Good Morning...Mors Ab Alto.

[Okla-homey]

April 26, 1937 Nazis test Luftwaffe on Guernica

On this day 69 years ago, the German military tests its powerful new air force--the Luftwaffe--on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain.

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/2787/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The Spanish Civil War (July 18, 1936–April 1, 1939) was a conflict in which the incumbent Second Spanish Republic and political left-wing groups fought against a right-wing nationalist insurrection led by General Francisco Franco, who eventually succeeded in ousting the Republican government and establishing a personal fascist dictatorship.

Hitler and his Italian fascist buddy Mussolini supported fellow fascist Franco for two reasons. First, they desired to encourage establishment of fascist regimes and secondly, they prized the opportunity to "blood" their forces and get them important "shooting war" experience for the wider conflict they knew was coming.

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/2606/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz36.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Francisco Franco

Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a small rural city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared its "neutrality" in the conflict.

http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/6577/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz25.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso

With Franco's approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica's 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days.

http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/4893/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz23.th.jpg (http://img240.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz23.jpg)
Guernica post-bombing

The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica aroused world opinion and became a symbol of fascist brutality. Unfortunately, by 1942, all major participants in World War II had adopted the notion that population centers were legitimate military targets and their destruction might lead to the destruction of an enemy peoples' "will to fight."

http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/6195/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz24.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Me-109 fighters and Ju-88 bombers. Named the "Condor Legion," German aircraft sported Spanish Nationalist markings. Flown by Luftwaffe crews they were in effect the fascist Franco's air force.

Urban bombing techniques first showcased by the Nazis at Guernica caught on among all the major powers and and by the war's end in 1945, millions of civilians had perished under Allied and Axis air raids.

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/7906/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz38.th.jpg (http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz38.jpg)
German Ju-87 "Stuka" dive bombers in Nationalist markings. They gained experience in Spain they would apply two years later as Hitler unleashed them elsewhere in Europe against Poland and France.

Today, the "Law of Armed Conflict" has been acknowledged by most nations around the world to proscribe the deliberate Guernica-style bombing of civilians merely to terrorize and kill. They may, however, be legitimately bombed if they happen to reside near industrial or economic targets and constitute the workforce necessary for such targets to function.

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5059/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz18.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Popular souvenir ring sold to "Condor Legion" participants

http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/5678/insane7zo5ne.jpg

[RacerX]

Are there some pics missing?

[Okla-homey]

fixed it. Imageshack is kinda goofy this morning.

[Taxman71]

So that's where Japan got the idea for the whole Pearl Harbor thing. Bastages.

[Okla-homey]

So that's where Japan got the idea for the whole Pearl Harbor thing. Bastages.

That was kinda different. The Japanese didn't bomb Honolulu or anything. They confined their attacks to bona fide military targets -- the naval installation at Pearl and the air bases at Hickam and Wheeler fields.

Naval aviation was not capable of large scale area attacks at the time. Their strikes were limited to pinpoint targets such as ships, shore based POL facilities, hangars and parked aircraft using a mix of dive-bombers, torpedo-bombers and single-engine level bombers which simply were'nt capable of heavy bomb loads.

Land-based aircraft could execute such attacks because of multi-engine bombers which could carry multiple bomb loads.

[Taxman71]

Anyway, isn't bombing Spain kind of like bombing Mexico? Not a whole of military power coming from that country since the conquistador age.

[Okla-homey]

Anyway, isn't bombing Spain kind of like bombing Mexico? Not a whole of military power coming from that country since the conquistador age.

Well, the thing that helped make it such a hotspot was Joe Stalin and the international communist movement were backing the Republican side with arms and "volunteer" fighters. This pitted those guys against the Nationlists who, as you saw above, were armed and supported by Hitler and Mussolini.

Thus, it was in many ways a giant war laboratory between they guys who would go at it in earnest a couple years later.

BTW, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (Hemingway) is a marvelous piece of American literature set amid civil war Spain.

[TUSooner]

So that's where Japan got the idea for the whole Pearl Harbor thing. Bastages.
Actually, the Japanese were inspired in part by a ballsy and successful British torpedo-plane raid on Italian ships at Taranto, Italy. Maybe that's a story for another morning.


The naval Battle of Taranto took place on the night of 11 November — 12 November 1940 during World War II. The Royal Navy launched the first all-aircraft naval attack in history, flying a small number of aircraft from a single aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and attacking the Italian fleet at Taranto. The effects of the British aircraft on the Italian warships led pundits around the world to predict the end of the "big gun" ship and the rise of naval air-power.

[mdklatt]

Nothing about the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl?

[Skysooner]

Actually, the Japanese were inspired in part by a ballsy and successful British torpedo-plane raid on Italian ships at Taranto, Italy. Maybe that's a story for another morning.

They had also had a successful surprise raid against Russian naval forces early in the 1900s that caused the Russians to seek peace.

Also, the first multi-engine raids from carriers occurred just a few months after Pearl Harbor. The Doolittle raid against Tokyo was a real surprise.

"In a foretaste of Pearl Harbor nearly forty years later, a Japanese fleet launches a devastating surprise attack on Port Arthur in February 1904. Many Russian warships are destroyed. The rest are blockaded in the harbour."

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=2023&HistoryID=ab84

[GottaHavePride]

Should the thread title be Muerte Del Arriba? Or maybe Tod Von Oben? ;)

[scotplum]

Okla-homey, you need an RSS feed or something so I can subscribe to it and read this every day. Some days I forget to look for it. Very good stuff!

[TUSooner]

They had also had a successful surprise raid against Russian naval forces early in the 1900s that caused the Russians to seek peace.

Also, the first multi-engine raids from carriers occurred just a few months after Pearl Harbor. The Doolittle raid against Tokyo was a real surprise.

"In a foretaste of Pearl Harbor nearly forty years later, a Japanese fleet launches a devastating surprise attack on Port Arthur in February 1904. Many Russian warships are destroyed. The rest are blockaded in the harbour."

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=2023&HistoryID=ab84

Well, but at Port Arthur there were no airplanes and no aircraft carriers. The air-attack-on-anchored-ships dealio was the key link between Taranto & Pearl Harbor. All of which has nothing to do with Guernica, I guess. :norm:

[Skysooner]

Well, but at Port Arthur there were no airplanes and no aircraft carriers. The air-attack-on-anchored-ships dealio was the key link between Taranto & Pearl Harbor. All of which has nothing to do with Guernica, I guess. :norm:

Agreed, but the genesis of a surprise attack coming out of the Port Arthur attack is mentioned again and again. I also agree about the Taranto attack being another link. It was more relevant in terms of proximity in time.

[TUSooner]

Agreed, but the genesis of a surprise attack coming out of the Port Arthur attack is mentioned again and again. I also agree about the Taranto attack being another link. It was more relevant in terms of proximity in time.
OK.:twinkies:
BTW, is there a good book out there about the Russo-Japanese war? I always wanted to learn something about it.

[Skysooner]

I would recommend Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia's War with Japan by Richard Connaughton.

[Jerk]

One of the worst things happened to the allies during the Franco conflict, and this was several years before WW2 even began. The event which would cost many American, British, and Russian lives happened when a German anti-aircraft Flak 88 crew got bored one day at having no targets in the sky to shoot at, and decided to try and plink some ground targets. But...you aint supposed to shoot ground targets with a flak gun, right? It actually proved to be a nightmare for anyone and anything caught in its sights, including Shermans.