Writes Steve Candidus: “I just read the post about the most inaccurate movies and I couldn’t help but chime in about the one that just sticks in my craw…
“Memphis Belle…
“My neighbors lent me the movie because their son-in-law (DB Sweeny) is in it and I had no idea who he is.
“The movie depicts the pilot and commander of the plane Memphis Belle making a ‘go-around’ in heavy flak in order to hit their target and not risk hitting the school full of kids right across the street.
“What absolute BS!!!!
“Our bombers flew in what were called ‘box’ formations of sometimes more than 1,000 planes. The lead ship would determine when they were over their target and would shoot off a flare telling all of the other planes to drop their bombs.
“That 1,000+ plane formation was several miles long by several miles wide. Even if the lead plane hit their target (WWII hit rate percentages were about 20% for the Norden bomb site) where do you think all of the other bombs from all of those other planes went?
“They hit homes, hospitals, schools, drug stores, food stores, power plants, sewage plants, etc. Everything that you would expect in a city. Since most of the able bodied men were all off fighting, the inhabitants they murdered from 20,000 feet were women and children. The old, the sick, etc.
“The mass carpet bombing was such a sickness it is hard to even describe and here this movie is telling us that they risked their lives to ‘save the children’. And that doesn’t even touch what that madman Le May did in Japan.
“It’s enough to make you sick…”
12:09 am on March 22, 2008
