Why isnt fire bombing done anymore?
Only the US makes its houses of wood.
>>62508917Surely a large enough fire can consume even concrete. Like the firebombing of Japan killed 1 million nips and wounded a million more with 9 million made homeless. All for the cost of 614 aircraft. Thats an insane kill ratio. Needs to be brought back, nothing is more efficient.
>>62508910>>62508923we live in the age of fire droning now
>>62508910>Why isnt fire bombing done anymore?Because it's obsolete. It only made "sense" in total war and only with air dominance plus massive amounts of aerial bombing capacity. The only country in the world that could still give it a go is America, and it has both PGMs and nukes. Firebombing is obsolete on both ends. If you're aiming for specific military/industrial targets inside of even a dense city, it's unnecessary to hit anything but them. The days of bombs being off by a mile, at any time of day, are long long gone. And if you're aiming to wipe out the city itself, you can just nuke it.You're a retard OP. It's like asking "why aren't lines of battle with battleships doing broadsides at each other done anymore?"
>>62508986>You're a retard OP. It's like asking "why aren't lines of battle with battleships doing broadsides at each other done anymore?"Why though? Id imagine broadsides from the coasts will make the liberation of Kuwait go little easier. Why did the navy just scuttle the battleships?
>>62508910see>>62508986Also read the US Strategic Bombing Survey, which can be summed up as 'strategic bombing really didn't work all that well until we focused on transportation and fuel, but we did burn down a few cities and we have nukes now so next time it'll totally work, trust me bro'Cue Korea, where strategic bombing did, in fact' not work very well even though the USAF turned most of Norkistan into a moonscape.Followed by Vietnam, where strategic bombing failed to achieve any of teh stated goals, but at least the bomber mafia finally aged out and the EWAR, precision guidance and air operations lessons from that war were pointers in the right direction.
>>62508910its only good for when you wanna kill [EVERYTHING]
>>62508910Airmen LOVE firebombing civilians.Until they realize they will now get lynched if they have to bail out lmaoI bet US air crews hated Dresden after they learned their fate in case they have to parachute down lmao
>>62509049Just dont get shot down lmao.
>>62509049Didn't they put some bomber pilots in a cage in the Ueno zoo in Tokyo after they bailed out?
>>62508923>Surely a large enough fire can consume even concreteIt doesn't burn, it can melt if you have a strong enough fire, but that takes an absurd amount of heat.>Like the firebombing of JapanWooden houses built before modern fire codes.
>>62509038>' not work very well even though the USAF turned most of Norkistan into a moonscape.it was highly effective in absolutely destroying north korean logistics the NKs required herculean efforts to bring flow of supplies to the front, which meant a significant diversion of men and material to repairing damagethat the north koreans travelling only at night and only using pack animals was a sure sign that the bombing campaign had achieved noticeable effectsonly NK propaganda would spin that outcome as a victory, any actual general would find not being able to use trucks or travelling slower than usual to be a millstone
>>62508923jap houses were unironically made of paper at the time
>>62508923>nothing is more efficient.Nukes made this type of mass aircraft assault obsolete. The nuclear bombing fleet lost no aircraft at all.
>>62508917>Only the US makes its houses of wood.Correction. USA makes its houses out of wood chips and glue, with plastic vinyl siding mimicking bricks.
>>62509652nta but I agree this is fair: ultimately the ""issue"" there was a (reasonable) unwillingness to expand the war to China and the USSR. That's the only reason the norks survived. We see that repeated over and over again, hell, we're literally seeing it repeated right now in Ukraine. If the enemy has tons of production and human resources that you're unwilling to attack or threaten because ESCALATION then they may indeed just able to wear you down no matter how much you hit some specific area of sandbox you've arbitrarily decided is where the shooting bits shall happen.At the same time though (and more so back then vs now) escalation can be real, so it's still a real factor. And while the mass destruction definitely worked vs the norks themselves, in a world where the US had suddenly had access to modern PGM tech and ability to mass produce it that too would have worked quite well or better. The problem would have remained sustaining the economics vs an opponent that could employ huge amounts of labor and expend huge amounts of meat in ways a democratic country just isn't willing to.
