Hiroshima/Nagasaki vs conventional B-17 bombing

[zxcv]

Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17 had
a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?

[Ragnar]

"zxcv" > wrote in message
...
> Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
had
> a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
> B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
> would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?

Yes.

[Keith Willshaw]

"zxcv" > wrote in message
...
> Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
had
> a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
> B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
> would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>
>

Take a look at the fire raid on Tokyo where a very large number
of B-29's killed MORE people than the Nagasaki or Hiroshima
raids.

Keith

[Cub Driver]

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 01:23:21 -0500, "zxcv" > wrote:

>Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17 had
>a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
>B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
>would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
>lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>

Most figures I have seen would suggest a somewhat higher yield for Fat
Man and (especially) Little Boy.

Given the same yield, however, my guess is that the B-17s (or more
like, B-29s) would do much more damage with conventional weapons, but
that it would have to be distributed among several or many targets.
And none of those targets would be devastated as Hiroshima was.

There was indeed a "thousand-plane" raid over Japan on August 14-15
http://www.warbirdforum.com/lastraid.htm which actually involved about
800 B-29s. I think they struck four or five cities over a period of
more than 12 hours. (The limiting factor was the runways at Guam and
Tinian. For a time there, the early raiders were landing even as the
later ones were taking off.)


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

[Stephen Harding]

Keith Willshaw wrote:

> "zxcv" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
>
> had
>
>>a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
>>B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
>>would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
>>lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>
> Take a look at the fire raid on Tokyo where a very large number
> of B-29's killed MORE people than the Nagasaki or Hiroshima
> raids.

Also note the appearance of Tokyo versus Hiroshima.

Not much different.


SMH

[Guy Alcala]

Cub Driver wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 01:23:21 -0500, "zxcv" > wrote:
>
> >Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17 had
> >a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
> >B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
> >would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> >lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
> >
>
> Most figures I have seen would suggest a somewhat higher yield for Fat
> Man and (especially) Little Boy.

You have that bass-ackwards, Dan. Little Boy is typically given a range of
13-15kt, Fat Man typically 21-23kt.

Guy

[Bernardz]

In article >, says...
>
> "zxcv" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
> had
> > a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
> > B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
> > would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> > lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>
> Yes.
>
>
>

This cannot be right surely the effects of many small bombs over a wider
area are bigger then one big bomb in one region.



--
Morality is like fashion. It changes all the time.

Observations of Bernard - No 54

[hiroshima facts]

"zxcv" > wrote in message >...
> Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17 had
> a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
> B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
> would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?


Even in the worst cases of conventional bombing (like Tokyo), only 10%
of the affected population was killed.

In most of the Japanese cities firebombed, the death rate was about
1%.

The A-bombs killed about half of the people in the affected area both
times.

[Keith Willshaw]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
m...
> "zxcv" > wrote in message
>...
> > Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
had
> > a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of
1300
> > B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 =
3900)
> > would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> > lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>
>
> Even in the worst cases of conventional bombing (like Tokyo), only 10%
> of the affected population was killed.
>
> In most of the Japanese cities firebombed, the death rate was about
> 1%.
>
> The A-bombs killed about half of the people in the affected area both
> times.

This is clearly incorrect , In 1946, the Manhattan Engineer District
published
a study that concluded that 66,000 people were killed at Hiroshima out of a
population of 255,000. Of that number, 45,000 died on the first day and
19,000
during the next four months.

Also in 1946, the Hiroshima police estimated the dead at 78,150 and the
missing
at 13,983, for a total of about 92,000 if all the missing are presumed dead
(a very unlikely hypothesis). So this estimate is not radically different
from
the American estimate.

In Nagasaki, out of a population of 174,000, 22,000 died on the
first day and another 17,000 within four months.

Keith

[Cub Driver]

>Even in the worst cases of conventional bombing (like Tokyo), only 10%
>of the affected population was killed.

It would appear that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the
Hiroshima population was killed. www.warbirdforum.com/hirodead.htm
Comparing kiloton equivalents, it might well be that the Tokyo fire
raid was much more devastating.
all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

[Kevin Brooks]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
m...
> "zxcv" > wrote in message
>...
> > Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
had
> > a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of
1300
> > B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 =
3900)
> > would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> > lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>
>
> Even in the worst cases of conventional bombing (like Tokyo), only 10%
> of the affected population was killed.
>
> In most of the Japanese cities firebombed, the death rate was about
> 1%.
>
> The A-bombs killed about half of the people in the affected area both
> times.

Nope. You need to change your nickname from "Hiroshima Facts" to "Hiroshima
Fantasies". Had half the population of Hiroshima died then the death toll
there would have been well over 100K, which is plainly not the case.

Brooks

[[email protected]]

Bernardz > wrote:

>In article >, says...
>>
>> "zxcv" > wrote in message
>> ...
>> > Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17
>> had
>> > a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
>> > B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
>> > would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
>> > lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>
>>
>
>This cannot be right surely the effects of many small bombs over a wider
>area are bigger then one big bomb in one region.

I would think so too because of the "overkill" in close proximity
to the blast. Not much use (war-wise) to pulverize an area near
the blast while missing an area far away, which, if you had
'spread out' the blast you'd have affected..
--

-Gord.

[hiroshima facts]

"Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message >...
> "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> m...
>
> > The A-bombs killed about half of the people in the affected area both
> > times.
>
> This is clearly incorrect , In 1946, the Manhattan Engineer District
> published a study that concluded that 66,000 people were killed at
> Hiroshima out of a population of 255,000. Of that number, 45,000 died
> on the first day and 19,000 during the next four months.

I don't think all 255,000 people were in the area affected by the
A-bomb, though.




> In Nagasaki, out of a population of 174,000, 22,000 died on the
> first day and another 17,000 within four months.

In the case of Nagasaki, I know all 174,000 were not in the affected
area, since the pilot could only get sight of the arms-production
complexes on the outskirts of the city and so dropped the bomb there
on the outskirts.

[hiroshima facts]

Cub Driver > wrote in message >...
> >Even in the worst cases of conventional bombing (like Tokyo), only 10%
> >of the affected population was killed.
>
> It would appear that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the
> Hiroshima population was killed.


But how many of them were in the area affected by the bomb?

[hiroshima facts]

"Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message >...
>
> Nope. You need to change your nickname from "Hiroshima Facts" to "Hiroshima
> Fantasies".

This was a poor substitute for an intelligent argument.



> Had half the population of Hiroshima died then the death toll
> there would have been well over 100K, which is plainly not the case.

"Half the affected area" and "half the population of the city" are not
necessarily the same thing.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message

>Even in the worst cases of conventional bombing (like Tokyo), only 10%
>of the affected population was killed.

Pre war population of Tokyo around 5,900,000, the firestorm raid
killed 83,783 according to Tokyo police, 1.4%, other estimates have
higher numbers of deaths and a smaller population due to evacuations.
Hamburg and Dresden suffered losses in the 4 to 5% range in the
firestorm raids, as a percentage of total population. Depending on
what population figures for the people present is accepted.

If the homeless figure plus deaths is the "population affected" figure
then the Tokyo death rate was around 7 to 8% of population affected.

>In most of the Japanese cities firebombed, the death rate was about
>1%.

This is presumably a percentage of total population present.


>The A-bombs killed about half of the people in the affected area both
>times.

Pre war combined population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
around 520,000

So presumably the "affected area/population" is being defined as
something less than the total city, only the districts damaged to a
defined extent and affects on people again to a defined extent.
Arthur Harris' acreage destroyed table says 75% of Hamburg and
59% of Dresden were destroyed during the war. The Tokyo fire
storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all
buildings in the city, over 1,000,000 left homeless.

The attack on Hiroshima killed around 80,000 and made a further
180,000 homeless, so 80/260 or 31% of the people affected, using
homeless and killed as the definition of affected. As noted above
Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8% using this measure.

One problem with comparing the data is the non atomic attacks
were against alerted cities, with people in shelters, the atomic
strikes were against unalerted cities and it makes a big difference
to the casualty figures. On 5 April 1943 the USAAF hit the Antwerp
industrial area with 172 short tons of bombs, killing 936 civilians,
it would appear the population assumed the bombers were going
somewhere else. There are plenty of such examples from the air
war in Europe, as late as April 1945 with the RAF attack on
Potsdam, the population appears to have assumed an attack on
Berlin, one estimate is perhaps 5,000 dead, the pre war population
was 74,000, 1,962 short tons of bombs dropped.

Given the difficulty in knowing the population numbers at the time
of the attacks on axis cities it would be interesting to know how
the estimates of populations in specific parts of the cities were done.

I would expect a nuclear weapon to be more lethal to those in the
target area, mainly the difference between most damage being
inflicted almost instantaneously and fires breaking out rapidly
versus the time it takes to put hundreds of bombers over the target.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[John Keeney]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
om...
> "Kevin Brooks" > wrote in message
>...
> >
> > Nope. You need to change your nickname from "Hiroshima Facts" to
"Hiroshima
> > Fantasies".
>
> This was a poor substitute for an intelligent argument.
>
>
>
> > Had half the population of Hiroshima died then the death toll
> > there would have been well over 100K, which is plainly not the case.
>
> "Half the affected area" and "half the population of the city" are not
> necessarily the same thing.

I think you are going to have to very carefully define what *you*
mean by "the affected area". You apparently don't mean to include
the entire cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. I would like to see your
interpretation of "the affected area" as applied to Tokyo as well.

[Keith Willshaw]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
om...
> "Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message
>...
> > "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> > m...
> >
> > > The A-bombs killed about half of the people in the affected area both
> > > times.
> >
> > This is clearly incorrect , In 1946, the Manhattan Engineer District
> > published a study that concluded that 66,000 people were killed at
> > Hiroshima out of a population of 255,000. Of that number, 45,000 died
> > on the first day and 19,000 during the next four months.
>
> I don't think all 255,000 people were in the area affected by the
> A-bomb, though.
>

I dont think all the population of Tokyo were in the area
affected by its bombing either but the target at Hiroshima
was the military HQ and there were at least 30,000 soldiers
in the area.

>
>
>
> > In Nagasaki, out of a population of 174,000, 22,000 died on the
> > first day and another 17,000 within four months.
>
> In the case of Nagasaki, I know all 174,000 were not in the affected
> area, since the pilot could only get sight of the arms-production
> complexes on the outskirts of the city and so dropped the bomb there
> on the outskirts.

Actually the arms plant was the target.

In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted

Keith

[Cub Driver]

>> It would appear that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the
>> Hiroshima population was killed.
>
>
>But how many of them were in the area affected by the bomb?

But that, surely, is the whole point! The atomic bomb makes rubble
bounce. The same or less kilotonnage spread over a wide area might
well do much more damage.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

[Cub Driver]

>I don't think all 255,000 people were in the area affected by the
>A-bomb, though.

