Talk:Firebombing

London Blitz
Let's not forget that London was firebombed during the battle of britain, as well as Coventry and other locations in the British isles. Weather conditions save the city from even more damage, but the number of deaths was still something remarkable, not to mention the loss to historical parts of London. Just putting it out there, let's not be too pro-axis.


 * Pro-axis? This whole article reads like it was the Germans that started Firebombing first.  The fact is the Nazis were decimating the RAF until the RAF firebombed Berlin causing Hitler to overreact and have the aireforce target cities only.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.134.161.64 (talk) 12:21, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Question: I was just reading the newly released transcripts from the 9/11 attacks a male caller called the Jersey Fire Department and said that it's a fire bomb. The transcript can be read at: Transcript #5 Path - Ch. 12 - Jersey City Fire Dept. 7 pages, 286K at http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/pa-transcripts/ is it possible that is true?

Question: Can the Blitz be regarded as an example of firebombing? What about other bombing with incendiaries without a specific plan to create a firestorm, eg Japanese fire-balloons, Edinburgh Zeppelins and other ineffectual attacks? -- 213.253.40.158 11:50, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wasn't Coventry also firebombed? Dresden was firebombed partly in revenge and also to demonstrate to the Russians what the US & UK bombers could do.

Deaths at Coventry = 380.

Deaths at Dresden = 200,000+

That's some kind of revenge.

Coventry was also a munitions centre, a military target. Dresden made cups and saucers!!! Were the British afraid of German cups of tea?


 * The deaths at Dresden were around 50,000. Even your patron saint Irving no longer claims the absurdly high numbers. Jayjg 17:55, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The Death Toll at Dresden is a matter of contention, and will never be exactly established. The low estimate, using only officially recorded deaths, is 25,000. Other respectable sources, taking into account the large number of refugees and other factors, arrive at 40,000-50,000. The figure most often used by historians is 35,000, as far as I can tell.


 * More to the point: The reference to Wielun, and possibly others, should be removed. While they are examples of bombings of civilian targets, they are not [i]firebombing[/i] attacks.

Tobias R 13:26, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Warsaw, Wielun and Frampol were conventional bombings (with explosivs), but no firebombings. Firebombing is a special technique of bombing initially developt by the british indicianary panel in 1942, after large studies of fire disasters like the london-fire or the great san francisco fire. So this technique could not be used before 1942.

Dubious claim
 this technique was as effective as the atomic bombs I highly doubt any military historian or commander has ever claimed this. If it were true, what purpose would the atomic bomb have served? --NEMT 03:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The technique was clearly as effective, as measured by number of deaths, injuries, area damaged or buildings destroyed. The firebomb attacks on Tokyo, for instance, were far more destructive in any of these measures than the nukes dropped later. This is a well known historical fact that appears in most any history of WWII, see this for instance. So why the nuke? One bomber vs. hundreds. Maury 16:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Another dubious claim is that the CIA and the military do firebomb Facebook and Social Networking servers via the Internet. That is, I haven't made a friend all day because my last name is Diaz (such as Cameron Diaz' family) is protected content and likes pages are protected the least from flames, fighting, or wars of nudity or pictures that are offensive, amateur, or might be considered against the DMCA II. Fatum81 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Efficiency is considered part of a military weapon or strategy's effectiveness. --NEMT 18:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


 * In January 1946, Major Cortez F. Enloe, a surgeon in the USAAF who worked on the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), said that the fire effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki "were not nearly as bad as the effects of the R.A.F. raids on Hamburg on July 27th 1943". He estimated more than 40,000 people died in Hamburg.

Fair use rationale for Image:StPaulsCathedral.jpg
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— Save_Us _ 229  22:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Example farm
I have just completed a large re-write of the examples section. The examples section was an example of an examplefarm and expand-section. The category and to a lesser extent the WWII city bombing template cover the list issue. The trouble with listing cities hit by man made a firestorm is that there is disagreement over whether particular raids started a firestorm or just very bad fires. Although with some, such as Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo there is no doubt, there are a lot of marginal ones where some historians describe them as firestorms and others do not. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:52, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Expansion needed
The page is currently fixated on aerial bombardment. While any cause of any fire by bombardment would be overbroad, the widespread and terroristic naval rocket attacks like Second Copenhagen, the demonstration attacks during the Opening of Japan, and the gunboat assaults on China and elsewhere during the 19th century where incendiary damage and terroristic effects were forefront should be mentioned here as a separate kind of firebombing. — Llywelyn II   18:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)