Modern Historians on method of attack.

 These claims have been ridiculed by more modern historians as being completely unsubstantial. Cox counters Irving's claim of a higher proportion of incendiaries as"Despite claims to the contrary, the proportion of incendiaries carried as a percentage of the bomb-load was by no means unusual for a Bomber Command area raid."¹ and bases this off Air Historical Branch papers that show, “Dresden ranked only tenth in terms of the percentage of incendiaries used with 44 percent.”² Cox is able to do this because of release of Air Ministry documents after the war's end, something that was unavailable to Irving and so Cox is correcting past histories.

The P-51 strafing runs are attacked by Taylor who proves that they are insubstantial. He shows that the strafing could not have happened above Dresden as, “the Twentieth Fighter Group was....at the time more than eighty miles away escorting the attack not against Dresden but Prague.”³ Tayor continues to attack Irving's claims stating that, “...nor - perhaps more significantly – in German accounts originating at the time are such daylight strafing attacks mentioned.”⁴ This new information was discovered after the Soviet bloc fell and allowed historians to reveal the true extent of the raids and progress history on Dresden.

1Cox, op. Cit., p. 31

2Ibid., p. 223 (end notes)

3Taylor, op. Cit, p. 491

4Ibid., p. 494