As posted elsewhere: this is the whole point! The nuclear blast wastes
most of its power killing the same people over and over again.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

[hiroshima facts]

"Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message >...
>
>
> I dont think all the population of Tokyo were in the area
> affected by its bombing either

Correct. Only about 1 million people.




> but the target at Hiroshima was the military HQ and there
> were at least 30,000 soldiers in the area.

43,000 Japanese soldiers (20,000 of which were killed by the bomb).

I never saw figures for injuries, but I imagine a lot of the rest had
some serious injuries.




> Actually the arms plant was the target.

It was the target the pilot was aiming for because it was all he could
see. But the target he was supposed to be hitting at Nagasaki was the
Mitsubishi Shipyards.




> In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted

Not half population of the cities. But half the population in the
areas affected by the bombs.

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>
> So presumably the "affected area/population" is being defined as
> something less than the total city, only the districts damaged to a
> defined extent and affects on people again to a defined extent.

Yes.



> Arthur Harris' acreage destroyed table says 75% of Hamburg and
> 59% of Dresden were destroyed during the war. The Tokyo fire
> storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all
> buildings in the city, over 1,000,000 left homeless.
>
> The attack on Hiroshima killed around 80,000 and made a further
> 180,000 homeless, so 80/260 or 31% of the people affected, using
> homeless and killed as the definition of affected. As noted above
> Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8% using this measure.

The figures behind the 10% claim presume 1 million affected and
100,000 killed.

I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
for the estimate I was quoting.




I agree with the rest:

> One problem with comparing the data is the non atomic attacks
> were against alerted cities, with people in shelters, the atomic
> strikes were against unalerted cities and it makes a big difference
> to the casualty figures. On 5 April 1943 the USAAF hit the Antwerp
> industrial area with 172 short tons of bombs, killing 936 civilians,
> it would appear the population assumed the bombers were going
> somewhere else. There are plenty of such examples from the air
> war in Europe, as late as April 1945 with the RAF attack on
> Potsdam, the population appears to have assumed an attack on
> Berlin, one estimate is perhaps 5,000 dead, the pre war population
> was 74,000, 1,962 short tons of bombs dropped.
>
> Given the difficulty in knowing the population numbers at the time
> of the attacks on axis cities it would be interesting to know how
> the estimates of populations in specific parts of the cities were done.
>
> I would expect a nuclear weapon to be more lethal to those in the
> target area, mainly the difference between most damage being
> inflicted almost instantaneously and fires breaking out rapidly
> versus the time it takes to put hundreds of bombers over the target.
>
> Geoffrey Sinclair
> Remove the nb for email.

[hiroshima facts]

"John Keeney" > wrote in message >...
>
> I think you are going to have to very carefully define what *you*
> mean by "the affected area". You apparently don't mean to include
> the entire cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. I would like to see your
> interpretation of "the affected area" as applied to Tokyo as well.


I don't have all the methodology that went into the estimate, but I
presume "affected area" refers to the areas that were leveled in the
attack.

The "affected area" for the nukes was counted as "within 2 km".

[hiroshima facts]

Cub Driver > wrote in message >...
> >>
> >> It would appear that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the
> >> Hiroshima population was killed.
> >
> >
> >But how many of them were in the area affected by the bomb?
>
>
> But that, surely, is the whole point! The atomic bomb makes rubble
> bounce. The same or less kilotonnage spread over a wide area might
> well do much more damage.


To structures, perhaps.

But even if we use the lower mortality figures of 7-8% for Tokyo, and
31% for the nukes, there are still a lot more killed within the
affected area with nukes.

To put it another way, compare the number killed with one of the
A-bombs with the number killed in Tokyo. Then compare the area
destroyed and the population density of that area.

It is true that "people not taking cover from the nukes" is going to
skew this some, but I expect that there would still be a considerable
difference even if that was taken into account.

[Keith Willshaw]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
om...
> "Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message
>...
> >
> >
> > I dont think all the population of Tokyo were in the area
> > affected by its bombing either
>
> Correct. Only about 1 million people.
>
>

Cite please, a million people were left homeless but the
main damage mechanism in Tokyo as at Dresden,
Hamburg and Hiroshima was the firestorm that
developed. There was no firestorm in the case
of Nagasaki.

>
>
> > but the target at Hiroshima was the military HQ and there
> > were at least 30,000 soldiers in the area.
>
> 43,000 Japanese soldiers (20,000 of which were killed by the bomb).
>
> I never saw figures for injuries, but I imagine a lot of the rest had
> some serious injuries.
>
>
>
>
> > Actually the arms plant was the target.
>
> It was the target the pilot was aiming for because it was all he could
> see. But the target he was supposed to be hitting at Nagasaki was the
> Mitsubishi Shipyards.
>

Not according to the crew who dropped it

<Quote>
We started an approach [to Nagasaki]," Olivi said, "but Beahan couldn't see
the target area . Van Pelt, the navigator,
was checking by radar to make sure we had the right city, and it looked like
we would be dropping the bomb automatically by radar. At the last few
seconds of the bomb run, Beahan yelled into his mike, 'I've got a hole! I
can see it! I can see the target!' Apparently, he had spotted an opening in
the clouds only 20 seconds before releasing the bomb."
In his debriefing later, Beahan told Tibbets, "I saw my aiming point; there
was no problem about it. I got the cross hairs on it; I'd killed my rate;
I'd killed my drift. The bomb had to go."

</Quote>
>
>
>[i]
> > In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted
>
> Not half population of the cities. But half the population in the
> areas affected by the bombs.

Incorrect, 67% of the buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed
or severely damaged. This means at least 2/3rds of the city
was affected by the bomb

In the case of Nagasaki 40% of the cities buildings were
either totally or partly destroyed.

source

The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by The Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946

Keith

[Keith Willshaw]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
om...


> I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
> "Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
> in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
> they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
> And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
> for the estimate I was quoting.
>

This is an oversimplification

According to the Manhattan Engineer district survey
the relationship of mortality to range was as follows

Distance in feet Per-cent Mortality
0 - 1000 93.0%
1000 - 2000 92.0
2000 - 3000 86.0
3000 - 4000 69.0
4000 - 5000 49.0
5000 - 6000 31.5
6000 - 7000 12.5
7000 - 8000 1.3
8000 - 9000 0.5
9000 - 10,000 0.0

The same source states

"Nearly everything was heavily damaged up to a radius of
3 miles from the blast and beyond this distance damage,
although comparatively light, extended for several more miles."

Clearly the area affected was much more than that within
a radius of 2 kms

Keith

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>>
>> So presumably the "affected area/population" is being defined as
>> something less than the total city, only the districts damaged to a
>> defined extent and affects on people again to a defined extent.
>
>Yes.

Which makes the figures very vulnerable to arbitrary definitions.

>> Arthur Harris' acreage destroyed table says 75% of Hamburg and
>> 59% of Dresden were destroyed during the war. The Tokyo fire
>> storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all
>> buildings in the city, over 1,000,000 left homeless.
>>
>> The attack on Hiroshima killed around 80,000 and made a further
>> 180,000 homeless, so 80/260 or 31% of the people affected, using
>> homeless and killed as the definition of affected. As noted above
>> Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8% using this measure.
>
>The figures behind the 10% claim presume 1 million affected and
>100,000 killed.

(10% for Tokyo)

Yet those figures should then read 9%, 100,000 dead out of 1,100,000
dead and homeless, since the two categories are mutually exclusive.

>I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
>"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
>in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
>they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
>And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
>for the estimate I was quoting.

In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.

It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
therefore invalid.

The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
toll like for the 2 km circle?

On a comparative scale Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8%, Hiroshima 31%
deaths when you count the dead and homeless as the "affected
population", making the atomic strikes about 4 times as lethal.
Though this ignores the reality Hiroshima was not under air raid alert
at the time but Tokyo was, which could account for much to even all
of the difference in lethality.

It looks like the bombing campaign against Germany killed around 1
person per 4,600 pounds of bombs dropped, using the pre war German
borders definition of Germany. The strike on Antwerp I mentioned killed
at a rate much higher than that. Now it could be the reason this strike made
it to the history books was because it was an extreme example of lethality,
but it does show how variable the results could be. In the bombing
campaign against French targets the civilian death toll was around 1 death
per 20,000 pounds of bombs. In theory, assuming Little Boy had a 15,000
ton effectiveness, Hiroshima works out to 1 death per 375 "pounds", the
Antwerp raid 1 death per 360 pounds. Fat Man at 23,000 tons yield works
out to around 1 death per 1,300 "pounds".

The RAF Hamburg firestorm raid dropped 2,707 short tons of bombs,
some of which missed, but killed around 40,000 people, that is around
1 death per 135 pounds of bombs. Many of the deaths were to lack
of oxygen/carbon monoxide in the shelters which had not been set up
to handle such bad fires.

Back to Tokyo,

Put it another way, the Tokyo Police report has 1 injured for every 2
dead, assume the same ratio applies to housing and you have over
1,000,000 homeless and over another 500,000 whose house was
damaged, they would be "affected" as well. That means the dead
as a percentage of affected goes to 84,000 out of 1,600,000, back
down to the 5% range of the European fire storms.

Or again Tokyo had nearly 25% of buildings destroyed, again assume
a 2 to 1 ratio destroyed to damaged, and we have over 1/3 of the city
affected, which would mean, in theory 2,000,000 people. So the
percentage drops to 4%. Just choose the definitions and drop out
the numbers.

This ignores the problems in determining a good population figure for
the city, let alone a subset of districts, given the attacks by definition
would destroy some of the records needed to determine the population
present.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[Cub Driver]

On 22 Mar 2004 06:54:55 -0800, (hiroshima
facts) wrote:

>To put it another way, compare the number killed with one of the
>A-bombs with the number killed in Tokyo. Then compare the area
>destroyed and the population density of that area.

No. Compare the kilotonnage per fatality.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
> hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>
> >I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
> >"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
> >in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
> >they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
> >And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
> >for the estimate I was quoting.
>
> In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
> the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
> beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.

I'm guessing the estimate tried to pick the area where most of the
buildings were leveled, and came up with 2 KM. Since a modern nuclear
attack that wanted to level a city would use either large enough
warheads (or a large enough numbers of warheads) to level everything,
this seems fair to me, although perhaps I should use a more precise
term than "area affected".




> It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
> use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
> the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
> measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
> therefore invalid.
>
> The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
> circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
> toll like for the 2 km circle?

As far as I know, there was no concentration of deaths in the Tokyo
raid that would change the ratio if we focused on a smaller area.




> On a comparative scale Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8%, Hiroshima 31%
> deaths when you count the dead and homeless as the "affected
> population", making the atomic strikes about 4 times as lethal.
> Though this ignores the reality Hiroshima was not under air raid alert
> at the time but Tokyo was, which could account for much to even all
> of the difference in lethality.

I don't think it could account for all of it.