>>62508917>Dresden, Germany>The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre. Up to 25,000 people were killed.
>>62510006Makes. present tense.Not pre-1940s tense.
>>62510006Well yeah, that's part of the reason they don't have a lot of wooden houses.
>>62508910Better methods have been arranged.
>>62509000Do you not know what "obsolete" means?
>>62509000as opposed to how easy it already was without broadsides? Also battleships are expensive so it wouldn't even be cost effective when what happened in reality was more effective and cheaper.
>>62510027>>62510041Yeah look at all these wood houses. Oh wait, you're fucking retarded.
le human rights
Attacking civilian targets makes for very bad optics and optics matter more and more as time moves forward and it becomes easier for literally anyone to broadcast their thoughts.The only time it's deemed appropriate (by the people doing it, naturally) is when the enemy is thoroughly dehumanized.The Allies did not have a problem with killing literally as many Japs as they could, that's why The USA did it with no blowback from anyone who matters.Same as with The A-bombs, we like to justify it today by saying things like "it shortened the war and saved lives" and we like the idea of somber scientists and generals contemplating what they have done and if it's worth it.But the truth is that excluding bleeding heart types the people of the United States were very, VERY pleased with how many Japs died, as far as they were concerned they all deserved it.
>>62508917
>>62510514Those houses had a shitton more wood in them than any modern construction.I also never said there were no wood houses in Dresden (I'm not the anon you first responded to).Compare Dresden to Tokyo, which was mostly wood constrcution.
>>62510560>houses of brick>look at wooden fences thoRetard
>>62510514I don't see any houses there at all, just the remains of hybrid bigger city structures using stone/cement with wood supports/cross beams/roofs.
>>62508910Its a warcrime and if the allies had lost the war they would have been on the other side of the Nuremberg trials for it.
>>62510610woops lol
>>62510661>random picture of fire with 0 contextOh wow you really proven how retarded Americans are with their houses lol
>>62510661Wtf I thought eurocuck houses were immune to fire?
>Topic>Out of nowhere shitposting about Americans/the WestIts so blatant.
>>62510651Nah. Anyway since it was impossible for the allies to lose the war since long before that point nothing to worry about.
>>62508910because you can just make a missile hit what you want if you're not a thirdie.
>>62510759How compelling.That's not the point anyway. Post Vietnam war you can't sweep warcrimes under the rug as effectively so even if you win you're gonna face a lot of pressure domestically and internationally. Purposefully burning women and children alive doesn't play well anymore.
>>62509652That's partly why "interdiction" has always been separated out from "strategic bombing". That other part being that interdiction is usually done closer to the front with smaller, shorter-ranged aircraft like medium bombers and fighter bombers.Interdiction is about the nastiest thing an air force can do to an enemy army once friendly troops are in contact. It can be far, far more effective than CAS, it generally provides "free" recon of a sort, and it meshes so well with targeted tactical/operational-level strikes that the two doctrines are typically bundled together in ID/S. ID/S was extremely effective against Saddam (both times), and works best against a logistics-heavy enemy (that is, an army rather than COIN).
>>62510610compare those densely-packed European townhomes to any typical American suburb. European cities are fundamentally more at risk of fire due to their layout.
>>62510961Why do US suburbs regularly burn down during forest fires then?
>>62511189because they're in the forest
>>62511226... So they're at fundamentally high risk of a fire spreading?
