Happy Nuke Day

The above is a damage report on Tokyo following five incendiary raids by a total of 1,861 B-29s. As the caption says, an area the size of Pittsburg was burned to the ground. This was taken from an official USAAF periodical of the time.

On one typical B-29 raid in March of 1945, 800 planes burned out 15 square miles of the city. Three times the area destroyed by the Hiroshima A-bomb. 150,000 people were killed, and about a million left homeless. And that was one night, one raid, in a loooong series of raids that had gone on for months.

Now, who here thinks another whole year of that would be preferable to destroying a city or two with a new weapon to make a point, thus ending the whole shebang?

Another point: That 800 plane raid risked the lives of over 8,000 US airmen, in raids that were heavily defended against by interceptors and flak. The Hiroshima raid put 30 guys in three planes over the target, and those three planes were considered so unremarkable by the Japs they didn't even shoot at them. Now, imagine you're the US theater commander responsible for the lives of those men. Which mission would you rather schedule?

The Japanese would stick glass catheters in your urethra and smash your dick with a hammer.

Here we go. In honor of this thread, I've just finished a model of one of Nazi Germany's many "Amerika Bomber" projects. This rather huge jet was to be carried under an even huger mothership aircraft and launched offshore. It had six bomb bays to carry 66,000 pounds of bombs, or a nuke, and would have been headed for NYC if the war had continued another year or two.

Here's a little rundown on the project:
http://www.luft46.com/db/dbbombb.html

Here's my model:

As regards the Soviets getting the bomb first . . .

I don't think they would have used it on the Germans. They were already winning the war by the time they would have had the bomb, and knew that the rest of the Allies were coming from the other direction in a hammer and anvil move that was going to crush the Wermacht between them. Maybe they would have toasted Berlin, maybe not . . . but they knew the Brits and Americans were on the way and it was going to end.

With Japan, we were fighting an enemy who was using tactics that were much more suicidal than anything the Germans had shown, and who was home based on an island chain with no convenient ground invasion routes. The logistics of invading Japan were orders of magnitude worse than invading Europe on D-Day. We had help from the Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders, and a few others, but nothing like the grand alliance of forces in Europe. The Sovs hadn't even declared war on Japan and didn't until, IIRC, we'd already dropped the nukes, and that so that they could do a land grab in the northern islands.

But, in regards to the original point of this post, Churchill and Roosevelt (and Truman after FDR kicked it) already knew not to put too much trust in Uncle Joe. A Soviet nuke would have scared the crap out of us and we'd have had our own in short order anyway. End result: same Cold War and nuclear stand-off we had anyway.

Ziel: 6. Allee

I agree with you, but sometimes I wonder, what would have happened had we gone for something less than unconditional surrender? Just a thought experiment of course, but it might have turned out just fine.

Suppose we offered some sort of negotiated peace that left the Japanese government in place, maybe even left them with a vestigial empire (Okinawa perhaps). We had thoroughly thrashed their industry and military. There was no longer any threat to us from Japan. Why bother with a home island invasion at all?

The root causes of the Japanese aggression were still there, gul. Without removing the system that allowed the government in the first place, they most likely would've resumed fighting later on (see Saddam Hussein.)

Well the other positive thing that came out of the bombings other than ending the war, was that it gave the superpowers a look at what would happen if they ever pressed the button.

A hard lesson, but a lesson that helped temper some attitudes during the cold war.

Agreed, the military influence over Hirohito would still have been strong in that scenario, and the concepts of the new Bushido would have still likely remained a strong component of their culture.

The world's definitely a better place for a peaceful, merchantalistic Japan.

It's interesting to note that Hirohito was in favor of a negotiated peace, but it was unanimous among his cabinet that it be AFTER an Allied invasion, as repulsing it and causing massive casualties to the allies would have improved their bargaining position in the peace settlement.

Not exactly looking out for the little guy, were they?

And at the same time they were sending out feelers through the Soviet Union to discuss peace with the allies. Of course, by this point Stalin was sure of his victory over Nazi Germany and was more than willing to continue its expansion into Japan. It wasn't in the Soviet's best interest, having the foremost army in the world and a possible land invasion of Japan imminent, for peace to break out.