Are there *any* instances of conventional weapons ever killing more
than 8% (either of the "area affected" or the "area leveled")?

[hiroshima facts]

Cub Driver > wrote in message >...
> On 22 Mar 2004 06:54:55 -0800, (hiroshima
> facts) wrote:
>
> >To put it another way, compare the number killed with one of the
> >A-bombs with the number killed in Tokyo. Then compare the area
> >destroyed and the population density of that area.
>
> No. Compare the kilotonnage per fatality.


Nuclear weapons may well be more costly that way, but you get what you
pay for.

I don't think there are any instances of conventional weapons killing
more than 10% of people in the affected area, and arguments here point
to even less than 10%, even for the most deadly use of conventional
weapons.

However, I have not seen any arguments that have credited the A-bombs
with fewer than 30% fatalities in the area affected.

By using more explosive per person killed, you also kill a greater
portion of the people in the area you are bombing.

[hiroshima facts]

"Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message >...
> "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> om...
> > "Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message
> >...
> > >
> > >
> > > I dont think all the population of Tokyo were in the area
> > > affected by its bombing either
> >
> >
> > Correct. Only about 1 million people.
>
>
> Cite please, a million people were left homeless but the
> main damage mechanism in Tokyo as at Dresden,
> Hamburg and Hiroshima was the firestorm that
> developed. There was no firestorm in the case
> of Nagasaki.

I think the estimate was just based on the 1 million homeless number,
but I didn't see any explanation.

I'll accept 7-8% as valid.




> > > Actually the arms plant was the target.
> >
> > It was the target the pilot was aiming for because it was all he could
> > see. But the target he was supposed to be hitting at Nagasaki was the
> > Mitsubishi Shipyards.
> >
>
> Not according to the crew who dropped it
>
> <Quote>
> We started an approach [to Nagasaki]," Olivi said, "but Beahan couldn't see
> the target area . Van Pelt, the navigator,
> was checking by radar to make sure we had the right city, and it looked like
> we would be dropping the bomb automatically by radar. At the last few
> seconds of the bomb run, Beahan yelled into his mike, 'I've got a hole! I
> can see it! I can see the target!' Apparently, he had spotted an opening in
> the clouds only 20 seconds before releasing the bomb."
> In his debriefing later, Beahan told Tibbets, "I saw my aiming point; there
> was no problem about it. I got the cross hairs on it; I'd killed my rate;
> I'd killed my drift. The bomb had to go."
>
> </Quote>


They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.

There are some links here that mention the shipyards being the
intended target:

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=nagasaki+bomb&num=100&as_epq=mitsubishi+shipyards

They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might have
ended up in front of a court marshal for it.

They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.

It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because they
did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay (although
I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb fizzle would
already be one with no survivors).



[i]
> > > In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted
> >
> > Not half population of the cities. But half the population in the
> > areas affected by the bombs.
>
> Incorrect, 67% of the buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed
> or severely damaged. This means at least 2/3rds of the city
> was affected by the bomb

But what percentage of the population within that 2/3 was killed?

[hiroshima facts]

"Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message >...
>
> The same source states
>
> "Nearly everything was heavily damaged up to a radius of
> 3 miles from the blast and beyond this distance damage,
> although comparatively light, extended for several more miles."
>
> Clearly the area affected was much more than that within
> a radius of 2 kms


Heavy damage usually refers to something like that caused by a 3 PSI
overpressure, which will destroy internal walls of a house and leave
the contents of the house all piled up against the far wall, but
doesn't destroy the exterior frame of the house.

I think the estimate probably was considering the area where most
structures were completely destroyed.

I concede that "affected area" was a poor choice of words on my part.
"Area razed to the ground" would be more appropriate.

[Keith Willshaw]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
m...


<snip>

> >
> > Cite please, a million people were left homeless but the
> > main damage mechanism in Tokyo as at Dresden,
> > Hamburg and Hiroshima was the firestorm that
> > developed. There was no firestorm in the case
> > of Nagasaki.
>
> I think the estimate was just based on the 1 million homeless number,
> but I didn't see any explanation.
>

Then its erroneous as conventional bombing doesnt render all houses
in an area uninhabitable while not touching those around it. Its
likely that many houses were destroyed by the fires started
and were untouched by bombs. In such a situation the population
would be able to flee.

> I'll accept 7-8% as valid.
>

Thats scarcel accurate given the

>
>
>
> > > > Actually the arms plant was the target.
> > >
> > > It was the target the pilot was aiming for because it was all he could
> > > see. But the target he was supposed to be hitting at Nagasaki was the
> > > Mitsubishi Shipyards.
> > >
> >
> > Not according to the crew who dropped it
> >
> > <Quote>
> > We started an approach [to Nagasaki]," Olivi said, "but Beahan couldn't
see
> > the target area . Van Pelt, the
navigator,
> > was checking by radar to make sure we had the right city, and it looked
like
> > we would be dropping the bomb automatically by radar. At the last few
> > seconds of the bomb run, Beahan yelled into his mike, 'I've got a hole!
I
> > can see it! I can see the target!' Apparently, he had spotted an opening
in
> > the clouds only 20 seconds before releasing the bomb."
> > In his debriefing later, Beahan told Tibbets, "I saw my aiming point;
there
> > was no problem about it. I got the cross hairs on it; I'd killed my
rate;
> > I'd killed my drift. The bomb had to go."
> >
> > </Quote>
>
>
> They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.
>

No its what they said at their debriefing, at the time this was definitely
NOT for public consumption

> There are some links here that mention the shipyards being the
> intended target:
>
>
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=nagasaki+bomb&num=100&as_epq=mitsubishi+shipyards
>

I prefer to take the word of the men who flew the
mission and those that briefed them.

> They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might have
> ended up in front of a court marshal for it.
>
> They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.
>

Not quite, they were instructed not to BOMB using radar,
the drop was made using the Norden visual bombsight


> It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because they
> did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay (although
> I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb fizzle would
> already be one with no survivors).
>

They considered the possibility and you seem to be forrgetting that
landing with an armed weapon of any sort is risky let alone
a nuclear weapon with a barometric fuze.

>
>
>[i]
> > > > In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted
> > >
> > > Not half population of the cities. But half the population in the
> > > areas affected by the bombs.
> >
> > Incorrect, 67% of the buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed
> > or severely damaged. This means at least 2/3rds of the city
> > was affected by the bomb
>
> But what percentage of the population within that 2/3 was killed?

I have already pointed you to the source of the post war survey - go look.

Keith

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...

>Nuclear weapons may well be more costly that way, but you get what you
>pay for.
>
>I don't think there are any instances of conventional weapons killing
>more than 10% of people in the affected area, and arguments here point
>to even less than 10%, even for the most deadly use of conventional
>weapons.


The trouble yet again is "Affected area" is being defined in a way
to increase the perceived lethality of the atomic attacks.

Also how many of those conventional attacks were against unwarned
populations? Try Pforzheim in 1945 for a very lethal conventional attack.

>However, I have not seen any arguments that have credited the A-bombs
>with fewer than 30% fatalities in the area affected.

How about we drop the "area affected" for the conventional bombs to
something like their known lethal blast area? In which case 90%
casualties can be expected, just be within so many feet of the bomb
going off. If we ignore anything outside this blast area, since after all
there will be only building damage, not destruction, we can make
conventional explosives quite lethal. Most of the area is actually
"missed" if you use the bomb blast radius.

>By using more explosive per person killed, you also kill a greater
>portion of the people in the area you are bombing.

There is the overkill factor, since the blast dissipates as the square
of distance, the buildings near the centre are hit "too much".

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.

hiroshima facts wrote in message
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message
>...
> hiroshima facts wrote in message
>>>I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
>>>"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
>>>in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
>>>they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
>>>And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
>>>for the estimate I was quoting.
>> In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
>> the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
>> beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.

>I'm guessing the estimate tried to pick the area where most of the
>buildings were leveled, and came up with 2 KM. Since a modern nuclear
>attack that wanted to level a city would use either large enough
>warheads (or a large enough numbers of warheads) to level everything,
>this seems fair to me, although perhaps I should use a more precise
>term than "area affected".

Let us understand this, fair for nuclear weapons is looking at the
most damaged areas when computing lethality. Fair for conventional
weapons is looking at a much bigger area, where damage is not as
severe in places when computing lethality. Fair also seems to be
assuming multiple larger atomic attacks, presumably also against
unwarned populations.

>> It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
>> use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
>> the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
>> measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
>> therefore invalid.
>> The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
>> circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
>> toll like for the 2 km circle?
>As far as I know, there was no concentration of deaths in the Tokyo
>raid that would change the ratio if we focused on a smaller area.

Actually there were concentrations of deaths, the canals and rivers
became choked with bodies as people tried to escape the heat,
the incoming tide caused drownings.

It all came down to whether the fires cut off people's retreat, if they
did not more people survived. There was not an even x deaths per
square mile in the "affected area", as a simple exercise in logic
the people at the fringes had a better chance of escaping.

>> On a comparative scale Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8%, Hiroshima 31%
>> deaths when you count the dead and homeless as the "affected
>> population", making the atomic strikes about 4 times as lethal.
>> Though this ignores the reality Hiroshima was not under air raid alert
>> at the time but Tokyo was, which could account for much to even all
>> of the difference in lethality.

>I don't think it could account for all of it.

There are precisely two atomic strikes against populations, in both
cases unwarned populations, it is clear moving the population to air
raid shelters would have made a significant difference to lethality.

In theory, assuming Little Boy had a 15,000 ton effectiveness,
Hiroshima works out to 1 death per 375 "pounds", Fat Man at
23,000 tons yield works out to around 1 death per 1,300 "pounds".

That is nearly a factor of 3.5 difference between these two strikes and
3.5 times the 7 to 8% Tokyo lethality is 24 to 28%, in the area of the
claimed atomic weapons lethality.

One of the first things to learn about WWII bombing is how variable
the results could be. It is clear from the atomic attack survivors many
were killed or lethally injured in the open and others were killed when
trapped in damaged/destroyed buildings that burnt. Put the population
in shelters and many/most of these injuries go away.

Hamburg was so lethal partly because the shelters were not designed
to cope with a firestorm, normally the best thing to do was head for the
shelters, on this night it would have been flee the area even as the
raid began. The Hamburg raid killed people at a rate 34 times the
average per ton of bombs dropped on Germany. And you want to
think a factor of 4 is somehow large between Tokyo and Hiroshima,
and that is after altering the definitions in favour of the atomic attack.

If the Oxford companion to WWII is correct air raids on Austria were
3 times as lethal per ton of bombs dropped on average than those
on Germany.

>Are there *any* instances of conventional weapons ever killing more
>than 8% (either of the "area affected" or the "area leveled")?