>>62511233Not really. The ratio of forest acres burned to houses damaged is 700:1, which if anything is a pretty excellent record
>>62510855>How compelling.I'm being flippant because this is an endless thing that comes up to people new but Axis victory was completely impossible well before the serious Allied bombing raids kicked off. The US was fully committed, on the path to nuke mass production with no counters, and effectively invulnerable to anything the Germans or Japanese could do. There may be timelines where in theory they might have managed a conditional vs unconditional surrender, but for the nips even that probably wouldn't fly after PH and all the atrocities they committed against allied soldiers.The "war crimes" thing is overdone in that specific war given the treaties at the time and general situation. That's not to say axis wouldn't have prosecuted anyway if they could, though without the same overall mercy and even hint of trial fairness nor rebuilding and letting allies be independent afterwards.>Post Vietnam war you can't sweep warcrimes under the rug as effectivelyI wish, unironically, you were right. And you were, until maybe 2000ish. As Russia's war in Ukraine demonstrates though we've moved into yet another new phase featuring all the information but lots of nihilism and reversion to "all values are relative" and so on. Mass war crimes can be committed, and in a hyper polarized environment tons will deny it ever happened or whatever.
>>62508910It proved completely ineffective at terrorizing hostile populations and only minimally effective at destroying enemy industry.
>>62511291Culture>Strategic bombing won WW2>Look at how Germany suffered from catastrophic shortages of industrial productsCounterculture>Strategic bombing actually did nothing at all>German war production increased every year until 1945Truth>Strategic bombing mattered but was just one of many factors all contributing to victory>The exact effects are impossible to quantify, but every ounce of steel and gallon of fuel spent rebuilding factories and railways became resources that would be missing on the frontlines
>>62511189Because those aren't suburbs
>>62511257That has more to do with the suburbs that burn down being fundamentally rich people vacation homes in otherwise very sparsely populated mountainous and heavily forested areas. US homes are tinderboxes, most don't have sprinklers and most cities don't require sprinklers in newbuild houses, only multi-family buildings. They're made out of wood-pulp boards impregnated with petroleum, filled with particleboard furniture, cardboard, and paper. Sheer size of the lots these homes sit on can slow the spread long enough for firefighters to protect adjacent buildings, but without fire department attention it's all likely going up until it hits a major road or natural firebreak.>>62511265>in a hyper polarized environment tons will deny it ever happened or whatever.The only people denying Russia's warcrimes in Ukraine are the weird tankie types that think Russia is recreating the USSR and Putin's useful idiots in the GOP. We know it happened, there's plenty of evidence it happened, the problem prosecuting the criminals. It requires either the complete conquest of the offending state, or a completely new regime getting installed that's willing to find and turn over those responsible. I doubt even if Putin gets deposed Russia will somehow get a ruler willing to send war criminals to the Hague.
>>62510006>25,000More like 200,000 you firebomb denier. Verdamnt die Amerikanen tried to wipe out my entire people.
>>62516866>Russia will somehow get a ruler willing to send war criminals to the Hague.Oh I am sure that after Putin dies, whatever faction wins will be perfectly willing to send all their opposition to the Hague to be tried. Or even trial them themselves and gulag them. Probably the latter actually.
>>62508910first world countries have created better air defense & early warning systems to prevent it
>>62511189nigger a forest fire can jump lakes and rivers to keep burning, the winds they create can be hurricane speeds and the ambient heat dries and bakes anything close to them, no shitbox eurotrash town would be safe
>>62516947>tried to wipe out my entire people.Based. Firebombing should make a comeback
>>62516947Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind
>>62519349What do you mean? The UK was the first to target civilian housing.
Because killing the enemy is easy but maintaining public approval for the killing is hard. Horrific ways of killing are no more effective, but alienate the performing nations own people.
>>62521764>what was Warsaw>what was Rotterdam>what was the blitz
It's possible to hit the target now, and hitting a factory/logistics node/power plant with a cruise missile/ballistic missile is much easier than blanketing a city with kilotons of conventional bombs.Even US nuclear strategy avoids deliberately targeting the civilian population.
