Actually, they were probably very difficult to hit during the night attacks favoured by RAF Bomber Command. One of the (several) reasons why "area area bombing" became the preferred RAF strategy was that anything more precise was simply beyond their abilities, and would remain so for most of the war, "precision" attacks using Mosquitoes or earthquake bombs notwithstanding. Even using elite pathfinder units just allowed them to accurately mark where they wanted to start area bombing.Hermit wrote:I can assure you that nothing is further from my mind than attempting to fabricate any moral justification for systematically and intentionally killing civilians. Not even in the case of the nuclear bombs that destroyed two cities and their inhabitants. You may recall that people have sought to justify those wholesale massacres by claiming that the net effect was to shorten the war and actually save lives.rEvolutionist wrote:As I said, civilians are never legitimate military targets. If you think they are, then you have no morality.Hermit wrote:Bremen ... Dresden ... Hiroshima ... Nagasaki ... My Lai ...rEvolutionist wrote:Moral of the story is that you have no morals. Civilians are never "legitimate" military targets. Only in fascist land.
Same reasoning stood behind the strategy pursued by Bomber Harris. Greetings, Bremen and Dresden. Even the minor town (approximate population of 90,000 in 1944) I was born in was bombed 35 times. Most of those bombings were diversionary raids to lure the German fighters away from the actually intended targets, but on three occasions, the town was the prime target. During one of these, 10,000 civilians were killed in 20 minutes and the same carpet bombing left two thirds of the population homeless. In not a single occasion were the three obvious targets of military significance (two chemical factories, one rail head) hit by as much as a single bomb, although they were right on the edges of town and easy to spot on the reconnaissance aerial photographs. They were large, easy to spot and not difficult to hit, at least occasionally, if they were ever actually targeted. They manifestly never were.
What I did want to do was to draw attention to the fact that actually aiming at exclusively civilian targets has always been part of warfare and all sides have done that at all times. Israel's actions in Gaza are inhumane and reprehensible, but Israel is not some sole pariah. The Geneva conventions have been largely ineffectual in regard to the intentional targeting of civilians. Few people have been successfully prosecuted at the International Court of The Hague and even fewer that perpetrated war crimes on behalf of the sides that are regarded as "the good side".
There are no possible excuses, let alone justifications, but those are the facts.
The US Air Force, bombing by day and with the aid of the best aiming technology available at the time (bomb sight or radar), killed a great deal less people than the RAF over Europe. This was less due to the Americans being - relative to Bomber Command - more accurate and more discriminating, but because the mainly high explosive bombs they dropped were unlikely to start fire storms.
There were other reasons why some cities were more heavily targeted than others, such as them being easy to locate using rudimentary radar.and other navigation aids. Hamburg was a prime example.
BTW, the RAF raid you've described sounds like it was on either Darmstadt or Kassel ??