Yes night of 23/24 February 1945 RAF Bomber Command versus
Pforzheim. The city, pre war population of 80,000, had been the
target of Mosquito harassment raids by night plus some day strikes
in the order of 100 to 300 tons of bombs before the big raid. On
23/34 February 1945 some 1,740 tons of bombs caused a firestorm,
around 17,000 to 18,000 people killed on this night. This raid was
responsible for most of the damage to the city during hostilities.
Some 83% of the built up area destroyed for the war. In terms
of deaths per bomb it works out to a maximum of 1 death per 190
pounds of bombs, around 2/3 the lethality of the Hamburg firestorm.

Assuming no growth in population the Pforzheim raid's lethality works
out at 21 to 23% of the total population, but around 20% of the city
survived, so 5/4 times 21 to 22 is 26 to 28%.

This ignores the problems in determining a good population figure for
the city, let alone a subset of districts, given the attacks by definition
would destroy some of the records needed to determine the population
present.

Simply given the reality there are only two atomic strikes to go on
and their lethality per "ton" of bomb varied so much and they were
against unwarned populations, and the variability seen in WWII
conventional bombing means claims about how much more lethal
atomic weapons can be do not have solid evidence to back them.
Hopefully it stays this way. As I said before I would expect a higher
lethality for nuclear weapons thanks to the instantaneous nature of
much of the damage and the much higher "explosive" yield, how
much higher is another question.

The only comparable strikes to the atomic weapons in "explosive"
yield were the RAF Bomber Command strikes against Duisberg on
14 October 1944 by day and again that night, the two operations
put around 10,000 short tons of bombs on the city, about 5,000
tons each, around 16% incendiaries. No idea of casualties, the
city did not put together a final report but there were clearly not
Hamburg etc. casualty levels.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
> This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.
>
> hiroshima facts wrote in message
> >"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message
> >...
> > hiroshima facts wrote in message
> >>>I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
> >>>"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
> >>>in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
> >>>they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
> >>>And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
> >>>for the estimate I was quoting.
> >> In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
> >> the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
> >> beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.
>
> >I'm guessing the estimate tried to pick the area where most of the
> >buildings were leveled, and came up with 2 KM. Since a modern nuclear
> >attack that wanted to level a city would use either large enough
> >warheads (or a large enough numbers of warheads) to level everything,
> >this seems fair to me, although perhaps I should use a more precise
> >term than "area affected".
>
> Let us understand this, fair for nuclear weapons is looking at the
> most damaged areas when computing lethality. Fair for conventional
> weapons is looking at a much bigger area, where damage is not as
> severe in places when computing lethality.

I think the comparison was using the area where most buildings were
razed to the ground in each case.

There are zones of far more intense damage with nukes, such as the
zone exposed to at least a 20 PSI overpressure.




> Fair also seems to be assuming multiple larger atomic attacks,

Since a modern nuclear attack would use enough nukes to achieve
whatever level of damage was desired, I don't see why it isn't fair to
consider that.

I also think it would also be fair to count any intensity/numbers of
conventional bombs that are within the limits of practicality for
delivering the attack.

But I think with conventional bombs there will always be a large
number who will be able to successfully flee the firestorm before it
takes hold, no matter how intense the bombing.




> presumably also against unwarned populations.

I think it is reasonable to account for that. I just don't think it
accounts for *all* the difference. Also, given that a nuclear strike
can hit with very little warning, there might not be much time for a
population to prepare.

The two things that strike me as being unique about nukes is that they
can take out an large area rapidly, giving no time to flee once the
attack starts, and the prompt radiation kills people in the areas of
heavier damage who might otherwise survive the blast.




> >> It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
> >> use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
> >> the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
> >> measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
> >> therefore invalid.
> >> The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
> >> circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
> >> toll like for the 2 km circle?
> >As far as I know, there was no concentration of deaths in the Tokyo
> >raid that would change the ratio if we focused on a smaller area.
>
> Actually there were concentrations of deaths, the canals and rivers
> became choked with bodies as people tried to escape the heat,
> the incoming tide caused drownings.

But that is due to the geography of the target, not the nature of the
bomb. And the people only ended up in that concentration because they
ran there once the bombing started.




> It all came down to whether the fires cut off people's retreat, if they
> did not more people survived. There was not an even x deaths per
> square mile in the "affected area", as a simple exercise in logic
> the people at the fringes had a better chance of escaping.

I think it would be fair to trim off the fringe areas and count the
casualty rate in the core area.




> >Are there *any* instances of conventional weapons ever killing more
> >than 8% (either of the "area affected" or the "area leveled")?
>
> Yes night of 23/24 February 1945 RAF Bomber Command versus
> Pforzheim. The city, pre war population of 80,000, had been the
> target of Mosquito harassment raids by night plus some day strikes
> in the order of 100 to 300 tons of bombs before the big raid. On
> 23/34 February 1945 some 1,740 tons of bombs caused a firestorm,
> around 17,000 to 18,000 people killed on this night. This raid was
> responsible for most of the damage to the city during hostilities.
> Some 83% of the built up area destroyed for the war. In terms
> of deaths per bomb it works out to a maximum of 1 death per 190
> pounds of bombs, around 2/3 the lethality of the Hamburg firestorm.
>
> Assuming no growth in population the Pforzheim raid's lethality works
> out at 21 to 23% of the total population, but around 20% of the city
> survived, so 5/4 times 21 to 22 is 26 to 28%.

Thanks. I didn't know their proportion got so high.




> Simply given the reality there are only two atomic strikes to go on
> and their lethality per "ton" of bomb varied so much and they were
> against unwarned populations, and the variability seen in WWII
> conventional bombing means claims about how much more lethal
> atomic weapons can be do not have solid evidence to back them.
> Hopefully it stays this way. As I said before I would expect a higher
> lethality for nuclear weapons thanks to the instantaneous nature of
> much of the damage and the much higher "explosive" yield, how
> much higher is another question.

I don't see what lethality per ton has to do with it.

No matter how much conventional explosive is dropped on a city, a lot
of people are still going to be able to flee the raid once it starts.
This is something that nukes can overcome.

[hiroshima facts]

"Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message >...
> "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> m...
>
>
> > I'll accept 7-8% as valid.
>
>
> Thats scarcel accurate given the

I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
figures for the Tokyo raid.




> > > > > Actually the arms plant was the target.
> > > >
> > > > It was the target the pilot was aiming for because it was all
> > > > he could see. But the target he was supposed to be hitting
> > > > at Nagasaki was the Mitsubishi Shipyards.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Not according to the crew who dropped it
> > >
> > > <Quote>
> > > We started an approach [to Nagasaki]," Olivi said, "but Beahan
> > > couldn't see the target area [in the city east of the harbor].
> > > Van Pelt, the navigator, was checking by radar to make sure we
> > > had the right city, and it looked like we would be dropping the
> > > bomb automatically by radar. At the last few seconds of the
> > > bomb run, Beahan yelled into his mike, 'I've got a hole! I can
> > > see it! I can see the target!' Apparently, he had spotted an
> > > opening in the clouds only 20 seconds before releasing the
> > > bomb."
> > > In his debriefing later, Beahan told Tibbets, "I saw my aiming
> > > point; there was no problem about it. I got the cross hairs on
> > > it; I'd killed my rate; I'd killed my drift. The bomb had to
> > > go."
> > >
> > > </Quote>
> >
> >
> > They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.
> >
>
> No its what they said at their debriefing, at the time this was
> definitely NOT for public consumption

Well, they were stretching the truth for someone.

Unless they actually thought the arms factories were the shipyards.




> > They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might
> > have ended up in front of a court marshal for it.
> >
> > They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.
>
> Not quite, they were instructed not to BOMB using radar,

Thus my raised eyebrows at the statement "and it looked like we would
be dropping the bomb automatically by radar".




> > It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because
> > they did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay
> > (although I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb
> > fizzle would already be one with no survivors).
>
> They considered the possibility

Yes, but I think it unlikely. I'm not sure how hard you have to smack
composition B to make it go off, but I wouldn't think anyone would
survive a crash that was that violent.



> and you seem to be forrgetting that landing with an armed weapon of
> any sort is risky let alone a nuclear weapon with a barometric
> fuze.

The barometer was just part of the system. There was little danger of
the bomb going off without the arming cords pulled out.

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>
> How about we drop the "area affected" for the conventional bombs to
> something like their known lethal blast area? In which case 90%
> casualties can be expected, just be within so many feet of the bomb
> going off. If we ignore anything outside this blast area, since after all
> there will be only building damage, not destruction, we can make
> conventional explosives quite lethal. Most of the area is actually
> "missed" if you use the bomb blast radius.

That just changes the way the difference is stated. Nukes don't
"miss" any of the area affected, and so kill people that are in areas
otherwise missed.




> >By using more explosive per person killed, you also kill a greater
> >portion of the people in the area you are bombing.
>
> There is the overkill factor, since the blast dissipates as the square
> of distance, the buildings near the centre are hit "too much".

Airbursts help with that quite a bit.

The blast pressure directly underneath an explosion at a burst height
optimized to maximize 30 PSI, is probably not as strong as the blast
pressure near an exploding conventional bomb.

[Keith Willshaw]

"hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
om...
> "Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message
>...
> > "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> > m...
> >
> >
> > > I'll accept 7-8% as valid.
> >
> >
> > Thats scarcel accurate given the
>
> I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
> figures for the Tokyo raid.
>
>

Sorry I wont fudge the facts for your benefit

Keith

[hiroshima facts]

"Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message >...
> "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> om...
> > "Keith Willshaw" > wrote in message
> >...
> > > "hiroshima facts" > wrote in message
> > > m...
> > >
> > >
> > > > I'll accept 7-8% as valid.
> > >
> > >
> > > Thats scarcel accurate given the
> >
> >
> > I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
> > figures for the Tokyo raid.
>
>
> Sorry I wont fudge the facts for your benefit


I wasn't asking for you to fudge any facts, and I would hardly gain
any benefit from it.

What I was saying was that I would listen if you had a case that the
numbers were different.

But you clearly have no case. Your response is good evidence that the
numbers were accurate as stated.

[Mike Willey]

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 01:23:21 -0500, "zxcv" > wrote:

>Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17 had
>a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
>B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
>would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
>lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?
>

The effects of 1300 B-17s over a relatively wide area would spread the
destruction further. What an atomic bomb does that is so effective is
due to having all xxx kilotons go off at the same time and the same
place creating an enormous shockwave and wall of intense heat.

To put this in perspective, think of the bombs as hailstones. If I
have a hailstorm for 30 minutes with pea sized hail over, say a 2 acre
area and that hail had the equivalent water to 1/8 inch of rain, it
would cause a great deal of damage. But imagine the damage if there
were just one hailstone that weight 7000 lbs dropping from the sky.
Not nearly as much damage in most of the area, but where it hit, wow!