>>62511360It's funny how there is so much discussion as to whether the strategic campaign was effective in Germany (it was), to the point that some politically motivated individuals say it just doesn't work in general.Meanwhile at the same time on the other side of the world Japan surrendered without a fight on the home islands, due to the blockade and the strategic bombing campaign, IE it was completely successful.Those same people will tend to just ignore that or complain about the moral injustice instead.
>>62508917I love how stupid this makes people look when they say this shit, then people post their BRICK and MORTAR homes in America and they just start blathering away at how they're wrong anyway.
>>62511226>dunno lol
>>62508923Japan was built from wood then, the only reason they switched as fast is because the cities got leveled.You can visit cities like Kyoto or Shiragawa and they're still built from wood, sometimes even hundreds of years old buildings because they were too remote or too important culturally to be bombed.
>>62522020Vast majority of "brick and mortar" homes in the US are brick facades on a stick frame. The suburbs of my city is full of these kinds of houses. The only places you tend to see large numbers of actual brick and mortar houses are in the cities and inner suburbs in the New England area. A lot of the post-world war II building boom in the US was stick frame houses, and nearly everything built by large tract developers since the 1970s has been stick frame.
>>62516947I fucking wish, they definitely should have
>>62508910Because we have PGMs to destroy actual military targets and killing civilians on a massive scale is no longer acceptable.Civilian deaths used to be taken much less seriously. For instance, when the US liberated Manila they killed 110,000+ civilians dislodging 18,000 Japs. By modern standards, e.g. Gaza or Mariupol, people would call this "genociding" our allies.Although to be fair about 20-35,000 were killed booting 10,000 IS fighters from Mosul and no one really cares about that because it was Arabs and Kurds fighting Arabs.It's also not particularly helpful as a military strategy in the grand scheme of things UNLESS you're willing to go all in and destroy entire cities.
>>62524584>For instance, when the US liberated Manila they killed 110,000+ civilians dislodging 18,000 JapsThis was both due to less accurate weapons of the time and because the Japanese were quite literally chaining civilians to the walls of buildings they were using as strongpoints to act as human shields. IJA and IJN behavior in Manila makes even Hamas look like saints today. You also appear to be insinuating that all of those civilian deaths were caused by the US despite the Japanese raping and murdering civilians indiscriminately even before US forces reached the city.>By modern standards, e.g. Gaza or Mariupol, people would call this "genociding" our allies.I'm unaware of anyone calling Mariupol a genocide. Russian treatment of the local population is a war crime without a doubt. Gaza by contrast is closer given decades of Israeli policy of taking land and repressing the population, there's nothing new with the current fighting other than a much higher tolerance for civilian casualties by the IDF. The tolerance for collateral damage in both Falluja and Mosul was far lower, but when your opponent hides within the civilian population and uses them as shields you're going to see a lot of civilians die no matter what you do.
>>62524704People have definitely called Mariupol a genocide. And by contrast to Gaza, it is in many ways worse. If the IDF killed a commensurate share of the population in Gaza they would kill 250,000 or so (in a vastly shorter time span).The IDF bombing isn't even "indiscriminate" (as it sometimes was in Mariupol), and again, being indifferent to civilian losses or even targeting them as a punitive measure to force surrender is not genocide. Genocide is when you try to exterminate the populace. US firebombing in Tokyo and Dresden wasn't genocide either.By December Israel had dropped 5+ times as much ordinance on Gaza as the London Blitz, where Germans had a high dud rate, dumb bombs, and had to attack through heavy and effective air defenses. And yet the Germans killed more Brits with vastly less ordinance. Why? Because they were actually targeting civilians in some cases and trying to produce civilian deaths (although this was far from the only strategy). The genocide claim somehow has it that the IDF is vastly less effective at killing civilians despite the massive advantages of modern technology and total air supremecy.As to "genocide," if the Hamas leadership was rounded up and turned over tomorrow and all hostages released, it's fairly inconceivable that the war would go on. That is, this whole time Hamas, like Hitler after 43, could easily end the war, which has a forgone conclusion, through surrender. No doubt some Israelis do have genocidal intent (queue the Twitter screen caps as overwhelming evidence of where national policy is directed). But the fact is that there isn't much to suggest they are in the driver's seat.
