3 June 2024 Garand Picture of the Day

[CINDERS]

I've so many on bomber command they each have their story ~ 1000 Bomber Raid, Looking into Hell, Flying Backwards, Hamburg Raid, Dresden Raid, Peenemunde Raid, Luck & a Lancaster, Bennet & the Pathfinders, Pathfinder force, Tail Gunner that's just a very small lot on my shelves of H/C along with S/C's as well with allot more packed away.

When you read about the Hamburg/Dresden raids all the stars aligned with the perfect atmospheric conditions for Hamburg that instigated the fire storms these are where the fire creates its own wind fanning the flames further & hotter.
The suction from the firestorm was so fierce that it stripped the clothes from ppl hanging on for dear life to poles & trees until it grabbed them, trees were uprooted whilst steel melted ppl in basements suffocated as the fire used the oxygen or were cooked alive in there.
Conservative estimates from that raid put civilian deaths at @40,000 but as time has passed it is now thought to have been 80,000 as many were not found just turned to dust by the extreme flames and heat.
Bomber crews stated at debriefings they could smell the smoke and feel the heat from the conflagration with the target being easily identifiable by the red glow visible from 50 miles away.

In a book from the other side called "Strike From The Sky" it tells the story of the Luftwaffe bombing campaign against England with reports from factory workers after being bombed at the factories with descriptions of blast waves in buildings and what it did to the workers some of the descriptors are quite graphic in nature.
One I recall was a girl sat on a stool when the bomb hit the blast wave left her hips and legs on the stool complete with nylon stockings with the upper body completely gone.
Another lass sat on a chair just like a mannequin in a window not a mark on her or her clothes the pressure wave from the blast being confined to the inside the building and quite near to her had shattered all her internal organs but did no exterior injury.
I find sometimes I need a break so put the book down for a day or two to process what has gone on, as each side has its stories.

[Bob Womack]

I, too, have read the term "terrorflieger" used to describe bomber crew in my reading of 8th Air Force history. I think Masters of the Air depicted an instance as well.

And as far as Allied examples are concerned, there is the famous example from the Battle of Britain of the pilot of the Dornier, Oberleutnant Robert Zehbe, who was shot down by Sergeant Ray Holmes. Holmes ran out of ammo and claimed to have chewed off the tail of the Dornier with his prop. The Dornier went down in Victoria Station and there are pics of it going in. Both his and Holmes' planes were excavated decades later. However, after bailing out, Oberleutnant Robert Zehbe was caught by a London mob and beaten. He died the next day, whether from wounds in the air or by the beating wasn't recorded. But by and large, the British Government made it clear they wanted every German crewman returned alive and unharmed for intelligence value and for treatment according to the Geneva Accords. The Brit civilians were typically good about that.

Bob

[Sapper740]

It wasn't just the townspeople who murdered downed aircrew. Former German WWII ace Franz Stigler (RIP) told me of a conversation he and Adolf Galland had with Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Göring. Göring asked Galland about what he thought about shooting enemy pilots while in their parachutes, even over their own territory. Galland replied that, "I should regard it as murder, Herr Reichsmarschall. I should do everything in my power to disobey such an order." Despite the normal chivalry displayed between pilots of the opposing nations there were several instances of murdering aircrew that had bailed out of their aircraft. Richard "Bud" Peterson, a P-51 pilot with the 357th Fighter Group saw a Bf 109 systematically firing at American B-17 bomber crews as they descended in their parachutes. After Peterson forced the German pilot to bail out, he killed him in revenge for the aircrew as he was descending with his parachute. He recalled that some of his unit were nervous that this would invite a retaliatory response from the Luftwaffe. "But they had to be there to know what I was seeing," Peterson said. "Those guys were helpless, the bomber crews going down".

[CINDERS]

Robert Stanford Tuck shot down a 109 over the channel with the pilot bailing out into it, Tuck sent the rest of his flight back to base and circled the downed german pilot.
He circled in from behind the german in his cannon armed Hurricane thinking this was better than a slow freezing death it was the right thing to do, he placed his sight on the top of the bobbing head and gave a 2 second burst from his cannon, as the spray was whisked away the pilot was no longer there, 2 seconds was enough he told himself flying away.
He never told anyone it is in his book "Fly For Your Life" By Larry Forrester.

[Sapper740]

Cinders, If I was the German pilot I might have preferred surviving long enough to give a rescue boat from either side a chance to rescue me.