Hilton Head Island: voyagers; bombings; a samurai

 

I have been remiss in not mentioning that Steve Earley is on his Spring cruise on SPARTINA  in North Carolina .

You can follow him on his tracking page:

https://maps.findmespot.com/s/5LD8#history/assets

and at his website:

https://logofspartina.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile a few thousand miles to the south Hugh is close to completing his four year circumnavigation in SEA CHANGE.

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SeaChange/?mapMode=useGoogle&windSymbol=WindStreamlines&weatherSource=ECMWF

And Michael and Layne and their trusty dog Rusty are on board their customized Dodge van, GANNET 2, near a beach in Chile awaiting a new radiator after having driving the length of the continent.

https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/

 

I have followed their voyages with interest and pleasure for years and wish them all fair winds, safe anchorages, and unholed radiators.  

Via BookBud came the excellent and disturbing THE FIRE AND DARKNESS:  THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN, 1945 by Sinclair McKay.  After reading it I reread Kurt Vonnegut’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE.  Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden during the bombing February 13-15, kept alive by being locked in the underground cold storage of Slaughterhouse Five.  Being February the temperature was naturally cold enough so the refrigeration was not turned on.

McKay tells the story mostly in terms of individuals.  He writes well and impresses me with his intelligence and even handedness, particularly about whether the bombing was a war crime.  Kurt Vonnegut is certain it was, but he accepts the Nazi exaggerated claim that 135,000, mostly civilians, died in the attack. In 2008 an independent commission formed by the City of Dresden determined that the death total was approximately 25,000.  A great many to have died, but far less than claimed by some.

I found many interesting numbers in the book.

The number of Jews in Dresden at the start of the war in 1939:  over 6,000.

Number of Jews in Dresden in February 1945:  178.

That is startling efficiency.  We don’t really want governments to be too efficient.

The bombing took place in four waves, one by chance.  The first two were British on the night of February 13.  The third American the following morning and a fourth American on February 15.  The first wave consisted of 240 RAF bombers.  The second wave of 550 bombers was forty miles long.  In the third wave more than 300 B-17s of the United States Eighth Air Force struck.  And a fourth wave of more than 200 B-17s was diverted from its intended target because of weather and bombed the city.

During the war out of a total of 125,000 bomber air crew in the RAF 55,573 died.

The standard tour of duty of USAAF bomber crews was thirty missions.  Calculations after the war found the average life expectancy of bomber crews was fifteen missions.

I wondered about the casualties in other bombings in 1945.

On March 10, less than a month after the bombing of Dresden, more than 100,000 died in a single night in the fire storm created over Tokyo.

On August 6, an estimated 66,000 were killed at Hiroshima and an equal number injured, out of a population of 255,000.  On August 9,  at Nagasaki 39,000 were killed and 25,000 injured out of a population of 195,000.

The photo is of Dresden after the bombings.

I thank another Steve—not Earley—for a samurai poem he included in a comment on the Power Boater 2 video.  Believing few will see it there, I include it here.

        Come, ever more, come

        ye dread sorrows and pains

        and heap upon my burdened back

        that I not one test may lack

        of what strength in me remains