for a while, my dad was stationed near the Derwent Dam at Ladybower Reservoir* in Derbyshire, where the training for the attack was taking place. He wasn't told what it was all these bombers were doing flying over Derbyshire dropping odd-looking barrels into the water, but he was told to shut up and not say anything about it to anyone. Naturally once he heard about the raid itself sometime later, although he'd been posted off to somewhere else by then, he knew that's what he'd been seeing.

*which isn't too far from Tawakalnistan; other side of Buxton, about an hour's drive over the moors. Sadly, the shopping delights of Buxton and Bakewell usually draw Mrs Taw in, leaving little time and less money for more interesting and constructive pastimes than wandering around pottery barns.

Edited by - Tawakalna on 9/28/2007 12:35:39 PM

Needless to say, this will be one I will be going to the theater to watch. I hope the acting is as good as the original but with modern effects.

“SISU”
(Pronounced: siss-sue)
(Meaning)
Guts, Tenacity, Steadfastness, Courage, and an Indomitable will to Succeed, and Survive.

Still... Blasphemy.

lets hope mr. "LOTR" has a better sense of cast than the dribbling idiots that produced/raped Pearl harbour.

It'll certainly be most interesting to see, and I hope to see some of the usual Fry'ish stuff thrown in. He's a good writer/comedian, lets hope he doesn't balls up this.

targeting civilians to instill fear and coerce political change is also known as terrorism.


double standards are teh suck.

(that was a comment on war and not the topic btw)

Edited by - Cold_Void on 10/3/2007 12:18:00 PM

Indeed. Although WW2 was one in which total war had been declared between the combatants ... thus it was a "just war."

Under those circumstances, attacks on the civilian population ... while repugnant an option to many, is fair game.

now now, the Dambusters' raid wasn't an attack on civilians per se, it was a precision attack on industrial infrastructure, in which admittedly a lot of German civilians unfortunately died due to the subsequent flooding- war's a messy business. It can't be compared to the fire-bombing of Hamburg or the attacks on Dresden in either scale or intent, or the Blitz and the V-Weapons (which were specifically intended to terrorise the population as Hitler himself stated.) One could well argue that anything that helped to shorten the War was ultimately justified, as every extra moment that the Nazi regime existed was itself a source of suffering for millions of people, inside and outside Germany. I doubt that a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz concerned himself with the morality of the Dambusters' raid when he'd seen thousands of his fellows brutalised and exterminated.

for the record, I never approved of the RAF mass-bombing campaign against civilian targets, because, as the Blitz proved, it's counter-productive; it increases the enemy's resolve to resist, binds the population together in a sense of shared duty and responsibility in the face of common hardship, and fails to permanently dislocate the enemy's industrial capacity which becomes dispersed and protected. The only advantage is that it may force the enemy to transfer a disproportionate amount of material resources and manpower into civil defence and away from front-line combat. But the alternative was to suffer crippling losses in daylight raids, as happened to the Americans.





Edited by - Tawakalna on 10/4/2007 1:10:50 PM

Nuclear MAD during the Cold War was so effective because the concept of Total War and the annihilation of civilian populations had become the "military" option.

Attacks upon a country's infrastructure while "militiarily" definable and justifiable, as you say, does not exclude civilian deaths and such deaths are countenanced as part of the gambit if not contemplated.

In any event, the point would be that modern war very much is a matter of killing civilians by one side or both ... usually both.

Historically also, despite the "chivarly" and whatnot the death of civilians was part of the equation in wars. Barbarians or not.

but there is a significant difference between attacks on industrial infrastructure which kill civilians as a consequence when the purpose is to inhibit or negate the enemy's ability to make war, and the deliberate targeting of civilian populations where the purpose is to destroy the enemy's will to resist, or where nuclear weapons are concerned, the enemy's very existence. I agree that widespread infrastructure attacks can have much the same effect in a prolonged campaign with modern weapons as mass bombing did in the past, the attacks in the opening phases of the Iraq Wars (both of 'em) being an example of how even "surgical" strikes can reduce a country to a relatively primitive level of existence. But this cannot be compared to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, surely?

I don't mean to detract from the Dambusters. Celluloidal glorification or not.

I only wanted to point out that even that attack was made with the full knowledge that civilian casualties were a foreseeable end result.

In more ancient times, civilian casualties were the result of armies needing to feed themselves as much as defend themselves as they advanced through territory (usually hostile but sometimes also friendly).

I guess my point is rather simply that war means civilian deaths even more so in modern ones that older.

---

I only wanted to point out that even that attack was made with the full knowledge that civilian casualties were a foreseeable end result.

---

quite unlike Bomber Command's 1943-44 offensive against German cities in which the stated objective was to kill as many Germans as possible, civilian or otherwise, and to destroy as much German property and materiel as possible doing so. Or the firebombings in 1945 which destroyed almost every ancient German city regardless of actual military or economic value (including most infamously, Dresden, packed full of refugees from other bombings and fleeing the advancing Russians)

until the advent of "modern" warfare (and we'll take that as being the American Civil War for a variety of reasons, although one could well argue for Napoleon) it was perfectly possible for a land battle to take place and for no-one further than a few miles away to even know that it was taking place. As the military objective was invariably to defeat the enemy on the field of battle in previous wars, civilian deaths were generally a consequence, rather than a strategic imperative; with certain notable exceptions such as Hadrian's ethnic cleansing of Palestine, or Cromwell's occupation of Ireland. However as you rightly observe, foraging off the land usually meant desolation and death for the local population - Napoleon's invasion of Russia being a prime example, or the various advances in the Thirty Years' War that left Central Europe in tatters.



Edited by - Tawakalna on 10/6/2007 11:26:31 AM

Pete, you speak of these events with a tone of voice that suggests that you remember. how Old are you acutally? i can't believe i've never asked before (or maybe i have?)

Also, have you ever been in the 'Forces?

The Great Mullet is a mere babe in the woods. Although he did serve in the RN, iirc.

I seem to recall a photo of him drilling in his navy whites at Gibraltar ... with sunglasses on, no less. :O ... The RN seems to have dropped off in standards....

not so low they'd ever have taken you, you lounge lizard! I don't think that the Royal Navy ever had much call for a globetrotting insurance man...

AoD - it's true, i do sound a bit like that, but you must remember that both my parents lived through the war - my dad was in the RAF from 1940 onwards and my mum lived in Italy which was eventually occupied by the Germans (and she was Jewish, to boot) and most of their friends and neighbours were of the same generation; so whilst not first-hand experience, i grew up with the war as a fact of life and the central event in all these people's lives. After all, if it hadn't been for the war, my folks would never have met.

The Dambusters raid is one of those signal events of the war that everyone knows about, and for people who lived through the war, is one of the prime memories that they have. I often asked people of that generation what their most vivid memories were, and they usually answered that the most prominent events they could recall were; Chamberlain's declaration of war speech, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the sinking of the Hood and Bismarck, the invasion of Russia, Pearl Harbour, the Dambusters, El Alamein, Monte Cassino, D-Day, Arnhem, VE-Day, and the atom bombs. Quite a common observation is that many people felt that, in their perception at the time, the darkest moment was the sinking of the Hood.

(Indy - shut up, you! You know full well that I had medical permission from the M.O. when we were in Gib' to wear those sunglasses because without them i couldn't see and kept walking into things - or falling over)

Edited by - Tawakalna on 10/13/2007 12:44:31 PM