This, of course, is not an entirely fair analogy, since our bombing in
Japanese cities was designed to start firestorms, which did much more
damage and killed many more people than the bombs that started them.
----------------------
Mike Willey

[[email protected]]

Mike Willey > wrote:
>
>To put this in perspective, think of the bombs as hailstones. If I
>have a hailstorm for 30 minutes with pea sized hail over, say a 2 acre
>area and that hail had the equivalent water to 1/8 inch of rain, it
>would cause a great deal of damage. But imagine the damage if there
>were just one hailstone that weight 7000 lbs dropping from the sky.
>Not nearly as much damage in most of the area, but where it hit, wow!
>

That's not a good reason either because why does it matter how
much damage is caused PAST the point where everything is
destroyed?...everything past that point is useless overkill...
--

-Gord.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>>
>> How about we drop the "area affected" for the conventional bombs to
>> something like their known lethal blast area? In which case 90%
>> casualties can be expected, just be within so many feet of the bomb
>> going off. If we ignore anything outside this blast area, since after all
>> there will be only building damage, not destruction, we can make
>> conventional explosives quite lethal. Most of the area is actually
>> "missed" if you use the bomb blast radius.
>
>That just changes the way the difference is stated. Nukes don't
>"miss" any of the area affected, and so kill people that are in areas
>otherwise missed.

I see the need to trim the post to take me out of context.

The claim was,

"However, I have not seen any arguments that have credited the A-bombs
with fewer than 30% fatalities in the area affected."

With the "area affected" being defined in a way to increase the
lethality of nuclear weapons. I simply altered the "area affected"
rule to be the same for both nuclear and conventional bombs,
that is within the lethal blast area of the individual bomb, not the
area of the city deemed to be the "area affected".

And "area affected" now seems to be defined as where people
were killed, not where buildings were largely destroyed, at least
for the nuclear weapons.

By the way there were survivors near ground zero of the nuclear
attacks, around 7% of people caught within 1,000 feet, the
claimed 2 km "area affected" rule means a circle of around 6,600
feet, the people caught between 6,000 and 7,000 feet had an
87.5% survival rate. Yet the claim is

"Nukes don't "miss" any of the area affected, and so kill people
that are in areas otherwise missed."

Try comparing like with like, the instantaneous nature of a large
explosion should mean an elevated lethality versus the same amount
of explosives dropped over say an hour. There is no need to set up
these absurd changes of definition of "area affected" between nuclear
and conventional attacks.

>> >By using more explosive per person killed, you also kill a greater
>> >portion of the people in the area you are bombing.
>>
>> There is the overkill factor, since the blast dissipates as the square
>> of distance, the buildings near the centre are hit "too much".
>
>Airbursts help with that quite a bit.

Ever seen the results of a 4,000 pound bomb that detonated before
hitting the ground, in fact any bomb that manages to detonate before
impact, so it wastes minimal energy throwing dirt around?

It does not change the point that the effect of a big bomb is "too
much" damage at the point of impact.

>The blast pressure directly underneath an explosion at a burst height
>optimized to maximize 30 PSI, is probably not as strong as the blast
>pressure near an exploding conventional bomb.

I see, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were at these optimal heights and
you have a belief this is smaller than the blast pressure of a conventional
bomb, is that a 100 pound or 22,000 pound conventional bomb, armour
piercing or high explosive?

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>> This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.
>>
>> hiroshima facts wrote in message
>> >"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message
>> >...
>> > hiroshima facts wrote in message
>> >>>I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
>> >>>"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
>> >>>in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
>> >>>they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
>> >>>And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
>> >>>for the estimate I was quoting.
>> >> In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
>> >> the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
>> >> beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.
>>
>> >I'm guessing the estimate tried to pick the area where most of the
>> >buildings were leveled, and came up with 2 KM. Since a modern nuclear
>> >attack that wanted to level a city would use either large enough
>> >warheads (or a large enough numbers of warheads) to level everything,
>> >this seems fair to me, although perhaps I should use a more precise
>> >term than "area affected".
>>
>> Let us understand this, fair for nuclear weapons is looking at the
>> most damaged areas when computing lethality. Fair for conventional
>> weapons is looking at a much bigger area, where damage is not as
>> severe in places when computing lethality.
>
>I think the comparison was using the area where most buildings were
>razed to the ground in each case.

I suggest you go look up the various damage levels involved in the
different attacks instead of telling us you are "facts" when you are
supplying "thoughts". Someone decided to use 2km as the radius
to measure the lethality for the nuclear strikes but a much larger
area for the conventional strikes, skewing the results.

>There are zones of far more intense damage with nukes, such as the
>zone exposed to at least a 20 PSI overpressure.

Ever seen the pictures of ground zero for a 4,000 pound HE bomb,
the RAF heavy bomber standard weapon in 1944/45?

>> Fair also seems to be assuming multiple larger atomic attacks,
>
>Since a modern nuclear attack would use enough nukes to achieve
>whatever level of damage was desired, I don't see why it isn't fair to
>consider that.

Let us understand this, it is "fair" to compare lethality of conventional
and nuclear attacks from WWII by assuming the nuclear attacks are
multiple, modern attacks. It looks like the biggest conventional raid
in WWII was around 1/3 the size of the smallest nuclear weapon used
in terms of explosive power. So now we compare delivering what,
10 to 100 times more explosive power and announce hey the bigger
strike is more lethal.

Congratulations.

Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks
from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How
about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call
that "fair".

>I also think it would also be fair to count any intensity/numbers of
>conventional bombs that are within the limits of practicality for
>delivering the attack.


The limit on conventional delivery of explosives is aircraft over
target, the Lancaster delivered around 10,000 pounds of
bombs, put a modern bomber on the job and the number goes
up by a factor of 4 or so. Or simply switch to a combination
of conventional bombing and missile strikes to increase the
explosive delivery rate.

Just as the WWII limitations on nuclear strikes have gone
away, keep the bomb small enough for the aircraft to survive,
the limitations on delivering conventional bombs have been
significantly reduced.

>But I think with conventional bombs there will always be a large
>number who will be able to successfully flee the firestorm before it
>takes hold, no matter how intense the bombing.

Hamburg was so lethal because of the firestorm killing people
in otherwise safe shelters. Normally the best thing to do in an
air raid is get into a shelter. Large numbers of people running
away on the surface are going to be killed by blast, stampedes,
vehicle collisions and so on.

>> presumably also against unwarned populations.
>
>I think it is reasonable to account for that. I just don't think it
>accounts for *all* the difference. Also, given that a nuclear strike
>can hit with very little warning, there might not be much time for a
>population to prepare.

Now what are we comparing? WWII conventional air raids to
ICBMs? The IJN strike on Pearl Harbor used around 0.1 to 0.15
kt of bombs, killed 2,400 people. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima
was around 100 times more powerful, it should have killed 240,000
people at this level of lethality. Take away the people killed on the
Arizona and you still end up with the Hiroshima bomb needing to
kill around 120,000 for equivalent lethality.

Try to understand the results of air raids in WWII varied dramatically,
using 2 attacks to generalise the effects is an exercise in selective
quotation, not facts.

>The two things that strike me as being unique about nukes is that they
>can take out an large area rapidly, giving no time to flee once the
>attack starts, and the prompt radiation kills people in the areas of
>heavier damage who might otherwise survive the blast.

Again this assumes people are unprotected and ignores the fact
fleeing during an attack is likely to raise the number of dead. The
protection from blast gives good protection from radiation.

A machine gun can kill thousands of people per hour if they have
no protection.

>> >> It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
>> >> use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
>> >> the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
>> >> measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
>> >> therefore invalid.
>> >> The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
>> >> circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
>> >> toll like for the 2 km circle?
>> >As far as I know, there was no concentration of deaths in the Tokyo
>> >raid that would change the ratio if we focused on a smaller area.
>>
>> Actually there were concentrations of deaths, the canals and rivers
>> became choked with bodies as people tried to escape the heat,
>> the incoming tide caused drownings.
>
>But that is due to the geography of the target, not the nature of the
>bomb. And the people only ended up in that concentration because they
>ran there once the bombing started.

They ended up in the canals because the fires cut off retreat. The
districts that were cut off by fire had the higher death rates.


>> It all came down to whether the fires cut off people's retreat, if they
>> did not more people survived. There was not an even x deaths per
>> square mile in the "affected area", as a simple exercise in logic
>> the people at the fringes had a better chance of escaping.
>
>I think it would be fair to trim off the fringe areas and count the
>casualty rate in the core area.

Now we have "core area" to go with "area affected". Understand
there are plenty of raids in WWII that killed more people than the
atomic strikes per ton of explosive dropped. Even in terms of
absolute numbers killed Hiroshima comes in at 1 or 2 with Tokyo,
Nagasaki at 4 behind Hamburg at 3, Dresden at 5.

>> >Are there *any* instances of conventional weapons ever killing more
>> >than 8% (either of the "area affected" or the "area leveled")?
>>
>> Yes night of 23/24 February 1945 RAF Bomber Command versus
>> Pforzheim. The city, pre war population of 80,000, had been the
>> target of Mosquito harassment raids by night plus some day strikes
>> in the order of 100 to 300 tons of bombs before the big raid. On
>> 23/34 February 1945 some 1,740 tons of bombs caused a firestorm,
>> around 17,000 to 18,000 people killed on this night. This raid was
>> responsible for most of the damage to the city during hostilities.
>> Some 83% of the built up area destroyed for the war. In terms
>> of deaths per bomb it works out to a maximum of 1 death per 190
>> pounds of bombs, around 2/3 the lethality of the Hamburg firestorm.
>>
>> Assuming no growth in population the Pforzheim raid's lethality works
>> out at 21 to 23% of the total population, but around 20% of the city
>> survived, so 5/4 times 21 to 22 is 26 to 28%.
>
>Thanks. I didn't know their proportion got so high.

I presume though this has no effect on the claims about the relative
lethalities of nuclear and conventional attacks.

>> Simply given the reality there are only two atomic strikes to go on
>> and their lethality per "ton" of bomb varied so much and they were
>> against unwarned populations, and the variability seen in WWII
>> conventional bombing means claims about how much more lethal
>> atomic weapons can be do not have solid evidence to back them.
>> Hopefully it stays this way. As I said before I would expect a higher
>> lethality for nuclear weapons thanks to the instantaneous nature of
>> much of the damage and the much higher "explosive" yield, how
>> much higher is another question.
>
>I don't see what lethality per ton has to do with it.

It has everything to do with it if you want to compare conventional
and nuclear attack lethalities, otherwise why not simply compare
the lethality of say 2 Zeppelins in WWI and 100 Lancasters in WWII.
No guess as to which one kills more people.

>No matter how much conventional explosive is dropped on a city, a lot
>of people are still going to be able to flee the raid once it starts.
>This is something that nukes can overcome.

