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New Orleans terrorist attack 1/1/2025

I was thinking about the reaction to having to kill other people and my older brother, who was in the 8th USAAF in SE England during WWII. He was a navigator on a B-17 and was responsible for course. So long as they were on mission and in formation, things were straight forward. In a variety of circumstances - heavy weather, unexpected heavy defense, sometimes the formation was partially or totally scattered. They couldn't land with a full load of bombs. The last option was to dump them in the Channel. First choice was "targets of opportunity." In those circumstances, the navigator was responsible for telling the pilot where they were and where to drop the bombs. He made a mistake and bombed a Dutch village. Of his 25 missions, that alone seemed to bother him. I pointed out that there undoubtedly large numbers of civilians who were killed in other, on task, missions. (We later hosted a German exchange student, whose father was from Stettin and undoubtedly hid from my brother's bombs.) He just replied that they were Germans and were the enemy. The Dutch were our allies and friends...
 
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TIDE-HSV said:
I was thinking about the reaction to having to kill other people and my older brother, who was in the 8th USAAF in SE England during WWII. He was a navigator on a B-17 and was responsible for course. So long as they were on mission and in formation, things were straight forward. In a variety of circumstances - heavy weather, unexpected heavy defense, sometimes the formation was partially or totally scattered. They couldn't land with a full load of bombs. The last option was to dump them in the Channel. First choice was "targets of opportunity." In those circumstances, the navigator was responsible for telling the pilot where they were and where to drop the bombs. He made a mistake and bombed a Dutch village. Of his 25 missions, that alone seemed to bother him. I pointed out that there undoubtedly large numbers of civilians who were killed in other, on task, missions. (We later hosted a German exchange student, whose father was from Stettin and undoubtedly hid from my brother's bombs.) He just replied that they were Germans and were the enemy. The Dutch were our allies and friends...
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My wife's grandmother was quasi part of the resistance in that she took a Jewish child into her home under false papers. They lived near Ghent and my wife's grandfather had already fled to free France prior to occupation because he would have been killed. Later, once the US started bombing, her grandmother feared for their lives because of the proximity to rail lines which were being targeted. Hence, she took a train to also flee to free France with her two daughters and the Jewish girl who she explained looked nothing like her or her daughters (the youngest being my mother-in-law). When she got on the train, she was already nervous and then a group of German soldiers came and sat in the same area. She said they looked at them, but never said anything or asked for any papers.

Another story of unintentional bombing of civilians was that a colleague of mine existed simply because his parents failed to get on a train from Germany to Belgium (one parent was German and the other Belgian) to flee Dusseldorf which was being heavily bombed by the US. The train with no place for them to squeeze into was bombed and all onboard died.

Lastly, my great uncle was a radio guy on a bomber and he said his second job was to kick the bombs that got stuck--ouch........
 
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TIDE-HSV said:
I was thinking about the reaction to having to kill other people and my older brother, who was in the 8th USAAF in SE England during WWII. He was a navigator on a B-17 and was responsible for course. So long as they were on mission and in formation, things were straight forward. In a variety of circumstances - heavy weather, unexpected heavy defense, sometimes the formation was partially or totally scattered. They couldn't land with a full load of bombs. The last option was to dump them in the Channel. First choice was "targets of opportunity." In those circumstances, the navigator was responsible for telling the pilot where they were and where to drop the bombs. He made a mistake and bombed a Dutch village. Of his 25 missions, that alone seemed to bother him. I pointed out that there undoubtedly large numbers of civilians who were killed in other, on task, missions. (We later hosted a German exchange student, whose father was from Stettin and undoubtedly hid from my brother's bombs.) He just replied that they were Germans and were the enemy. The Dutch were our allies and friends...
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Then I would go back to Jerry Boykin's criteria:
  • Were you doing the right things (trying to bomb German industries and trying to avoid civilian casualties, especially Allied civilian casualties?)
  • Did you take reasonable precautions? (Watching navigation time hacks, air speed, etc. Looking for aerial checkpoints/landmarks?)
If the answer to these questions is "yes," then I would tell your brother (if I could), "You should have a clear conscience. It's a war. Bad things happen. You do the best you can."

Those deliberately burning barns and slaughtering livestock in our Civil War are a different matter. That was deliberately inflicting unnecessary harm on innocent civilians.
 
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Tidewater said:
Then I would go back to Jerry Boykin's criteria:
  • Were you doing the right things (trying to bomb German industries and trying to avoid civilian casualties, especially Allied civilian casualties?)
  • Did you take reasonable precautions? (Watching navigation time hacks, air speed, etc. Looking for aerial checkpoints/landmarks?)
If the answer to these questions is "yes," then I would tell your brother (if I could), "You should have a clear conscience. It's a war. Bad things happen. You do the best you can."

Those deliberately burning barns and slaughtering livestock in our Civil War are a different matter. That was deliberately inflicting unnecessary harm on innocent civilians.
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Pretty much what I told him. I think what bothered him was that there were no targets in the area and the error was his and his alone...
 
TIDE-HSV said:
Pretty much what I told him. I think what bothered him was that there were no targets in the area and the error was his and his alone...
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Yeah, I mean, I feel for him. You just have to make your peace with stuff like that and resolve to do better. I'm sure it haunted him the rest of his life.
Here is a navigation error: B-24 flies 400 miles into the Sahara Desert before running out of fuel. All the crew bailed out (one of whom bounced), the remainder tried to walk back to base and made it around 100 miles before they all died.
 
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Tidewater said:
Yeah, I mean, I feel for him. You just have to make your peace with stuff like that and resolve to do better. I'm sure it haunted him the rest of his life.
Here is a navigation error: B-24 flies 400 miles into the Sahara Desert before running out of fuel. All the crew bailed out (one of whom bounced), the remainder tried to walk back to base and made it around 100 miles before they all died.
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Stettin, Peenemünde and the other north German targets lie on a direct great circle route over the Netherlands. Harvey's plane had just traveled further than he had calculated...
 
