| While I am in awe of the Kamikaze flyers and their commitment, I agree that there is a distinction when regarding RAF sacrifice. As said by Bradlee, the USN destroyer officer, he could imagine himself more or less throwing caution to the wind (pardon the pun!) and doing something suicidal in battle but he could not imagine waking up one morning knowing you were going to deliberately plough into something. No doubt some RAF types woke up and thought to themselves they would end it that day but, from the reports of supreme sacrifice I've read (insignificant amounts compared to Kyt, I suspect), the decision to make the sacrifice often appears to be a spur of the moment thing: the vital target survives, the aircraft/pilot is mortally wounded.
Perhaps I'm being a bit too, ah, rosy in my impressions of RAF types but it is clear that it dawned on many Americans that the only way they would survive the war was if they gave no quarter. They knew not to expect any. |