I'm glad senseless killing and destruction in war is a thing of the past.

When I think of guys who had the most sack in ww2, it's these guys and and U-boat crews. I think the Germans lost somewhere around 75% of their U-boat personnel.

I know this is going to sound dumb, but the first Call of Duty on PC had an expansion pack involving a British bomber and its crew, and it was the most disheartening thing that franchise has ever put out, even up to today. It really showed just how insane and deadly these guys' lives were.

Never played it, but it's true. The British, in their Lancaster bombers, had equally god-awful losses.

The US did daylight bombing, while the British bombed by night, and the German night-fighters just tore them to pieces with no way to defend themselves in the dark.

As for the Germans and their U-boats, once their codes were cracked they got raped by depth charges. 75% losses definitely sounds plausable.

The Lancaster had a one piece thru-the-body wing that made it difficult to bail out, but was very strong, so the pilots used violent evasive maneuvers tio try and escape. In an emergency they could go into a power dive and hit a speed that would tear a Heinkel's wings off to try and escape. While carrying a 2 ton blockbuster to create flammable rubble for their incendiaries. Their defensive .303 guns weren't much use, but they could carry 3x the bombload of a B-17. Variations of the Lancaster remained in service until the first Gulf War. For carpet bombing they'd have streams of several hundred in the air at once, bombing the living fuck out of some city all night and battling night fighters 1 on 1.

Check out http://underabombersmoon.com/ for a good book on irt