Ask for information about thousands of planes being bombed, including the Hamburg fire, the bombing of Essen and Bremen.

1942 February 2 1 day, after arthur harris became commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force, he suggested that the British Air Force stop destroying specific targets and demanded ground bombing of German cities. He believes that to destroy the city, we must first destroy its industrial enterprises, so as to destroy the morale of the German people. He established a set of strict discipline, requiring soldiers to carry out all his orders quickly and unconditionally. He asked the British government to support his 4000 heavy four-engine bombers and 1000 high-speed fighter bombers. Only in this way can the RAF have the advantage of 1000 aircraft hovering over Germany every night. So on the evening of May 30th, 1942 to 3 1, Harris sent all the bombers, * * * 1047. As a result, 4 1 aircraft did not return to the base on time (3.9% of the total). In addition to German cities, the British Air Force also attacked Ruhr-gebiet, Milan, Turin and Cigar, Raspe, as well as German submarine bases in France. After the bombing lasted until 1943+0, the United States and Britain held their first meeting in Casablanca, and defined the goal of future strategic cooperation: spare no effort to defeat and destroy Germany's military, economic and industrial strength, so as to weaken the morale of the German people and make them lose their resistance.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced in his speech to the House of Commons on June 2 that year: "I promise that this year will make Germany's major cities, ports and military industrial centers suffer the most cruel disaster that no country has ever experienced."

Subsequently, the commander of the British bombing of Germany received the order of "giving the German industrial zone the most violent bombing". "In fact, I have obtained the right to bomb German cities with a population of 65,438+10,000 and 65,438+10,000 at will." Harris recalled this after the war. He once again targeted Hamburg, Germany's second largest city, and named the air raid "The Battle of Gomorrah" with the aim of completely destroying Hamburg and turning it into ashes.

1943 from the end of July to the beginning of August, the United States and Britain bombed Hamburg intensively for three days and four nights. * * * dispatched nearly 3000 heavy bombers and dropped about 10000 tons of bombs in densely populated urban areas, most of which were incendiary bombs. Hamburg became a sea of fire, and the fire formed a fiery pillar, up to 4000 meters high, and the smoke even penetrated into the cabin of the plane. According to some witnesses, asphalt roads and tram windows were burned and melted by the fire. Panicked refugees hid in the basement, suffocated by poison gas and burned to ashes, while others were buried alive in the ruins. The air raid seriously destroyed half of the city, 50,000 civilians were killed and 200,000 people were burned, injured and disabled. Marshal Harris, who has been nicknamed "bomber" since the air raid in Hamburg, has also been called "butcher" by some British magazines. But the result of the bombing didn't cheer Harris up at all, because the battle of Hamburg didn't accelerate the complete defeat of Germany. According to Harris' statistics, at least six big cities must be destroyed at the same time to completely destroy Germany. Almost at the same time, the US military concentrated on bombing the heavy industry areas of the Third Reich. On August 17, 363 heavy bombers tried to bomb the bearing factory in fuerte, but because there was no fighter cover, they suffered heavy losses and 60 bombers were shot down. Three months later, Harris started the "Battle of Berlin" on June 165438+ 10/8, and the fighting continued until March 1944. Harris organized 16 concentrated bombing of Berlin, dropping 50,000 tons of bombs, leaving half the city in ruins and tens of thousands of Berliners dead. 1on March 30th, 944, the British attacked Nuremberg at night, dispatched 786 planes, and 96 were hit by the Germans. By the beginning of 1944, allied bombers had the cover of mustang fighters. At this time, the German air defense system had collapsed, and there were few ace pilots left, and new pilots could not be replenished in time. Since April, allied strategic bombing has become more frequent. The small town of Essen is the result of strategic bombing: it is recorded that on the last day of September, 1944, due to bad weather, the US military aircraft could not detect the target of the arsenal to be attacked. On the way back, it passed a small town. In order to reduce the burden, the plane dropped all the bombs, which were falling on a school, 120 students (half the city). ......

By the end of 1944, the German railway had been completely paralyzed by the allied forces, and the fuel output dropped sharply from 3 16000 tons in May to 17000 tons in September, which could not supply the German Air Force and tank divisions at all. The Germans ended in failure.

With the increase of combat experience, the losses of allied planes became less and less, the cover power of heavy bombers and fighters was greatly strengthened, and German cities such as Berlin, Stuttgart, darmstadt and Freiburg were once again attacked and bombed the most violently. 1in the middle of February, 945, the battle of Dresden reached the peak of staged bombing. From the night of February 13 to the early morning of February 14, 800 British bombers violently dropped 650,000 incendiary bombs in the city center, and 27,000 houses and 7,000 public buildings collapsed, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Although there are different opinions about the number of victims, this flame storm, like the fires in Hamburg and Hiroshima, has brought disaster and pain to the city and people. After the war in Dresden, the British successfully bombed some ancient German cities such as Wü rzburg, Bayreuther and Ulm. In Pforzheim, a city with a population of only 60,000, 20,000 civilians were killed in the air raid on February 22nd.

At the beginning of March, Churchill suggested that Harris immediately stop the "regional" bombing, and Marshal Arthur Harris finally stopped the bombing of cities and civilians.

Marshal Arthur Harris wrote a book called Strategic Bombing after the war. In the book, he specifically pointed out: Except for the Battle of Essen, during the rest of the war, the bombing of the Royal Air Force never targeted a factory. Even if an enterprise is successfully destroyed, it is regarded as an additional achievement. And our success criterion is to destroy the city center, because the closer to the city center, the denser the houses and population, and the easier it is for the bombs to destroy the whole city.

During the war, the British dropped 950 million bombs in the German city of * *, weighing 430,000 tons.

For a long time after the war, both the United States and Britain constantly defended their bad behavior. In 1964, Lieutenant General Ella Ikle, retired from the US Air Force, said: "I am very sorry for the135,000 Dresden people who died in the bombing of Dresden by the United States and Britain, but I have not forgotten the initiator of the war. I am once again sorry for the more than 5 million civilians who died in the tenacious anti-fascist war of the US and British Air Forces. Marshal Robert Sandeby of the British Air Force took a more moderate tone: "No one will deny that the Battle of Dresden was a tragedy. This is a terrible disaster caused by cruel coincidence. 1945 The spring attack was not a fierce battle, although the Allies did not seem to want to know the great destructive power of air strikes. "

According to statistics, 300,000 to 6.5438+0.5 million German civilians died in allied bombing.

More than 50% of the cities were destroyed in the bombing: ludwigshafen, Volmut, Bremen, Hanover, Nuremberg, remscheid, Bochum, Essen, darmstadt, Kom and Hamburg. Mainz, NeiKassoum, Aachen, Mü nster, El krenz, Port William, koblenz, Cologne, Pforzheim, Dortmund, Giessen, Hanao, Kassel, Dylan, Altenkirchen, bruch Sal, Graven Broch, Donauvoort, Remagen, Wü rzburg, Ai En Deng, Plum, Wessel, Ksanten, Egypt.