>>62508910because it's ineffective. it fails in it's intended goals of:>reducing civilian morale>killing/dislocating important work force personnel (they largely don't live right next to their work, only those that are low on the totem pole live nearby)>sending a 'message' to the rest of the countryterror bombing didn't work in Britain, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union or China
>>62522006strategic bombing works, that's undeniable. indiscriminate bombing of civilians doesn't.
>>62508917Yeah, but 85% of US homes are single-family houses. They are so spread out that it would take a massive bombing campaign to take out a large percentage. While the houses are made out of wood, the separation would make it easy to contain a fire to just a few houses.
>>62525126>People have definitely called Mariupol a genocideDumbasses on twitter who have 0 idea what genocide means, sure. But genocide is not a question of numbers, it is very specifically attempting to wipe out a nationality, race, or ethnic group. This is why Mariupol does not meet the definition. The Russian army is indiscriminately killing civilians yes, but they aren't (at least as of yet) actually trying to kill all Ukrainians, just conquer the territory. The difference between that and Gaza is that the Israeli government has had a longstanding policy of allowing Israeli settlers to take Palestinian land, while simultaneously being far more lax about civilian casualties than the US was in similar urban insurgencies in the Middle East. It doesn't rise to the level of genocide yet IMO, but Israel has been edging in that direction for a long time and their current strategy appears to be to make Gaza uninhabitable via housing and infrastructure destruction.>The IDF bombing isn't even "indiscriminate"I never said it was, only that the IDF is being far more tolerant of collateral damage than the US was. This has been reported on multiple times, as an example where the US would balk at killing 5 civilians to bomb one militant, the IDF greenlights killing 25 civilians to bomb one random Hamas fighter, plus for a long time they weren't even doing their due diligence to ensure that their target intelligence was accurate.>And yet the Germans killed more Brits with vastly less ordinance. Why?Inner London's population density was about 2.5 times the density of Gaza today, 34k compared to around 14k. London's overall density was about the same today if you include the outer boroughs with inner London. That's much of the reason for similar death tolls despite worse overall weapons used by the Germans.If Bibi actually wanted the hostages back, he would have made a deal by now. He's just fomenting outrage and riding the tiger to try and keep his ass out of prison.
>>62525248see >>62516866Your pic is a fucking tenderbox, in a house fire scenario fire departments are able to respond and contain a fire so only one house gets burnt down, but during a hypothetical strategic bombing raid? You're looking at massive swathes of suburbia burning down while fire departments try to use major roads and natural firebreaks to contain the damage. Even worse, most of those neighborhoods have maybe one or two exits to city roads, with hundreds of cars that would be trying to get out. It's a fucking deathtrap no better than a Japanese city in 1945.
>>62525441The war isn't so much about getting hostages back, Hamas themselves have little incentive to release them for anything short of a long term cessation in hostilities.The war is/was mainly about Israel degrading Hamas capabilities, to reduce their ability to launch attacks on Israel for the foreseeable future.I think this was basically a gamble by Hamas that if they caused a big crisis it could snowball into a larger regional conflict, where they might have some hope of achieving some Palestinian nationalist objectives.However their allies were caught wrongfooted and were not interested in the consequences of such a war.So far the Israelis have been able to focus largely on Gaza without major interventions by other regional actors.If now that Hamas has been effectively neutralised, Israel initiates a major war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, that might look very bad for Hez who chickened out at the start, although it depends how it turns out.
>>62508910killing your enemy has become a warcrime you are only allowed to let them kill you now so the UN can give you sympathy awards as you go extinct. everything else is not allowed
