American bombings of Serbia in 1943-1944

**Rumata** · 05-19-2018, 04:49 AM

I wonder what was the reason behind this kind of bombing. Was the precision of American aircraft that awful? Or they didn't care about Serbian causalities and tried to destroy the infrastructure and some few Germans?

The bombings of Serbia and Montenegro lasted from 20 October 1943 to 18 September 1944. Especially hit was the industrial town of Niš in south Serbia. The bombing began on 20 October 1943, instantly killing 250 people. German forces in town were barely affected.

Belgrade was bombed by British and American air forces on 16-17 April 1944, which was Orthodox Easter Day. The most important unit that took part was the American 15th Air Force, based in Foggia in the south of Italy. This carpet bombing raid was executed by 600 aircraft flying at high altitude. Civilian casualties were as many as 1,160, while German military losses were 18, or some 1,200 killed in total. 5,000 people were wounded.

Though officially only the military and industrial targets were picked - factories, bridges, airport, ammunition depots, German barracks and garrisons - the precision of bombing was notoriously bad. Features in downtown hit on 16 April included Palace Albanija, National Theater in Belgrade, Terazije, Bajloni Market, area around the Belgrade Main railway station, Krunski Venac (including the maternity hospital where several mothers who just gave births were killed with their babies), a large number of hospitals, schools and kindergartens. Bombed areas of a wider center of Belgrade included Dorćol, which was heavily destroyed, parts of Vračar and Pašino Brdo and Dušanovac, suburbs at the time, which had no factories or military targets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied...n_World_War_II

**Morlak** · 05-19-2018, 02:03 PM

These bombings were absolutely brutal for Serbian civilians and there was minimal benefit from it which made them basically pointless.

It also weird for me that only Serbian lands were bombed, not a single bomb was dropped on Croatia and Ustashe.

And also those bombings were requested by Tito, which shows how little he cared for Serbs.