jimmy Doolittle.

cooper: read this: https://www.historynet.com/pow-hell-switzerland.htm to see how close your Father In Law came to hell on earth. The Swiss collusion with the Nazis explains why Switzerland was virtually unscathed in WW II. Being the Third Reich's banker had it's benefits.

Interesting story, and disturbing. There are many little known events that lie buried in the mainstream of history.

Paul

Twer'nt me. 'Twas Greygohst.

I don't know how they got in the planes with balls as big as they had.

Toward the end of his life, my FIL had dementia. He sometimes found himself back in time, in England. He once told us, "I've got to get to bed early, I've got a mission in the morning. I don't know why? I've flown my 35 missions." When we told him that the war was over, he replied with a "It is? Who won?"