Requesting information on the Thousand Planes Bombing, including the fire in Hamburg, as well as information on the bombings of Essen and Bremen

On February 21, 1942, after Arthur Harris became the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force, he suggested that the British Air Force stop destroying specific targets and requested ground bombing of German cities. He believed that to destroy a city, its industrial enterprises should first be destroyed to demoralize the German people. He developed a set of strict disciplines that required his soldiers to execute all his orders promptly and unconditionally. He asked the British government to support him with 4,000 heavy four-engine bombers and 1,000 high-speed fighter-bombers. Only in this way could the Royal Air Force have the advantage of having 1,000 aircraft hovering over Germany every night. So in the first thousand-plane bombing on the night of May 30-31, 1942, Harris dispatched all bombers, a total of 1,047. As a result, 41 aircraft did not return to base on time (3.9% of the total). In addition to German cities, the British Air Force's bombing targets also targeted the Ruhr Industrial Area, Milan, Turin and La Spezia in Italy, as well as the German submarine base in France. Such bombing continued until January 1943, when the US-UK Allied Forces held their first meeting in Casablanca and clarified the goal of future strategic cooperation: spare no effort to defeat and destroy Germany's military, economic and industrial strength in order to weaken the morale of the German people and make them Loss of resistance.

British Prime Minister Churchill announced in a speech in the House of Commons on June 2 of that year: "I guarantee that this year, Germany's major cities, ports, and military industrial centers will be subjected to an attack that no country has ever experienced. The most cruel disaster."

Subsequently, the British bombing commander received an order to "give the most violent bombing to the German industrial areas." "In effect, I had obtained the right to bomb German cities with a population of 100,000 and above at will." Harris recalled after the war. He once again targeted Hamburg, Germany's second largest city, and named this air raid the "Battle of Gomorrah". The purpose was to completely destroy Hamburg and reduce it to ashes.

From the end of July to the beginning of August 1943, the U.S. and British allies carried out intensive bombing of Hamburg for three consecutive days and four nights. The Japanese dispatched nearly 3,000 heavy bombers and dropped approximately 1,000 bombs into the densely populated areas of the city. 10,000 tons, mostly incendiary bombs. Hamburg became a sea of ​​fire. The fire formed a column of hot air, reaching a height of 4,000 meters. The billowing smoke even penetrated into the cabin of the plane. According to some eyewitnesses, the asphalt roads and tram windows were all scorched and melted by the fire. The panicked refugees hid in the basement and were suffocated by poison gas and burned to ashes alive. Some were buried alive in the rubble and died. This air strike severely destroyed half of the city, resulting in 50,000 civilian deaths and 200,000 burns, injuries, and disabilities. After the Hamburg air raid, Marshal Harris, who was already nicknamed "Bomber", was called "Butcher" by some British magazines. But the results of the bombing did not make Harris happy at all, because the Battle of Hamburg did not accelerate the arrival of Germany's complete defeat. According to Harris' statistics, at least six major cities must be destroyed at the same time to completely destroy Germany. Almost at the same time, the U.S. military concentrated its bombing on the heavy industrial areas of the Third Reich. On August 17, 363 heavy bombers tried to bomb the bearing factory in Schweinfurt, but without fighter cover, they suffered heavy losses and 60 bombers were shot down. Three months later, Harris started the "Battle of Berlin" on November 18, which lasted until March 1944. Harris organized 16 concentrated bombings on Berlin. The Nazis dropped 50,000 tons of bombs, turning half the city into ruins and killing tens of thousands of Berliners. On March 30, 1944, when the British army attacked Nuremberg at night, the Japanese dispatched 786 aircraft, 96 of which were shot down by the Germans. By early 1944, Allied bombers had the cover of Mustang fighters. At this time, the German air defense system had collapsed, there were very few ace pilots left, and new pilots could not be replenished in time. Starting from April, Allied strategic bombing became more frequent. The small town of Essen is the result of strategic bombing: There was once such a record... On the last day of September 1944, due to bad weather, US military aircraft were unable to detect the target of a military factory they intended to attack. On the way back, Passing through a small city, in order to reduce the burden, the plane dropped all the bombs. The bombs fell on a school. 120 students (half of the city) were buried alive in the rubble...

< p>By the end of 1944, the German railways had been completely paralyzed by Allied bombings, and fuel production dropped sharply from 316,000 tons in May to 17,000 tons in September, which was unable to supply the German Air Force and tank divisions. The German army ultimately failed.

With the increase in combat experience, Allied aircraft losses have become less and less, and the cover strength of heavy bombers and fighter jets has been greatly strengthened. Once again the city was attacked and bombed with the greatest intensity. In mid-February 1945, the Battle of Dresden reached the peak of stage bombing. From the night of February 13th to the early morning of February 14th, 800 British bombers violently dropped 650,000 incendiary bombs into the city center. 27,000 homes and 7,000 public buildings collapsed, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed. Although there are different opinions on the number of victims, it is self-evident that this fire storm, like the Hamburg and Hiroshima fires, brought disaster and pain to the city and people.

Following the Battle of Dresden, the British army successfully bombed some ancient German cities such as Würzburg, Bayreuth, and Ulm. In Pforzheim, a city with a population of only 60,000, 20,000 civilians were killed in an air strike on February 22.

In early March, Churchill suggested that Harris immediately stop "area" bombing, and Marshal Arthur Harris finally stopped the large-scale bombing of cities and civilians.

After the war, Marshal Arthur Harris wrote a book called "Strategic Bombing". In the book, he specifically pointed out: Except for the Battle of Essen, during the rest of the war, the Royal Air Force's bombing never Without targeting a certain factory, even if a company is successfully destroyed, we will regard it as an additional achievement. And our success criterion is the destruction of the city center, because the closer to the city center, the denser the houses and the population, the easier it is for a bomb to destroy the entire city.

During the war, the British army dropped 950 million bombs, weighing 430,000 tons, on German cities in Germany.

For a long time after the war, both the United States and Britain continued to defend their misdeeds. In 1964, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Ira Icker said: "I am very sorry for the 135,000 Dresden people who died when the U.S. and British Allied Forces bombed Dresden, but I have not forgotten the war. The instigator of the war, and once again expressed regret for the more than 5 million civilians who sacrificed their lives in the U.S. and British Air Force's tenacious fight against fascism." Marshal Robert Sundby of the British Air Force had a more moderate tone: "No one will deny that the Battle of Dresden. It was a tragedy. It was a horrific disaster caused by a cruel coincidence. The attack in the spring of 1945 was not a serious battle, although the Allies did not seem to understand the destructive power of the air raid."

< p>According to statistics, 300,000 to 1.5 million German civilians died in Allied bombings.

Cities with more than 50% of their area destroyed during the bombing include: Ludwigshafen, Volmth, Bremen, Hannover, Nuremberg, Remscheid, Bochum, Essen, Darfur Mstadt, Cochem, Hamburg. Mainz, Neckarsulm, Aachen, Münster, Erkelenz, Wilhelmshaven, Koblenz, Cologne, Pforzheim, Dortmund, Giessen, Hanau, Kassel , Düren, Altenkirchen, Bruchsal, Gravenbroch, Donauwörth, Remagen, Würzburg, Ironden, Pruem, Wesel, Xanten, Emmerich, Jülich.