Guy GibsonGuy Gibson was a British war hero.
He won a Victoria Cross for leading the 'Dam Buster' raid on dams on the Ruhr Valley in Germany in 1943.
Two dams were breached.
An estimated 1,650 men, women and children were drowned when the dams burst.
War heroes sometimes kill women and children.
Mohne Dam was burstA large number of those drowned were not Germans.
The majority of the dead were prisoners of war and forced labourers.
So, British heroes sometimes kill their friends and allies.
And war heroes often die in strange ways.
In 1944, Guy Gibson, aged 26, was killed by his own side.
During a flight, Sgt Bernard McCormack, of Britain's Royal Air Force, fired at what he thought was a German plane.
The 'German' plane crashed, killingt those on board.
The 'German' plane turned out to be a British plane crewed by Wing Comander Gibson and his navigator Jim Warwick.
Dambusters legend Guy Gibson was shot down by BRITISH airman
Richard Todd, as Guy Gibson, in the film 'The Dambusters'."In terms of deaths: according to the latest sources, at least 1,650 people were killed: around 70 in the Eder Valley, and at least 1,579 bodies were found along the Möhne and Ruhr rivers, with hundreds missing.
"1,026 of the bodies found downriver of the Möhne Dam were foreign prisoners of war and forced-labourers in different camps.
"Worst hit was the city of Neheim (now part of Neheim-Hüsten) at the confluence of the Möhne and Ruhr rivers, where over 800 people perished, among them at least 493 female forced-labourers from the Soviet Union."
(Operation Chastise - Wikipedia)
Air Vice-Marshal Ralph Cochrane, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, King George VI and Group Captain John Whitworth discussing the Dambuster Raid in May 1943.In his book Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer expressed puzzlement that the British should only send a few bombers and do relatively little damage.
The British did not follow up with additional raids when the dams were being repaired.
(Operation Chastise - Wikipedia)
It looks as if the people in charge did not really want a swift end to the war.
~~
6 comments:
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C
Hey Aangirfan,
What is the true status of the Canary Islands?
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C
"War heroes sometimes kill women and children."
These days, that's the rule not the exception. Destroy infrastructure, terrorize civilian populations, sow chaos to undermine leadership. Look at Libya: the war heroes are an unholy admixture of high-tech and low-tech butchers.
"And war heroes often die in strange ways."
British WW2 bomber pilots anyway had very high mortality rates and friendly-fire deaths were frequent because of the lack of IFF (identify friend foe) technologies. Mostly they had to rely on competent flight planning and visual observation. Even radar and radio identification was primitive and unreliable.
It's always possible higher command wanted Gibson to meet an earlier demise to prevent some outpouring of guilt that would undermine morale. But he appeared to have as much regret as Paul Tibbets. That is, not much really. The perfect soldier: a robotic mass murderer.
Gibson's death by friendly fire does not appear to be a statistical anomaly. Just looks like normal fog of war rather than any sort of conspiracy.
"It looks as if the people in charge did not really want a swift end to the war."
On the American side, I think that was definitely the case. The Eastern Establishment banking and industrial billionaires were making a pretty penny out of the war.
The British on the other hand really did appear to be fighting a battle for survival. From the London War Rooms, Churchill reportedly even cursed this "high cabal" orchestrating the wars, yet he himself was a lackey of British plutocracy like the Rothschilds and Samuels. The Nazis no longer saw the British as ideological allies in their murderous supremacist/eugenic program, and the Americans were intent on taking over what remained of the British Empire, meaning worldwide mining, oil and industrial concerns, under the pretence of democratization.
The American billionaires were also heavily invested in Nazi Germany, so they were making money on both sides, at least initially before they really started prosecuting under the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917. More details on this in Tarpley's George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography.
Aan -
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23997597-widows-lawyers-call-for-full-inquest-into-litvinenko-death.do
Fell ill 1 Novemeber 2006 Died 23 November . Polonium in SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS announced 24 November (Health Protection Agency)
So why was Polonium only announced as the cause of poisoning after he had died?
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061127/full/news061127-1.html
Murder Most Mysterious Nicola Jones, Nature:
"You'd also, at that point, do a mass spec of urine and blood to look for the suspect element, says Bateman — presuming that it wasn't a 'hit and run' exposure in which the poison would already have passed from the system. Why, at that point, polonium-210 didn't leap off the page is still a mystery to me. Maybe it did"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6181688.stm
BBC News What is polonium-210? ....
Traces of the radioactive substance have since been discovered at various locations in London visited by Mr Litvinenko as well as in Russia and on two British Airways (BA) flights.
It's everywhere, but they can't find it on him for 3 weeks???
7/7 style inquest = truth buried.
They did not bomb the dams further because the German's had learned from their mistakes and it was now impossible to 'bounce' bombs onto the dams. Defences were also vastly increased. I spoke to Germans who said the effect of the raid was really minimal, though it was a shock and did slow production for a while, but less effect than the carpet-bombing of the factories, the Germans simply split it all up into spread-out cottage industries and by the end of the war production was thrice what it was at the start of the war, but not enough to replace their losses on the battlefields.
My parents said the raid was a fantastic moral-boost for the Brit people, despite all the deprivation there were huge smiles everywhere, the Yanks seemed very impressed, too, perhaps the Limeys just might win the war, after all. Many in occupied Europe were also cheered, as they now knew the Brits were in it for keeps, they were fighting for victory and were capable of winning. In this regard the raid was worth it.
One of the 617 guys, living not far away, visited Gibson's family after the war. He was not welcome. "They seemed to be the sort of people who loved having a hero for a son ...but not a dead one." There had been talk about Gibson by the guys, of why he kept on flying combat and not taking the cushy PR-job in the USA. Opinion was Gibson loved the war, it made him somebody, he was good at it, and life after the war depressed him. He was thought to be 'carrying a lot of baggage' re: his family's demands on him, and 'was looking for it'. Make of that what you will, reader.
Gibson knew he was flying dangerously, stayed too long over target, wrong route, wrong height, likely to bump into a bomber. I met Lanc gunners, if they saw something moving and it wasn't a huge Lanc they shot at it. Gibson knew this. It was said no one wanted to nav for him, as he was pushing it a bit, taking risks.
But he did a good job with 'The Busters', it took balls to get it sorted so quickly, the training was so intense it was a relief to go off on the job!
By the way, the lesser targets weren't as easy as the books and films made out. Doug Webb, later a top film and theatrical photographer (plus helping make porn-films! But only because he needed the money) then the front gunner O-Orange which blew the Emms Canal (?) told me "we had to fight our way in, and fight our way out. All the way. In the end we had so little ammo left we pooled what we had and gave it to the tail-gunner, he needing it more than we. He only had half-a-dozen bursts left when we landed. We avoided a night-fighter on the coast by the pilot giving the impression he was flying a Spitefire in the B of B. This at 200 feet. THAT frightened me, I literally shit m'self!"
Where did they find the courage...
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