Talk:Precision bombing

Your call, lads and lasses. I'm very, very new.

And angry about this so-called encyclopedia article? Or an un-researched, partisan, and downright ignorant sales pitch for the USAF, and the "fact" that the only reason it hasn't saved the world yet, is that other organisations have let the USAF down?

Take that at face value, and pull the article? Cut it to the bare (and accurate) essentials? Or read on - and I still hope the article gets pulled/cut to about 2 sentences.

His thesis - precision depends on good intelligence? Ooops, own goal, mate. Intelligence - nil; so you've missed your target, by a very, very, very long way.

My thesis - the contributor is a poor, sad, politically biased (and woefully ignorant) dingbat. And I will make a few totally scurrilous, underhand, and unevidenced assertions about the USAF and its operations, to show conclusively that this article should be withdrawn - aye, but with one subtle difference (see below).

1. "Precision bombing was used by both the Allied and Central Powers during World War I" - evidence please. Oh, sorry - the USAF pilots hadn't figured out which way up to hold the map yet, so they didn't find their way there in time; so there can't possibly be any evidence worth quoting.

2. Hey, but by WW2, USAF had at last figured out how to read (bits of) a map. This time they got to Yurp (late).

"However, it (precision bombing) was no longer widely used in World War II because it was ineffective, .... " - try telling that to other nationalities, the ones really involved in WW2, not sitting in relative comfort at 20,000 feet. Try to ...

- tell it to the families of Spaniards, Poles, Russians, or anybody else, who died under precision Stuka bombing. [Ooops, sorry; only Americans can bomb with precision. Not Nazis - my bad]

- tell it to the Poles, Ukrainians, Canadians, French, Americans and everybody else who flew with the RAF (and others? But not the USAF) on precision bombing raids. Not hiding out of sight, above the clouds, at 20,000 feet like the "world-saving" heroes of the USAF with their B17s and the like.

[Ooops, sorry; only Americans can bomb with precision. "We", the USAF, know we hit the right continent (we think so - no guarantee, though); "you" only hit a dam or a heavy water plant - coulda been anywhere.]

- tell it to the German families in the Ruhr after the Dambusters raid. [What - dams in Yurp? Well ...... me sideways! They had dams in Yurp? Always knew those TVA guys were reds-under-the-bed. Never, ever, trust these Roosevelt guys.]

- tell it to the guys who developed and used the Tallboy and Grandslams [Duh - what, where? Aaah - they're cocktails; now that the USAF guys will understand.]

3. "... since to aim for a specific target, like a bridge or a factory, was very difficult. Therefore, the best that could be achieved was strategic bombing." Ah, but we're back to the USAF's inability to understand maps and coordinates; carpet bomb everything within a "reasonable" radius - of how much? Ach - the continent of Yurp'll do.

With nasty covert implications - that the USAF [alone] won WW2.

[Some hints - try it with a map, next time; don't worry, continents are pretty hard to miss with your tactics. Friends are visibly marked (see below). - there were just a few others involved - the various armies and infantries, navies, air forces, merchant marine services, and resistances, with all their various nationalities and origins; they weren't sitting comfortably on their arses at 20,000 feet, out of harm's way. - and you might try visiting an embassy - I can think of several - and try telling a bunch of real, world-wide, veterans (Egyptian, Senegalese, Gambian, Yemeni, Adeni, Indian, from my personal knowledge) in a monthly queue to collect a disgusting pittance of a war pension, that the USAF won the war for them. I am in the fortunate position of being able to translate pretty accurately their reaction - it won't be pretty or printable.

- oh, and Kraut civvies don't matter. After all, "we're the USAF, saving the world."]

4. How many Allied ships were sunk by aircraft during WW2? Ah, but that was German pilots. That doesn't count as bombing with precision - hey, they're not USAF (hmm - they could read maps and communicate, but let's not mention USAF inadequacies again).

5. You will note that out of common decency, I have deliberately not mentioned any, ummm, extremely accurate and precision attacks on any US fleets anywhere, any time. I did not say Pearl Harbour. It did not happen. It is a conspiracy. There were no Japanese planes within a continent's distance. They couldn't read maps either, and actually bombed coal mines in Worksop, in southern France.

• • • • - and God alone knows how much precision (and not-so-precision) bombing there has been since WW2.

6. How many times have the Israeli air force demonstrated precision bombing? Never once. [At least in this article. They're not USAF. It was neither Syria nor Iraq, but Australia they hit. (Mustn't mention map-reading again, nor intelligence, tain't fair with the USAF, poor ignorant sods.)]

7. Come on - I'm trying to be fair. Look at the good things the USAF have done. I haven't referred to the number of British servicemen killed by the USAF, and their "precision" tactics (!) in Iraq or Afghanistan? Nor Afghani wedding parties?

