
Bomb Sight – Mapping the World War 2 London Blitz Bomb Census - dmmalam
http://bombsight.org/#13/51.5087/-0.0879
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RowanH
That's a very graphic visualisation. You've got to wonder if every one saw and
understood this whether there would be greater tolerance and understanding to
avoid war...

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kennywinker
I don't think that's how humans work. We know that bombing is awful, but we
also "know" that the people we are bombing are the enemy and deserve to be
blown up.

The thing to avoid is dehumanizing and vilifying groups of people.

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mc32
I agree with that when it comes to starting a war as an aggressor --but not as
a defensive war. I mean, if someone is coming to get you and they have
vilified you or for whatever reason have decided to wage war against your
group, it would be utter folly to say, well, it's wrong to dehumanize and
vilify the enemy, unless you propose getting rolled over is an acceptable
alternative.

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shakna
That sort of thinking leads to "the ends justify the means".

Because we're on the defense, then any captured POWs don't deserve human
rights.

Because we're on the defense, we can deploy nerve gas against them.

If all you do is see the enemy as the villain... You become one.

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mc32
There is that possibility --and we saw that in WWii with German prisoners of
war captured by Soviet forces. On the other side US forces were much kinder to
German PoWs, but that's perhaps because it wasn't as personal a war to us.

Ethics and morality don't help win wars --but they are good PR post war, if
you are the winner.

There is no clean answer to this problem because your enemy will by all means
take advantage of your self-imposed constraints. Osama even admitted fighting
the Soviets was very, very hard fought --and fighting the Americans would be a
much easier task in his view. Here is one place I might agree with his
assessment.

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lsc
The shocking thing to me is that this is the side that won. This is what
victory looks like, even when the other side doesn't have nukes.

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lostlogin
Yes, and that map shows the hits London took. Britain received something like
75,000 tons of German bombs. British and American bombers dropped something a
bit short of 2 millions tons on Germany. It was on a whole different scale in
Germany.

This book covers is well.
[https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/201...](https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/bombing-
war-europe-richard-overy-review)

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org3432
The part that always surprised me about the blitz is only 28k killed and 25k
wounded. How is that even possible?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz)

> Civilian casualties on London throughout the Blitz amounted to 28,556
> killed, and 25,578 wounded.

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lostlogin
That seems a lot of dead to me, but it is a lot less than later bombing caused
and the lack of firestorms is the reason. The allies put a lot of effort into
optimising conditions for causing them.

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jonplackett
Unbelievable how many bombs dropped. Two within a few metres of my house!

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dvtv75
My partner's mother was a little girl during World War 2, and told me that she
remembers being at school with her gas mask nearby at all times. She told me
how a bomb fell near her house in Dorking blew out all the windows, while
another destroyed the railway bridge, presumably the one on Pixham Lane in
Dorking.

She remembers the V1 bombs, the Doodlebugs, and explained that you were
alright as long as you could hear the engine but if the noise stopped, you
were in trouble.

My history teacher at high school also lived through the Blitz, being just a
little older. I remember him telling the class about the bomb that fell near
his house, and when he ran out looking for his parents he accidentally kicked
a helmet which, he discovered, contained a head. He still had nightmares about
it 40 years later, understandably.

I find personal histories fascinating, I wish I was able to hear them all, and
visualize them to a degree. (Maybe not that last one.)

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ggm
Solly Zuckerman's work (O/R I thing) on the efficacy of bombing, and how it
was politically expedient to supress or white-ant it is worth reflecting on
(its in his biography "From Apes to Warlords")

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bendbro
It would be nice if you could make the dots transparent. There appears to be a
pattern of right to left lines across the city, but it is not easily visible
as is.

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jamessb
I was going to suggest changing the opacity attribute of the marker elements
using your browser's developer tools, but the markers are provided as a layer
of pre-generated image tiles (e.g. [1]), so while you can make these images
more transparent (which lets you see place names on the underlying map) you
can't make the individual markers more transparent.

[1]:
[http://geoserver.bombsight.org/geoserver/gwc/service/tms/1.0...](http://geoserver.bombsight.org/geoserver/gwc/service/tms/1.0.0/sit:prod_week_bomb@EPSG:900913@png/11/1023/1367.png)

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tomcooks
does this mean that the layers are merged into tiles and cached beforehand? is
this better than having a separate layer for markers?

edit: asking because this map is blazing fast, esp given the amount of points
to map

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jamessb
All of the _markers_ are merged into tiles and cached, and it is more efficent
for the browser to just load these than it would be to create a separate
circle or image for each marker. At zoom level 15 and higher actual individual
markers are drawn (each one as a separate png image).

There are still two layers, but both just contain image tiles: one contains
the base map, and the other contains red circles on a transparent background.

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tones411
Wow! I didn’t realize there were that many!

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hoppelhase
In Kassel, the allies dropped 2 bombs per m^2 on average in a couple hours.

[http://www.kassel.de/stadt/geschichte/zerstoerung/](http://www.kassel.de/stadt/geschichte/zerstoerung/)

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lttlrck
I lived in Stuttgart for 10 years (I’m British) and the post-bombing photos of
the city filled me with sorrow. 21000 long tonnes dropped on that beautiful
provincial city.

Sadly reconstruction was not as kind as it was in Munich (less money
presumably).

I love that place and miss it dearly.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Stuttgart_in_Worl...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Stuttgart_in_World_War_II)

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jackaroe78
Startup Idea: Improve the unexploded ordinance detection & removal process

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hoppelhase
Are there any maps that show German cities? E.g. Kassel or Dresden.

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lostlogin
It wouldn’t be possible I don’t think. The number dropped was vastly greater
and firestorms were the specific goal. Fires are large as those caused would
obliterate a lot of the evidence. There were specific recipes made to cause
major fires, with roofs opened up with explosives, incendiaries to follow into
the roof spaces. All done in nice dry weather. The British spent a lot of
effort on this.