Sigh, to minimise casualties move people before or after the raid,
not during it, keep shelters away from flammable areas, keep the
people in the shelters during the raid. Movement during a raid is
obscured by smoke and dust and exposes people to shrapnel,
blast, stampedes and rapidly changing conditions, the "bridge" to
safety being hit for example, the confusion as landmarks are
destroyed or obscured.

In WWII the lethality of conventional attacks varied widely, starting
large fires was the usual way of killing large numbers of people,
incendiary bombs were the best way to start fires. The WWII
nuclear attacks were at least 3 times more powerful in explosive
terms than the biggest conventional raid, but the biggest conventional
raid was not the most lethal, in either absolute terms or deaths per ton
of bombs used.

So far instead of supplying facts you are supplying opinions and
showing a great lack of knowledge about the results of conventional
air raids. Then you bias the definitions to make the nuclear attacks
look more dangerous.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[Eunometic]

"zxcv" > wrote in message >...
> Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were about 10 kilotons and a B-17 had
> a normal bomb load of about 3 tons and I have heard of a formation of 1300
> B-17's on a bomb run that would equal around 4 kilotons (3 x 1300 = 3900)
> would the devastation be the same as a small A-bomb? or is there some
> lessening effect because of the spread of much smaller bombs?

The residual radiation is a great deal less. So is the psychological
effect.

Most Americans would be better of if the Germans had of developed
nuclear exposives first and demonstrated them on either empty US
landscape). It would have saced 500,000 lives in Vietnam and quite a
few mutilations of Americans in Iraq (I note the oxymoron predictions
of a dessert quaqmire are looking realistic) while the japanese would
have kept the Red Chinese in check in Korea in the 1050s.

[Greg Hennessy]

On 1 Apr 2004 06:21:13 -0800, (Eunometic) wrote:


>Most Americans would be better of if the Germans had of developed
>nuclear exposives first and demonstrated them on either empty US
>landscape).

KER-PLONK, begone idiotic national socialist gob****e.


greg

--
Cast in the name of God. Ye not guilty.

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>
> I suggest you go look up the various damage levels involved in the
> different attacks instead of telling us you are "facts" when you are
> supplying "thoughts". Someone decided to use 2km as the radius
> to measure the lethality for the nuclear strikes but a much larger
> area for the conventional strikes, skewing the results.


OK, here is my version, based on damage levels:

Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.

I expect that this will result in 99.9999% casualties amongst any part
of the populace within the 100 PSI zone that is not inside an
inconspicuous 100 PSI blast shelter.

Had WWII continued, our weapons output in early 1946 should have been
able to produce enough A-bombs every three months to achieve that
level of destruction over an area of 3.5 square miles.


I expect that no conventional weapons attack, from any era you choose,
could achieve that level of casualties.




> >> Fair also seems to be assuming multiple larger atomic attacks,
> >
> >Since a modern nuclear attack would use enough nukes to achieve
> >whatever level of damage was desired, I don't see why it isn't fair to
> >consider that.
>
> Let us understand this, it is "fair" to compare lethality of conventional
> and nuclear attacks from WWII by assuming the nuclear attacks are
> multiple, modern attacks. It looks like the biggest conventional raid
> in WWII was around 1/3 the size of the smallest nuclear weapon used
> in terms of explosive power. So now we compare delivering what,
> 10 to 100 times more explosive power and announce hey the bigger
> strike is more lethal.
>
> Congratulations.

Since nuclear weapons have to potential to provide much more explosive
power than can be achieved by conventional weapons, and thus kill far
more people than can be achieved by conventional weapons, I think it
is fair to note this when comparing nukes to conventional weapons.

You seem to be simultaneously acknowledging this fact and taking issue
with me for also stating it.




> Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks
> from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How
> about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call
> that "fair".

I acknowledge that bioweapons are equal to nukes in killing people.
They are considered WMDs for very good reason.

It would also be possible to combine bioweapons with conventional
weapons, and get the casualty levels and property destruction that a
nuke would produce.




> >> presumably also against unwarned populations.
> >
> >I think it is reasonable to account for that. I just don't think it
> >accounts for *all* the difference. Also, given that a nuclear strike
> >can hit with very little warning, there might not be much time for a
> >population to prepare.
>
> Now what are we comparing? WWII conventional air raids to
> ICBMs?

I think nukes have more potential to spring a sudden attack on a
population than conventional weapons do, at any level of technology.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>>
>> I suggest you go look up the various damage levels involved in the
>> different attacks instead of telling us you are "facts" when you are
>> supplying "thoughts". Someone decided to use 2km as the radius
>> to measure the lethality for the nuclear strikes but a much larger
>> area for the conventional strikes, skewing the results.
>
>OK, here is my version,

No this is not a version, this is a change of subject, from the fact
the definitions were changed when comparing the lethality of
WWII nuclear and conventional attacks.

>based on damage levels:
>
>Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
>resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
>Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
>reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.

I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume
you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes,
the aiming points were missed. I presume you have noticed the
average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
before it detonates.

Direct hits presumably mean ground bursts?

Why not parachute commandos in with machine guns and line
up the population and just shoot them? It seems as realistic.

Note deliberately targeting air raid shelters is more than any
air force did in WWII, also such structures would best be
attacked by armour piercing bombs.

>I expect that this will result in 99.9999% casualties amongst any part
>of the populace within the 100 PSI zone that is not inside an
>inconspicuous 100 PSI blast shelter.

It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons
incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit. You can explain how
come 7% of the people caught within 1,000 feet survived the
real attacks despite no warning but you have decided to announce
only 1 survivor in a million for your hypothetical attack?

>Had WWII continued, our weapons output in early 1946 should have been
>able to produce enough A-bombs every three months to achieve that
>level of destruction over an area of 3.5 square miles.

The Tokyo fire storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly
25% of all buildings in the city.

Right so we have nuclear attacks delivering 60 to 100,000 kt being
compared to conventional attacks delivering around 5% the explosive
yield. Furthermore the aircrew delivering the nuclear attacks have
superb intelligence and well above average accuracy, no weather
problems, interceptions, mechanical failures and so on.

The bomb tonnage delivered by the 20th Air Force looks like this,
month, tonnage

Jun-44 547
Jul-44 209
Aug-44 252
Sep-44 521
Oct-44 1,669
Nov-44 2,205
Dec-44 3,661
Jan-45 3,410
Feb-45 4,020
Mar-45 15,283
Apr-45 17,492
May-45 24,285
Jun-45 32,542
Jul-45 43,091
Aug-45 21,873

Now add the arrival of the previously European based bomber units
to the 1946 attacks if we are going to talk 1946, including RAF units.
After all there was still 75% of Tokyo to go.

>I expect that no conventional weapons attack, from any era you choose,
>could achieve that level of casualties.

This is hardly surprising, since the nuclear attacks are simply
allowed to be so good and so much bigger than the attacks
they are being compared to. The result was in before the
experiment was run.

>> >> Fair also seems to be assuming multiple larger atomic attacks,
>> >
>> >Since a modern nuclear attack would use enough nukes to achieve
>> >whatever level of damage was desired, I don't see why it isn't fair to
>> >consider that.
>>
>> Let us understand this, it is "fair" to compare lethality of conventional
>> and nuclear attacks from WWII by assuming the nuclear attacks are
>> multiple, modern attacks. It looks like the biggest conventional raid
>> in WWII was around 1/3 the size of the smallest nuclear weapon used
>> in terms of explosive power. So now we compare delivering what,
>> 10 to 100 times more explosive power and announce hey the bigger
>> strike is more lethal.
>>
>> Congratulations.
>
>Since nuclear weapons have to potential to provide much more explosive
>power than can be achieved by conventional weapons, and thus kill far
>more people than can be achieved by conventional weapons, I think it
>is fair to note this when comparing nukes to conventional weapons.

Try again, fair is comparing lethality versus the effort expended,
tonnage of explosives used for example, not by changing the
definitions.

>You seem to be simultaneously acknowledging this fact and taking issue
>with me for also stating it.

Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks
from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How
about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call
that "fair".

>> Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks
>> from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How
>> about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call
>> that "fair".
>
>I acknowledge that bioweapons are equal to nukes in killing people.
>They are considered WMDs for very good reason.

I suggest rather than changing the subject you start to analyse why
you need to bias the results in favour of nuclear weapons.

>It would also be possible to combine bioweapons with conventional
>weapons, and get the casualty levels and property destruction that a
>nuke would produce.

It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of
lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks. It was also quite
possible to have minimal loss of life in a major conventional attack.
These are the results of thousands of WWII bombing raids. Trying
to selectively choose results and definitions to make the 2 nuclear
attacks look more lethal is foolish, after all in absolute terms
Nagasaki was around 1/2 the casualties, and in explosive terms
around 2/7 the casualties. Those figures alone should give pause
to the creation of wonder nuclear strikes.

deleted bits, to the next >

The limit on conventional delivery of explosives is aircraft over
target, the Lancaster delivered around 10,000 pounds of
bombs, put a modern bomber on the job and the number goes
up by a factor of 4 or so. Or simply switch to a combination
of conventional bombing and missile strikes to increase the
explosive delivery rate.

Just as the WWII limitations on nuclear strikes have gone
away, keep the bomb small enough for the aircraft to survive,
the limitations on delivering conventional bombs have been
significantly reduced.

Hamburg was so lethal because of the firestorm killing people
in otherwise safe shelters. Normally the best thing to do in an
air raid is get into a shelter. Large numbers of people running
away on the surface are going to be killed by blast, stampedes,
vehicle collisions and so on.

>> >> presumably also against unwarned populations.
>> >
>> >I think it is reasonable to account for that. I just don't think it
>> >accounts for *all* the difference. Also, given that a nuclear strike
>> >can hit with very little warning, there might not be much time for a
>> >population to prepare.
>>
>> Now what are we comparing? WWII conventional air raids to
>> ICBMs?

deleted text, to the next >

"The IJN strike on Pearl Harbor used around 0.1 to 0.15
kt of bombs, killed 2,400 people. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima
was around 100 times more powerful, it should have killed 240,000
people at this level of lethality. Take away the people killed on the
Arizona and you still end up with the Hiroshima bomb needing to
kill around 120,000 for equivalent lethality.

Try to understand the results of air raids in WWII varied dramatically,
using 2 attacks to generalise the effects is an exercise in selective
quotation, not facts."

>I think nukes have more potential to spring a sudden attack on a
>population than conventional weapons do, at any level of technology.

I would have thought the sudden attack ability comes down to the
delivery system, aircraft, ICBM, shipping container, truck, and the
warning system in place to detect the approaching delivery system.
There are clear examples from WWII of populations ignoring
warnings until it was too late because the bombers had previously
always attacked somewhere else.

The rest of the post is simply deleted text,

Again this assumes people are unprotected and ignores the fact
fleeing during an attack is likely to raise the number of dead. The
protection from blast gives good protection from radiation.