Precision bombing? My arse. I suspect your article writer would have difficulty hitting potato chips with tomato ketchup. Pretty much sums up US air operations - with the delicious overtone that the USAF can't ever admit they've ever made a mistake.

[Ooops, sorry! On several occasions I've mentioned, the USAF were not using bombs, but missiles. Bombs are easy to target with precision, but missiles go off uncontrollably, in any direction. I shouldn't confuse the two.]

[Ooops, sorry! The guys behind desks at computers told the USAF that the Al Ameriya structure was a command-and-control bunker. So it couldn't ever be a bomb shelter full of 408 non-combatant women and children. And they weren't incinerated by laser guided USAF bombs. It's all lies put about by the world's press. Anyway, the USAF wasn't responsible - it was the geeks back home; USAF were just the guys who "precision" bomb where they're told to]

[Ooops, sorry! It is at least "possible" that wedding party annihilated by the USAF in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, early July this year, were indeed militants involved in previous mortar attacks on a Nato base. You never know what women and children can get up to these days.

Oh, woe is me! I've brought up an example of the USAF using missiles again - far too uncontrollable. Now, if the USAF had used precision bombs, it'd be a different story. Nobody left within miles to tell the world about the US and its military operations.]

[Ooops, sorry! Ummmmmm, the elephant in the room. The section called "The leverage of precision weapons: historical experience through Vietnam"

All sorts of vacuous evasions of anything to do with Vietnam, apart from one absolutely prize sentence - "The modern precision weapon era may be said to have begun in May 1972, when laser-guided-bomb-armed McDonnell F-4 Phantoms perfunctorily took down the Paul Doumer and Thanh Hoa bridges in North Vietnam, as part of a larger campaign that shattered North Vietnam’s invasion of South Vietnam in the spring of that year."

I hope to goodness that the guy who is at the origin of this Wikipedia article never actually got paid for it.

If he did, there's a, ummmm, bit of uncomfortable historical fact about his "shattered North Vietnam invasion of South Vietnam"? I really do apologise; I can read [so I know that the modern precision era predates 1972], and I can read maps [so that excludes me from ever flying USAF killing machines] ------- so it is perhaps unfair on my part to remember media coverage of the evacuation from the US Embassy in Saigon? ROFLMAO.

Hmmm - you've got the idea that I'm just a little annoyed at such egregiously partisan propaganda being published in Wikipedia?

And I'm guessing that that the contributor of this article will be a bit miffed at my scurrilous, underhand, and unevidenced assertions about the USAF. Aye, but there is a huge difference - I happily describe accurately my unfounded opinions as "scurrilous, underhand, and unevidenced." I am windng the him up. Hey - but I'm NOT using Wikipedia to propagate brain-curdling fantasy, idiocy, and outright lies.

Try this lot. Read the section on "Future directions in precision weapon development and use" Brain-curdling? Fantasy? Or political and partisan propaganda and lies? Pretty much the same in my book.

I quote - "But after the war, inspectors learned that Iraq had, in fact, no less than ten major nuclear research facilities; eight uranium mining, production, processing, and storage sites; twenty-four uranium enrichment sites; nine weaponization sites; and seventeen other sites devoted to supporting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. In sum, what had been known had been targeted and much had been destroyed, but there was simply much more that was unknown and, thus, escaped attack."

It's there. That's a quote from the current Wikipedia article.

Come on, where's the evidence? References? Citations? Or is it as "precision" as his map-reading of Yurp, and his "blue-on-blues"? What planet is this contributor on?

Suggestion, friend - just do a google on "CIA intelligence Iraq" or anything remotely similar, and you'll find that the Bush and his Blair poodle lied, lied, lied, and lied again - before, during, and after the war.

This article is about as much use as a google on "Roswell Iraq". If there's one thing worse than propaganda, it's ignorant and stupid propaganda.

Get rid of it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yardsmyth2 (talk • contribs) 00.51, 28 August 2008

Your critique of the speech - as I pointed out above, it is just that, not a real article - is fair in your own terms, that is, as a rant. But I think it extremely unfair to ignore the RAF's contribution to the mass bombing of Germany. It was, after all, RAF Air Marshall Arthur Harris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Travers_Harris), who conceived area bombing and set the stage for the massive fire bombing of large German cities like Hamburg and Dresden. And he went about his job with such zeal (egged by Churchill), that he was knighted soon after WWII, and made a baronet at Churchill's insistence. So one could say that area bombing was invented by the RAF, and licensed by the USAF, based on principles developed by the Germans for the Spanish Civil War (remember Guernica?). Lavidia (talk) 23:07, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is an unhelpful rant by a one-edit contributor, followed by and a reasoned reply (which is more than it deserves). I've collapsed both, but am in two minds whether they should simply be deleted. Xyl 54 (talk) 18:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]