HOW dare the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, apologise for the air raid on Dresden.

He casts slurs on the brave young men of the RAF and US 8th Air Force who carried out the raid on Dresden.

The Second World War was fought under “total war” conditions, under which all means of bringing the conflict to a victorious conclusion had to be used.

Why doesn’t Welby berate the German Luftwaffe for their bombings of London, Coventry, Hull, Liverpool, York and so on for their use of the first guided-missiles, the V1 and V2, which between them caused more than 6,000 deaths?

The “bleeding-hearts” brigade say there was no need to raid Dresden because the war was nearly over.

The raid took place in February, 1945. The Nazis surrendered in May. The war didn’t end, totally, until the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, in August 1945 by the US Air Force.

Will the archbishop be taking his crusade to Japan to sympathise with their being bombed by the US? He wouldn’t dare.

Let it not be forgotten, too, that in the early stages of the war, Bomber Command were the only means of taking the fight to the enemy. Without them we may well have been subjugated by the Nazis.

Philip Roe, Roman Avenue South, Stamford Bridge, York.