A machine gun can kill thousands of people per hour if they have
no protection.

Now we have "core area" to go with "area affected". Understand
there are plenty of raids in WWII that killed more people than the
atomic strikes per ton of explosive dropped. Even in terms of
absolute numbers killed Hiroshima comes in at 1 or 2 with Tokyo,
Nagasaki at 4 behind Hamburg at 3, Dresden at 5.

It has everything to do with it if you want to compare conventional
and nuclear attack lethalities, otherwise why not simply compare
the lethality of say 2 Zeppelins in WWI and 100 Lancasters in WWII.
No guess as to which one kills more people.

Sigh, to minimise casualties move people before or after the raid,
not during it, keep shelters away from flammable areas, keep the
people in the shelters during the raid. Movement during a raid is
obscured by smoke and dust and exposes people to shrapnel,
blast, stampedes and rapidly changing conditions, the "bridge" to
safety being hit for example, the confusion as landmarks are
destroyed or obscured.

In WWII the lethality of conventional attacks varied widely, starting
large fires was the usual way of killing large numbers of people,
incendiary bombs were the best way to start fires. The WWII
nuclear attacks were at least 3 times more powerful in explosive
terms than the biggest conventional raid, but the biggest conventional
raid was not the most lethal, in either absolute terms or deaths per ton
of bombs used.

So far instead of supplying facts you are supplying opinions and
showing a great lack of knowledge about the results of conventional
air raids. Then you bias the definitions to make the nuclear attacks
look more dangerous.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[Greg Hennessy]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004 15:43:00 +1000, "Geoffrey Sinclair"
> wrote:


>Now add the arrival of the previously European based bomber units
>to the 1946 attacks if we are going to talk 1946, including RAF units.


Quite, with AIR plans for 1000 odd Avro Lincolns coming to the party.

ISTR also talk of making them inflight refuelable.



greg

--
Cast in the name of God. Ye not guilty.

[Eunometic]

Greg Hennessy > wrote in message >...
> On 1 Apr 2004 06:21:13 -0800, (Eunometic) wrote:
>
>
> >Most Americans would be better of if the Germans had of developed
> >nuclear exposives first and demonstrated them on empty US landscape.
>
> KER-PLONK, begone idiotic national socialist gob****e.
>
>
> greg


I'm always pleased when irritants like you self censore themselves.

I stand by my assertion. The US people lost by firstly getting
involved in the war and finally by ensuring the defeat of Germany and
thereby the spread of communism. Apart from the vast resources she
devoted to containing communism the USA developed an ideology to match
the internationalism of communism that is leading to the disolution
of the descendents of the people that fought.

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
> This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server
>
>
> >Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
> >resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
> >Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
> >reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.
>
> I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume
> you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes,
> the aiming points were missed.

Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb
close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed.




> I presume you have noticed the
> average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
> I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
> bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
> before it detonates.

The bombers could release together, or they could fly in one bomb
every few minutes. It would work either way.




> Direct hits presumably mean ground bursts?

Yes. All the bombs in my example were ground bursts.




> Why not parachute commandos in with machine guns and line
> up the population and just shoot them? It seems as realistic.

Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear
technology.




> Note deliberately targeting air raid shelters is more than any
> air force did in WWII, also such structures would best be
> attacked by armour piercing bombs.

A nearby groundburst from an A-bomb would be quite effective.




> >I expect that this will result in 99.9999% casualties amongst any part
> >of the populace within the 100 PSI zone that is not inside an
> >inconspicuous 100 PSI blast shelter.
>
> It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons
> incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit.

My assumptions are that nuclear weapons are incredibly effective.
They are perfectly capable of producing a 100 PSI shock.




> You can explain how
> come 7% of the people caught within 1,000 feet survived the
> real attacks despite no warning but you have decided to announce
> only 1 survivor in a million for your hypothetical attack?

None of the survivors experienced a 100+ PSI overpressure.

Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does
experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be
directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense
radiation.

I included the one-in-a-million survivor just to be conservative in my
estimate.




> >Had WWII continued, our weapons output in early 1946 should have been
> >able to produce enough A-bombs every three months to achieve that
> >level of destruction over an area of 3.5 square miles.
>
> The Tokyo fire storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly
> 25% of all buildings in the city.
>
> Right so we have nuclear attacks delivering 60 to 100,000 kt being
> compared to conventional attacks delivering around 5% the explosive
> yield.

My example used about 1,000kt total explosive power.




> Furthermore the aircrew delivering the nuclear attacks have
> superb intelligence and well above average accuracy, no weather
> problems, interceptions, mechanical failures and so on.
>
> The bomb tonnage delivered by the 20th Air Force looks like this,
> month, tonnage
>
> Jun-44 547
> Jul-44 209
> Aug-44 252
> Sep-44 521
> Oct-44 1,669
> Nov-44 2,205
> Dec-44 3,661
> Jan-45 3,410
> Feb-45 4,020
> Mar-45 15,283
> Apr-45 17,492
> May-45 24,285
> Jun-45 32,542
> Jul-45 43,091
> Aug-45 21,873
>
> Now add the arrival of the previously European based bomber units
> to the 1946 attacks if we are going to talk 1946, including RAF units.
> After all there was still 75% of Tokyo to go.

I saw nothing in any three month period that would equal 1,000kt worth
of explosive.




> >I expect that no conventional weapons attack, from any era you choose,
> >could achieve that level of casualties.
>
> This is hardly surprising, since the nuclear attacks are simply
> allowed to be so good and so much bigger than the attacks
> they are being compared to. The result was in before the
> experiment was run.

Nuclear weapons are allowed to be so much bigger because they ARE so
much bigger.

Had the war continued into 1946, our bomb output would have been
332.42 kilotons per month (although no single bomb would be over
50kt).




> >Since nuclear weapons have to potential to provide much more explosive
> >power than can be achieved by conventional weapons, and thus kill far
> >more people than can be achieved by conventional weapons, I think it
> >is fair to note this when comparing nukes to conventional weapons.
>
> Try again, fair is comparing lethality versus the effort expended,
> tonnage of explosives used for example, not by changing the
> definitions.

It is fair to note that by providing much more tonnage of explosive
than could ever be provided by conventional weapons, nuclear weapons
can kill far more people.




> >> Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks
> >> from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How
> >> about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call
> >> that "fair".
> >
> >I acknowledge that bioweapons are equal to nukes in killing people.
> >They are considered WMDs for very good reason.
>
> I suggest rather than changing the subject you start to analyse why
> you need to bias the results in favour of nuclear weapons.

I have no need to bias anything. Nuclear weapons are far more deadly
than conventional weapons on their own, with no need of bias.




> It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of
> lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks.

How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50%
of the people in a 2km radius?

[Howard Berkowitz]

In article >,
(hiroshima facts) wrote:

> "Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message
> >...
> > This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news
> > server
> >
> >
> > >Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
> > >resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
> > >Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
> > >reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.
>
>
>
>
> > I presume you have noticed the
> > average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
> > I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
> > bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
> > before it detonates.
>
> The bombers could release together, or they could fly in one bomb
> every few minutes. It would work either way.
>
>

Before assuming that you can salvo nuclear weapons, or drop them in
formation, read up a bit on the "dense pack" model of ICBM basing. Also
consider the winds after the first burst.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>> This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server


deleted text,

"No this is not a version, this is a change of subject, from the fact
the definitions were changed when comparing the lethality of
WWII nuclear and conventional attacks."

>> >Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
>> >resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
>> >Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
>> >reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.
>>
>> I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume
>> you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes,
>> the aiming points were missed.
>
>Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb
>close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed.


Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably
the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds
will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used
in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios.

As an aside when the 8th Air Force measured accuracy in the final
4 months of 1944 it found in good visibility 64.3% of bombs landed
within 1/2 a mile, 91.5% within 3 miles. So a ground burst 1/2 a
mile away (1 in 3 bombs) is considered good enough to destroy
underground shelters, another myth.

The above accuracies were from around 20 to 25,000 feet. Moving
from a bombing altitude of 20,000 feet to 30,000 feet roughly doubled
the average error. The rate of increase in error went up as altitude
went up. The bombing errors at 20,000 feet were around 4/3 those at
10,000 feet on average.

I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give
them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy

>> I presume you have noticed the
>> average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
>> I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
>> bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
>> before it detonates.
>
>The bombers could release together,

Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation
bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the
wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the
middle to escape the blasts.

>or they could fly in one bomb
>every few minutes. It would work either way.

Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like
this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual
bombers? Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes
played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next
mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again?

>> Direct hits presumably mean ground bursts?
>
>Yes. All the bombs in my example were ground bursts.


Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding
effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy
wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the
bomb failing to explode.

>> Why not parachute commandos in with machine guns and line
>> up the population and just shoot them? It seems as realistic.
>
>Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear
>technology.


Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities
than historical, just ignore WWII experience, go with the 1930's the
bomber will always get through, and destroy civilisation.

>> Note deliberately targeting air raid shelters is more than any
>> air force did in WWII, also such structures would best be
>> attacked by armour piercing bombs.
>
>A nearby groundburst from an A-bomb would be quite effective.

So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your
opinion to destroy an underground shelter?

>> >I expect that this will result in 99.9999% casualties amongst any part
>> >of the populace within the 100 PSI zone that is not inside an
>> >inconspicuous 100 PSI blast shelter.
>>
>> It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons
>> incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit.
>
>My assumptions are that nuclear weapons are incredibly effective.
>They are perfectly capable of producing a 100 PSI shock.


It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons
incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit.

>> You can explain how
>> come 7% of the people caught within 1,000 feet survived the
>> real attacks despite no warning but you have decided to announce
>> only 1 survivor in a million for your hypothetical attack?
>
>None of the survivors experienced a 100+ PSI overpressure.

So we are talking about the 7% of people within 1,000 feet
who survived so presumably we are talking about the nuclear
explosions being within less than 1,000 feet of each other.

>Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does
>experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be
>directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense
>radiation.

Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an
area of no cover etc.

>I included the one-in-a-million survivor just to be conservative in my
>estimate.


This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear
cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught
well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is
the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure?

>> >Had WWII continued, our weapons output in early 1946 should have been
>> >able to produce enough A-bombs every three months to achieve that
>> >level of destruction over an area of 3.5 square miles.
>>
>> The Tokyo fire storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly
>> 25% of all buildings in the city.
>>
>> Right so we have nuclear attacks delivering 60 to 100,000 kt being
>> compared to conventional attacks delivering around 5% the explosive
>> yield.

Oops my mistake above should be tons, not kilotons.

>My example used about 1,000kt total explosive power.

This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so
we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack.

This will be launched in crystal clear weather, with no interceptions,
no interference from fires already started, with accurate intelligence
as to air raid shelters, with precision unheard of in WWII and is
still unheard of for free falling bombs from 30,000+ feet, against an
unwarned population, and so on.

