History will always remind us of these unscrupulous mass killing of civilians during Second World War. The two most popular incidents were the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both in Japan, towards the end of World War II. Estimated number of civilian the bombs killed were as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki. Thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs.
Here are other lesser known incidents of mass killings of civilians by bombings.
The Bombing of Chongqing
Wars have been the worst atrocities ever witnessed by men. Nothing could be more devastating than attacking defenseless civilians. War is evil and one of the most evil deeds by the Japanese Empire during the Second World War is the bombing of Chongqing. The bombing was part of an Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service terror bombing operation on the Chinese provisional capital of Chongqing authorized by the Imperial General Headquarters.
On the first two days of bombing, 1939 civilians died. About conservative estimate places the number of bombing runs at more than 5,000, with more than 11,500 bombs dropped. The targets were usually residential areas, business areas, schools and hospitals. These terror bombings were probably aimed at cowing the Chinese government, or as part of the planned Sichuan invasion. Three thousand tons of bombs were launched on the city between 1939 and 1942.A total of 268 air raids were conducted against Chongqing.
The Blitz
Another series of bombings were the primary targets were civilians were “The Blitz”. This was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. The name is a shortening of the German term, "Blitzkrieg", or “Lightning War”. While the “"Blitz” hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 nights in a row. By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses destroyed or damaged in London alone.
The Bombing of Dresden
An estimated 24,000 to 40,000 civilians died during the Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and US Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945, 12 weeks before the surrender of Nazi Germany. This remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. The raids saw 1,300 heavy bombers drop over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four raids, destroying 13 square miles (34 km2) of the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, and causing a firestorm that consumed the city center.
The Bombing of Hamburg
Thousands of innocent lives perished during the heavy bombing of Hamburg by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the US Army air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. During one of the attacks in July 1943 a firestorm was created that caused more than 40,000 civilian casualties. It was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and was later called the Hiroshima of Germany by British officials.
Operation Gomorrah caused at least 50,000 deaths, mostly civilians, and left over a million other German civilians homeless. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs dropped, and 250,000 houses destroyed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg.
(Photos courtesy of Wikipedia)
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