In the final stages of the last war, what the British called "pilotless planes" terrorised London. The bombing blitzes of the earlier years of the war had passed. These could produce equal and even worse destruction.
Produced by the Nazis with slave labour, there were two types. The first was the VI. You could hear it coming, slowly, then the engine sound would break off, and a few seconds later there would be an almighty explosion. They were not, apparently, aimed at anywhere in particular. It might be a hospital, the Cafe de Paris, a school. The result was the same - total death and destruction.
The later type, the V2, arrived in 1945, the year the war ended. This was even more frightening. There was a short warning of the VI arrival, from the forces keeping watch on the coast, and from the noise of its engine. You only knew the V2 had arrived when its deadly cargo landed on its random target. I was in hospital in London, having a minor operation on my neck, during the V2 blitz. Recovery meant lying in bed and waiting for the next huge explosion,. There would usually be three or four each day - there may have been more, but these were the ones I heard from the hospital in Marylebone. It just meant that you lay there waiting for the next one to land on the hospital.
The US bombers were still taking off nightly from their bases 40 miles away at Newbury, and elsewhere in the West,sto bomb Berlin. But there was no protection against the V2's, no air raid warnings, no hope of getting to a shelter.
And now it is happening again. This time they are called Drones, and it is the Americans, not the Nazis, who are operating them. The Unmanned Ariel Vehicles, their formal name, are targeted and directed through space technology. In Afghanistan, hundreds of people have been killed by drone attacks and Israel, which also uses them, has been accused of killing Palestinians during the January attack. They are being used extensively in Pakistan.
Pilots in California operate the drones 7000 miles away over Iraq. They can see the results of the damage and death they have caused on their computer screens. They are said to be suffering battlefield type stress, and if they have any hearts, no wonder.
There has been high-level condemnation of drones, both in the US and here, where Professor Paul Rogers, the eminent peace studies academic, believes that drone deployments would be better termed as air raids. He thinks that the drone attacks in western Pakistan are actually helping and encouraging support for Al Quaeda. Lord Bingham, recently the senior law lord, has compared them to cluster bombs and landmines and said that some weapons were so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance.
Peaceful local gatherings have been massacred by the descent of a drone. Children are killed, homes destroyed. And, by the way, drones are developed, as well as in other places, in Staffordshire and Wales.