Quote:
Originally Posted by chezlaw
btw it was the USA and the British.
Lot of truth in that. Vienna was pretty much safe against bombings during the whole war because it was out of reach of the UK planes and kinda known as the "Luftbunker".
Well, at least until 1944, a little after the Allies successfully invaded Italy.
The US troops based in Foggia, Italy started then to bomb Vienna with 550 planes because of after the loss at Normandy, a lot of the German air forces were sent to Vienna.
Although until today its fact that they really only tried to bomb strategically important targets, especially a oil refinery, only 0,2% of the bombs did actually hit the target.
Major parts of Vienna, especially the most historic buildings in the city center were destroyed. 8769 people died, 6214 were completely destroyed. Mostly on 12th March 1945, where especially because of the bad weather and the resulting complete inaccuracy of the bombings, everyone thought it was finally over.
Not to forget the very controversial bombings on Prague by 650 US planes, two weeks later.
There is also very massive flak towers in Vienna until today.
One was made into an huge Aquarium with climbing walls outside and its a park and the primary school I went to right beneath it.
The other 5 ones can't be made any use of, so we mostly just built parks around them if possible. They can't be blown up. 10m of reinforced concrete would destroy everything in reach.