German pilots straffing civilians in France and England 1940

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Originally Posted by Smudger Smith

I agree these actions should be reported and open to discussion, however lets not restrict ourselves to one particular airforce.

I agree. Civilian deads due to bombings are a main caracteristic of modern warfare, even with all the technology now available.

It's easy to call airmen war criminals, when civilians or hospitals are hit but in many cases, they behave the same in enemy or Allied territory.

There were far more friendly fire errors by bombers than hospital bombings, so probably a good part are an error.

And a French civilian had more chances to be killed if he drived in summer 1944 under Allied bullets than in June 1940 under German ones.

Anyway, that should not stop people asking about these subjects. Or some bad cases may be thought to be the norm.

In that case, as I said before, road strafing is often mentionned in Exode stories but is more rarely confirmed by historical local studies (that far more often will describe bombings of stations, ports, bridges or airfields, that killed civilians too) or official reports.

The same local history books on the contrary will often have one or several examples of road strafing by Allied fighters in 1944, either on German units, on civilians vehicles (or carts) or on Resistance convoys.