TIDE-HSV said:
Stettin, Peenemünde and the other north German targets lie on a direct great circle route over the Netherlands. Harvey's plane had just traveled further than he had calculated...
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I think I have mentioned one of my colleagues was a MC-130 nav. We have talked about nav aids today. Back then, it was a watch, a compass, an indicated air speed, and a weather report about winds at altitude.
Good luck.
 
Tidewater said:
I think I have mentioned one of my colleagues was a MC-130 nav. We have talked about nav aids today. Back then, it was a watch, a compass, an indicated air speed, and a weather report about winds at altitude.
Good luck.
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It wasn't quite that bad, but close. They did have some help from the radio operator, who could get fixes from known stations and, sometimes triangulate. Later in the war, they had more advanced equipment. One thing you had to watch was not to be too good or you'd find yourself being trained to be a lead navigator, with the commensurate reduction in lifespan, since the Germans knew the roles of the lead navigator and pilot also and their primary target was always the lead plane. The lead navigator was really the navigator for the entire bomber group, with the others just checking him. Among the navigator's duties, in addition to the two cheek guns, was to keep the ship's log - where enemy was encountered and all details, all the way down to estimates of the skill of the attacking enemy pilots. Only around a third managed to complete 25 missions without becoming a casualty.

At a church we used to attend, on Veterans Day, the pastor used to recognize Vets and invite them to say a word about their service. There was a very old man who always sat on the first row. You could tell attending was an effort for him, but he was regular. He mentioned being in the 8th ** and I happened to bump into him in the restroom and told him my brother had served in the 8th. He just commented "We were lucky to come back alive." I really hated to tell him that, although my brother also had, he had passed in 1985...
 
TIDE-HSV said:
It wasn't quite that bad, but close. They did have some help from the radio operator, who could get fixes from known stations and, sometimes triangulate. Later in the war, they had more advanced equipment. One thing you had to watch was not to be too good or you'd find yourself being trained to be a lead navigator, with the commensurate reduction in lifespan, since the Germans knew the roles of the lead navigator and pilot also and their primary target was always the lead plane. The lead navigator was really the navigator for the entire bomber group, with the others just checking him. Among the navigator's duties, in addition to the two cheek guns, was to keep the ship's log - where enemy was encountered and all details, all the way down to estimates of the skill of the attacking enemy pilots. Only around a third managed to complete 25 missions without becoming a casualty.
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I think we have addressed in the past that the weakest navs went to cargo planes (why not? They mostly fly from friendly airfields to other friendly airfields. Unfortunately for the C-47 navs, parachute drops tend to be over enemy-controlled territory.).
The nav aids help, but only from friendly-controlled territory.
TIDE-HSV said:
At a church we used to attend, on Veterans Day, the pastor used to recognize Vets and invite them to say a word about their service. There was a very old man who always sat on the first row. You could tell attending was an effort for him, but he was regular. He mentioned being in the 8th ** and I happened to bump into him in the restroom and told him my brother had served in the 8th. He just commented "We were lucky to come back alive." I really hated to tell him that, although my brother also had, he had passed in 1985...
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I think Masters of the Air covered that aspect pretty well. The randomness and pervasiveness of losses.
 
Tidewater said:
I think we have addressed in the past that the weakest navs went to cargo planes (why not? They mostly fly from friendly airfields to other friendly airfields. Unfortunately for the C-47 navs, parachute drops tend to be over enemy-controlled territory.).
The nav aids help, but only from friendly-controlled territory.

I think Masters of the Air covered that aspect pretty well. The randomness and pervasiveness of losses.
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I've posted it before, but flak once shattered my brother's navigator window, covering him in glass shards. His mates went over him with a fine tooth comb, trying to find one scratch which would qualify him for a purple heart, only to find nothing. Charmed life indeed!
 
TIDE-HSV said:
I've posted it before, but flak once shattered my brother's navigator window, covering him in glass shards. His mates went over him with a fine tooth comb, trying to find one scratch which would qualify him for a purple heart, only to find nothing. Charmed life indeed!
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Lucky (i guess).
My platoon sergeant (1st Cavalry Division Vietnam) called the Purple Heart the "Combat Inefficiency Badge," saying, "You had to screw up to get that medal."
 
Tidewater said:
One of the unfortunate things about thios attack is that the cops blocked the road, but did not block the sidewalk.
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Partially blocked it. If they had put two cruisers, nose to nose, it would have closed it entirely. I've been there and it's very narrow...
 
www.nola.com

City of New Orleans, contractors sued by seven victims of 'preventable' Bourbon Street attack

Thursday's lawsuit touches off what could be a lengthy and costly period of litigation over the Bourbon Street attack.
www.nola.com www.nola.com

Seven victims of the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street, including the family of a 43-year-old Terrytown man who was killed, sued the City of New Orleans and two of its contractors Thursday, alleging they each failed to protect the street from an assailant who easily got around the city’s security barriers before mowing down a crowd.

The suit, filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, was brought on behalf of victims Alexis Windham, Corian Evans, Jalen Lilly, Justin Brown, Shara Frison, Gregory Townsend and the family of Brandon Taylor, a local cook who died in the attack.

The suit names the City of New Orleans and two contractors — Mott MacDonald, LLC and Hard Rock Construction, LLC — who the plaintiffs say were responsible for drawing up the security plans for Bourbon Street and installing new barriers.

The suit largely takes aim at Mott MacDonald, alleging the firm failed to heed its own warnings to the city that Bourbon Street was vulnerable to a vehicle attack, the lawsuit alleges.
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