Another page on the site you cited makes it clear that the stat does apply specifically to US bombing of Germany. The figure given there for all US bombing in the ETO is 1.6 or 1.7 megatons. Add in the 1 megaton for BC in Germany and that’s 2.6 megatons; which is already pretty close to the tonnages dropped on North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia mentioned in the first link (about 3.2 megatons). Here’s another stat: Allied aircraft in the ‘Pacific war’ dropped 656,400 tons. So WWII has drawn level. BUT, it also becomes apparent that South Vietnam was actually hardest bombed, with another 3 and a bit megatons. So now Indochina is well ahead again, by a factor of two or so. I’m sure Germany, the USSR and Japan all did their part, and there’s still the RAF’s efforts outside Germany (and the Pacific), but there’s probably not 3 megatons’ worth. So I’ll probably have to concede on the raw tonnage. No data on the actual number of bombs though, so I’m not conceding on that :P

I’m not sure about that - it could just be sloppy wording on the part of the author. Since tonnages are usually given by OOB rather than theater, I suspect it refers to 8th Air Force tonnage rather than tonnage dropped on Germany per se, and so would include the raids on France, etc. But I don’t know.

Bomber Command dropped more tons on Germany than did the USAAF, by a substantial margin — though less than a factor of two

Not true for the whole war, though certainly true up to early 1944. Wikipedia gives Bomber Command 191,540 tons to the 8th Air Force’s 188,573. Of course this excludes the 15th Air Force in southern Europe and the other tertiary theaters.

So it was a gut feeling on my part and I should have said that — but even if it was more in Vietnam, it’s a lot closer than that oft-quoted statistic suggests.

Re Desert Storm, here’s one answer: in absolute terms, only a bit over 60,000 tons, hardly worth mentioning. But at a monthly rate, it’s roughly comparable to the United States’s WWII and Vietnam/South-East Asia rates. The WWII figures quoted there would appear to be for ALL US aerial forces, and the ratio has dropped to just under 3 to 1. Add in the RAF and everyone else … well, it won’t be too far short. And temporally more intense, certainly, which is surely the criterion for action movie fun :) Though maybe not when you factor in Indo-China’s far smaller surface area (ie than the ETO, PTO, etc …) Hmm.

Really? Sorry to get all serious and OT, but I’m curious as to whether that’s true. I suppose it all depends on what one means by ‘all bombs,’ but surely in terms of equivalent-TNT recent wars have now surpassed WWII. According to this site, the Americans dropped five times the tonnage of bombs on Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam from 1965-1973 than they did on Germany from 1942-5. Anyone know the figures for, say, Desert Storm?

I’ve long wanted to see It Happened Here, as it happens. But if ‘Bombs are fun’, and since WWII must have seen more bombs used than any other war in history, ergo WWII movies should be fun too. It’s only logical … :P

There is a bit more romance in Enigma than your average war movie, but that’s not why I like it. Good cast, good script (Tom Stoppard from a Robert Harris novel), good period feel and an interesting subject which hasn’t been filmed to death. OK; there are some major rewrites of history going on (the main character is obviously based on Alan Turing, but is heterosexual so that mainstream audiences don’t go ewww) and there aren’t actually any explosions (other than a few gratuitous bits with U-boats), but it’s probably my favourite WWII film of the past decade. (Though I haven’t seen Eastwood’s latest yet.)

Jack:

Ouch. I can see why such a code of etiquette would have evolved … otherwise you’d have half the cast strangled to death and the other half in jail!