The clean fight: America and the ALlies "White Knight " it in World War Two.

Don't think that such wonders of navigation were restricted to the RAF. On August 28th 1940 the pilot of a two seat Gotha 145 communications biplanne of Stab 27 was carrying the post to the garrison on Jersey, got lost and ended up landing on the Sussex South Downs in South East England having flown North East across the widest part of the English Channel. Oops.
Oh no navigation was a problem for all sides. I think the USAAF bombed Dublin once and then there was that brand new Fw 190 that landed at RAF saint Athens:D
Area bombing was the only alternative given the state of technology at the time. At BEST one in three bombers got to within 5 miles of its target, dropping to as low as one in ten in bad weather or smog
This of course led to navigational aids such as gee and oboe which if used correctly and if all went well enabled at best 60% of the bomber stream to bomb within a 3 by 3 mile box [These are figures I remember and I am ready to be corrected]
This means that if your target was a particular factory then everyone around it suffered as well
This was not malice, for if the ability to hit a particular target was available then it would be used. It would have been wastful to do otherwise.
The awareness that civilians would be killed was at the forefront of those who gave the orders and set the policy but Bomber command and the USAAF were never sniper rifles they were shot guns
 
Gee and Oboe could only be used sparingly though, because they told the Germans exactly where the bombers were, which mean they tended to pick up a lot of flak.
 
My mistake, When I mentioned the bombers being easy to detect I was thinking of Fishpond. British bombers were fitted with a variety of radio-navigation and other equipment over the course of the war.
 
And yet the 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs were both designed, some way into the war, for hitting specific targets rather than for area bombing...
 
And yet the 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs were both designed, some way into the war, for hitting specific targets rather than for area bombing...
yes true but this was just area bombing allbeit on a small scale .Despite intense training excellent crew,specialised equipment. most of these bombs missed the target. Indeed some 617 missions failed completly
Please try to understand that the technology for pinpoint targeting was in its infancy at this time
 

iddt3

Donor
So the Goal here is to have the allies as unambiguously good as possible right?
How about we have Teddy win in 1912, push through a square deal and give us civil rights 40 years early before segregation has really set in, and none of the authoritarian shit wilson pulled, as well as no curbs on immigration. The British grant dominion status to India and Ireland during WWI, France does something similar with it's African possessions. The Great Depression when it hits has all the allied powers moving more towards social democracy, further and more completely then OTL anyway as well as more efficiently. China, instead of descending into warlordism, reforms through American aid, and comes out of the 30's a slightly unstable but functional and quickly growing democracy. War starts as normal in 1939, but the Japanese, who are doing much worse in their war with China, do something extra boneheaded and attack the Americans. Meanwhile, the British and French manage to antagonize the Soviets sufficiently that they stay closer to the Nazis. The Anglo French Alliance manages to beat back the inital Nazi thrust, but must face a full on Nazi Soviet alliance. After curbstomping Japan (and doing so quickly enough that the Japanese surrender before beaten into the stone age), the US china team jumps onto the allies, hitting the Russians from behind, then uses nukes to decapitate the Axis powers followed by internal revolutions that bring everyone to freedom and democracy. A UN is formed, but it it's both more powerful, more inclusive, and more representative then OTL, leading to a world of happiness and (instant) sunshine.

I have no idea what PODs you'd need to get such a TL, but it seems to more or less fulfill the OP's request.
 
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Hyperion

Banned
I am just not going to get a break, am I?

No.

Some individual incidents could be changed to have a much more positive outcome for everyone involved on both sides.

But for the Allies, or the US and Britain specifically to accomplish some of those things, that could necessitate going about the war a lot more cautiously. Avoiding risks, trying to promote a more positive image, trying harder to reduce civilian casualties, in some ways if pushed to the extreme it could result in the US and UK having to sign an armistice or cease fire at some point, or extending the overall length of the war if German or Japanese industry aren't bombed into the ground.

No nukes on Japan would result in either a bloodbath of an invasion, or the US simply blockading Japan into 1946, continuing to launch conventional B-29 strikes, and with swarms of carrier based and land based fighters attacking smaller targets throughout the region. In such a blockade scenario where the US keeps the pressure on, no nukes are dropped, and no invasion occurs, and Japan doesn't surrender, you could be looking at millions more casualties on the Japanese side killed in bombing raids and starvation.
 
So the Goal here is to have the allies as unambiguously good as possible right?
How about we have Teddy win in 1912, push through a square deal and give us civil rights 40 years early before segregation has really set in, and none of the authoritarian shit wilson pulled, as well as no curbs on immigration. The British grant dominion status to India and Ireland during WWI, France does something similar with it's African possessions. The Great Depression when it hits has all the allied powers moving more towards social democracy, further and more completely then OTL anyway as well as more efficiently. China, instead of descending into warlordism, reforms through American aid, and comes out of the 30's a slightly unstable but functional and quickly growing democracy. War starts as normal in 1939, but the Japanese, who are doing much worse in their war with China, do something extra boneheaded and attack the Americans. Meanwhile, the British and French manage to antagonize the Soviets sufficiently that they stay closer to the Nazis. The Anglo French Alliance manages to beat back the inital Nazi thrust, but must face a full on Nazi Soviet alliance. After curbstomping Japan (and doing so quickly enough that the Japanese surrender before beaten into the stone age), the US china team jumps onto the allies, hitting the Russians from behind, then uses nukes to decapitate the Axis powers followed by internal revolutions that bring everyone to freedom and democracy. A UN is formed, but it it's both more powerful, more inclusive, and more representative then OTL, leading to a world of happiness and (instant) sunshine.

I have no idea what PODs you'd need to get such a TL, but it seems to more or less fulfill the OP's request.
I think if I ever do this TL i'll be doing it in ASB territory. :eek:
 
No, you are right there is no clean war There was a German poet who'es name I forget who in one of his poems said something like
The bastards aim was far better than his cause ,he shot, and shot again and so I died'
Questionable acts will allways take place on all sides during all wars that much is self evident and every death is a tragedy ,but there is not, and can never be any sort of moral equivelance between the Axis powers and the Western allies.
Swizterland bent with the wind in WW2 and that was the reason it was bombed and 'we' 'got away with it'. Switzerland was asked several times thriugh diplomatic channels to stop sending war materials ,including ball bearings to Germany. It prevaricated and as a result 500 Lancasters made the same navigational error. Switzerland stopted exporting Ball bearings:rolleyes:

You confuse Switzerland with Schweinfurt. It was by the way not RAF that bombed Switzerland, but lone USAF bombers, of which some were actually shot down or forced to land. Same happened with occasional German bombers, by the way.
And Switzerland exported quite a few things... Many of them to UK.
 
In such a blockade scenario where the US keeps the pressure on, no nukes are dropped, and no invasion occurs, and Japan doesn't surrender, you could be looking at millions more casualties on the Japanese side killed in bombing raids and starvation.

To say nothing of the increased numbers of civilian casualties in Japanese-occupied China and Korea if the war continues, or even if the Soviets invade there (full-scale battle is hell on civilian populations). I've seen estimates from 10 million to 20 million total Chinese deaths as a result of the war. Call it 15 million for estimation's sake and that's still close to 2 million Chinese deaths for every year of war. 2 million people would have been a large city in 1945, so for every year the war is extended the equivalent of a major city is being wiped from the Earth.
 
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