Even with their relatively limited assistance against Japan the Soviets ended up with two of the Japanese home islands under their control.

And of course the US public wasn't interested in anything less than the destruction of the regime that launched the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.

The conditions for the dropping of the Atomic Bomb were almost a perfect storm.

I think you guys are probably right, but it's possible to envision different realities. Given the culture, a weak and chastised Japan might have decided that 75 years of external activity was aberrant and a mistake. Perhaps they would return to the pre-Dewey society -- militaristic, but internally focused. I'd expect a long period of civil war and weakness.

Possible, but then you have to consider external influences. I think this scenario just moves up the Korean war a few years, and shift the setting a few hundred miles to the East. The IJN would have been incapable of another Tsushima Straight victory.

You don't think of communism as a strong force in Japan, but it actually was one of the few organizing elements at the time. Only one of Hirohito's cabinet ministers voted against continuing the war in 1945, and that one was more afraid of a communist uprising overthrowing the Japanese militaristic structure than he was of losing a war against the allies.

A weak Japan would be a huge target and very tempting for Uncle Joe. I think in that scenario you end up again with US intervention and pretty much the same outlook for Japan's ruling class. Hell, McArthur would have even been selected as governor of Japan again.

I have to wonder, if under such circumstances, we would have spanked the Soviets, rather than sticking to the limited strategy employed in Korea.

It's good that this sort of mass murder would not lightly be tolerated in western societies were it to happen today. Nor would Tokyo, Dresden or any of the others.
Real progress.

Not really, its pretty inevitable that we're going to have more massive conflicts - there simply isn't another viable option besides large populations voluntarily exterminating themselves. Take away the veneer of consumerism and luxury and people will be at each other's throats, surprisingly you often seem to support systems that would trim both of those things...I rightly have no idea why you do so?

Had there been an actual country involved in 9/11...say, it had been an air attack by the Royal Saudi Air Force...most certainly you'd have seen a city or two go up in a mushroom cloud.

Which is sort of why we have terrorism now. Governments can work through small bands of fanatics and not be held responsible (which is why the Saudis continue to be kissed by Bush instead of slapped).

Nah. Wouldn't have happened, even with Bush in the White House. Would've been seen as overkill.

We would've retaliated, but not with nukes.

General W.T. Sherman agrees!

I assume you speak of the actions of all players in the '39-'45 war (hell, in the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese invasions of China and Manchuria too). 'Cause singling out two little cities bombed by one particular side, in all the dozens that anyone with a big enough plane bombed since Guernica would be, well, pretty nuts.

Yay! Murdering civilians is okay...as long as it "works".

You have companies like Raytheon to thank for that.

Absolutely. It's just that the civilian bombing campaigns conducted by the Allied side were much more extensive, and those are possibly the most extreme examples.

No, I have mass popular opposition to thank for it.

Bullshit. The only reason Western society has become so "enlightened" during wartime is because we have the technology that affords us to...No Other Reason.

If we didn't have "smart" weapon technology, we'd still be carpet bombing cities.

Has more to do with the progression of the war than the morality of any one combatant. By the time there was technology and adequate armaments to allow a Dresden or Tokyo, the Japanese and Germans were no longer positioned to pull it off. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have done the same, though. The only kind of war that allows the luxury of not breaking the so-called rules is an optional, one sided war.

As long as people think "war" is ok then killing people is going to be the way to win them. "Civilian" is just a fancy term...Rosie the Rivetter is as important to the war effort as Private John Doe.

Tell me when you figure out how to breed conflict out of the race and then you can actually mount your high horse rather than the current spectacle of it mounting you.

Europeans haven't figured out yet that the very idea of standards of conduct in warfare is immoral. There is no such thing as moral war, there is only winning or losing. I had this argument with Packard a week or two back. How can he and Henry argue for rules about something they see as fundamentally wrong?

Essentially yes. Who was "right" and who was "wrong" is pretty much determined by who won.

Yep, and from a very self centered POV, it is always best to be "right" which means doing everything necessary to win. That's been a consistent failure of U.S. policy from the 1950s onward.

And it should be noted, that sometimes winning means not fighting. But that shouldn't be confused with the idea that when you do fight, you fight to win.

Yep. Wealthy people can afford a more "humane" ethical code.