Since we are now moving into mass produced weapons the problems
of fusing and weapons assembly need to be made clear. When the
allies inspected the unexploded bombs dropped on German oil
installations they found around 15% had not exploded, many due to
the tails falling off, but also fuses. A 2.5% failure rate would be 1
unexploded nuclear weapon per 40 weapon strike.

Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just
chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who
hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it.

>> Furthermore the aircrew delivering the nuclear attacks have
>> superb intelligence and well above average accuracy, no weather
>> problems, interceptions, mechanical failures and so on.
>>
>> The bomb tonnage delivered by the 20th Air Force looks like this,
>> month, tonnage
>>
>> Jun-44 547
>> Jul-44 209
>> Aug-44 252
>> Sep-44 521
>> Oct-44 1,669
>> Nov-44 2,205
>> Dec-44 3,661
>> Jan-45 3,410
>> Feb-45 4,020
>> Mar-45 15,283
>> Apr-45 17,492
>> May-45 24,285
>> Jun-45 32,542
>> Jul-45 43,091
>> Aug-45 21,873
>>
>> Now add the arrival of the previously European based bomber units
>> to the 1946 attacks if we are going to talk 1946, including RAF units.
>> After all there was still 75% of Tokyo to go.
>
>I saw nothing in any three month period that would equal 1,000kt worth
>of explosive.

Yet again we have someone giving their preferred outcome a
helping hand and trying to pretend the "competitor" will not also
improve.

Instead we have a 1 megaton atomic attack, 40 times the biggest
attack in WWII, with more precision than any WWII attack short of
those low level types, skip bombing ships or sending bombs through
the walls of Gestapo HQs.

It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around
150,000 tons of bombs dropped. The above figures for the 20th air
force were without any transferred units. How many Japanese cities
would be left by the time the nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike
would be ready?

>> >I expect that no conventional weapons attack, from any era you choose,
>> >could achieve that level of casualties.
>>
>> This is hardly surprising, since the nuclear attacks are simply
>> allowed to be so good and so much bigger than the attacks
>> they are being compared to. The result was in before the
>> experiment was run.
>
>Nuclear weapons are allowed to be so much bigger because they ARE so
>much bigger.

Ah yes, just ignore the way the definitions have been altered to make
them look even worse.

>Had the war continued into 1946, our bomb output would have been
>332.42 kilotons per month (although no single bomb would be over
>50kt).

The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months
supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it
could do so in 1946.

I like the two digits precision when calculating yields given the 10%
variation in estimates of the yields of the weapons used.

>> >Since nuclear weapons have to potential to provide much more explosive
>> >power than can be achieved by conventional weapons, and thus kill far
>> >more people than can be achieved by conventional weapons, I think it
>> >is fair to note this when comparing nukes to conventional weapons.
>>
>> Try again, fair is comparing lethality versus the effort expended,
>> tonnage of explosives used for example, not by changing the
>> definitions.
>
>It is fair to note that by providing much more tonnage of explosive
>than could ever be provided by conventional weapons, nuclear weapons
>can kill far more people.

Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better
accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing
lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons.

>> >> Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks
>> >> from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How
>> >> about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call
>> >> that "fair".
>> >
>> >I acknowledge that bioweapons are equal to nukes in killing people.
>> >They are considered WMDs for very good reason.
>>
>> I suggest rather than changing the subject you start to analyse why
>> you need to bias the results in favour of nuclear weapons.
>
>I have no need to bias anything. Nuclear weapons are far more deadly
>than conventional weapons on their own, with no need of bias.

This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack,
after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal
the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there
is no need to rig the results.

The RAF used 2.7kt to kill 40,000 people at Hamburg, call it 3kt, now
multiply by 333 to give the RAF a 1,000 kt strike. Other attacks could
drop 3kt bombs and kill only a few people. Rather than trying to
understand this we have the attempts to use 2 (nuclear) strikes and
extrapolate them using the sort of precision and weather the modern
USAF would be envious of and multiplying the explosive yields by a
factor of 40 or more.

After all the Nagasaki bomb was around 10 times the explosive yield
of the Hamburg raid and killed fewer people. Yet we have a strike at
40 times the Nagasaki yield going in and casualties going up about
linearly, but then it is assumed to be a perfect strike.

>> It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of
>> lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks.
>
>How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50%
>of the people in a 2km radius?

I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten
40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs?

Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go
to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can
drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within
so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way,
just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together,
all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation
bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those
well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no
interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc.

The rest of the post is simply deleted text,

It was also quite
possible to have minimal loss of life in a major conventional attack.
These are the results of thousands of WWII bombing raids. Trying
to selectively choose results and definitions to make the 2 nuclear
attacks look more lethal is foolish, after all in absolute terms
Nagasaki was around 1/2 the casualties, and in explosive terms
around 2/7 the casualties. Those figures alone should give pause
to the creation of wonder nuclear strikes.

The limit on conventional delivery of explosives is aircraft over
target, the Lancaster delivered around 10,000 pounds of
bombs, put a modern bomber on the job and the number goes
up by a factor of 4 or so. Or simply switch to a combination
of conventional bombing and missile strikes to increase the
explosive delivery rate.

Just as the WWII limitations on nuclear strikes have gone
away, keep the bomb small enough for the aircraft to survive,
the limitations on delivering conventional bombs have been
significantly reduced.

Hamburg was so lethal because of the firestorm killing people
in otherwise safe shelters. Normally the best thing to do in an
air raid is get into a shelter. Large numbers of people running
away on the surface are going to be killed by blast, stampedes,
vehicle collisions and so on.

The IJN strike on Pearl Harbor used around 0.1 to 0.15
kt of bombs, killed 2,400 people. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima
was around 100 times more powerful, it should have killed 240,000
people at this level of lethality. Take away the people killed on the
Arizona and you still end up with the Hiroshima bomb needing to
kill around 120,000 for equivalent lethality.

Try to understand the results of air raids in WWII varied dramatically,
using 2 attacks to generalise the effects is an exercise in selective
quotation, not facts.

I would have thought the sudden attack ability comes down to the
delivery system, aircraft, ICBM, shipping container, truck, and the
warning system in place to detect the approaching delivery system.
There are clear examples from WWII of populations ignoring
warnings until it was too late because the bombers had previously
always attacked somewhere else.

Again this assumes people are unprotected and ignores the fact
fleeing during an attack is likely to raise the number of dead. The
protection from blast gives good protection from radiation.

A machine gun can kill thousands of people per hour if they have
no protection.

Now we have "core area" to go with "area affected". Understand
there are plenty of raids in WWII that killed more people than the
atomic strikes per ton of explosive dropped. Even in terms of
absolute numbers killed Hiroshima comes in at 1 or 2 with Tokyo,
Nagasaki at 4 behind Hamburg at 3, Dresden at 5.

It has everything to do with it if you want to compare conventional
and nuclear attack lethalities, otherwise why not simply compare
the lethality of say 2 Zeppelins in WWI and 100 Lancasters in WWII.
No guess as to which one kills more people.

Sigh, to minimise casualties move people before or after the raid,
not during it, keep shelters away from flammable areas, keep the
people in the shelters during the raid. Movement during a raid is
obscured by smoke and dust and exposes people to shrapnel,
blast, stampedes and rapidly changing conditions, the "bridge" to
safety being hit for example, the confusion as landmarks are
destroyed or obscured.

In WWII the lethality of conventional attacks varied widely, starting
large fires was the usual way of killing large numbers of people,
incendiary bombs were the best way to start fires. The WWII
nuclear attacks were at least 3 times more powerful in explosive
terms than the biggest conventional raid, but the biggest conventional
raid was not the most lethal, in either absolute terms or deaths per ton
of bombs used.

So far instead of supplying facts you are supplying opinions and
showing a great lack of knowledge about the results of conventional
air raids. Then you bias the definitions to make the nuclear attacks
look more dangerous.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[hiroshima facts]

"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...
>
> >> >Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
> >> >resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
> >> >Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
> >> >reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.
> >>
> >> I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume
> >> you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes,
> >> the aiming points were missed.
> >
> >Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb
> >close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed.
>
>
> Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably
> the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds
> will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used
> in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios.

They could always scrub the raid if the weather didn't cooperate.




> I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give
> them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy

No. I was using WWII technology, which didn't have such.




> >> I presume you have noticed the
> >> average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
> >> I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
> >> bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
> >> before it detonates.
> >
> >The bombers could release together,
>
> Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation
> bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the
> wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the
> middle to escape the blasts.

The area being blasted doesn't seem so great that an aircraft in the
middle couldn't escape.




> Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like
> this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual
> bombers?

They could have decoy aircraft fly in each time a bomb was dropped.




> Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes
> played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next
> mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again?

The mushroom clouds themselves can become landmarks.




> Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding
> effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy
> wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the
> bomb failing to explode.

I am not sure that topography would be that significant that close to
a nuclear explosion.

I am skeptical that the bomb would fail to explode. I'd think a
reliable contact fuse could be devised using WWII technology. If not,
an extremely close range proximity fuse would work.




> >Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear
> >technology.
>
>
> Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities
> than historical,

I see no basis for saying that WWII technology could not achieve a
ground burst.




> So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your
> opinion to destroy an underground shelter?

Depends on the shelter's blast resistance. A 49kt bomb would have a
blast overpressure of 200 PSI at 1,000 feet.




> >Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does
> >experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be
> >directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense
> >radiation.
>
> Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an
> area of no cover etc.

The 100+ PSI overpressure, followed by 1,777+ MPH winds, would do a
good job of removing any cover that might protect against the 200,000+
rads of penetrating radiation that people would experience, unless
they were in a shelter designed to resist it.




> This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear
> cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught
> well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is
> the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure?

For a 37kt groundburst, 0.228416 mile.




> This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so
> we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack.

By 1946, we would have been able to produce 37kt bombs at a rate of
7.76 per month. And we would have been able to produce some
additional 18kt bombs at a rate of 2.516667 per month. The material
for the 18kt bombs could have been used instead to produce 49kt bombs,
but at a much lower rate.

I used a three-month production of 18kt and 37kt bombs. However, I
was conservative in my initial figures, and the specified level of
damage could be achieved by the 37kt bombs alone. This would give the
US the opportunity to forgo the 18kt bombs and make some 49kt ones for
use against bunkers.




> Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just
> chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who
> hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it.

I am cooking nothing. These ARE the levels of damage that nukes can
provide.




> It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around
> 150,000 tons of bombs dropped.

Which was less than half of the explosive output that our A-bomb
program would have been able to produce once it got going.




> How many Japanese cities would be left by the time the
> nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike would be ready?

However many cities we chose to spare from conventional bombing.




> The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months
> supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it
> could do so in 1946.

It would have reached that level of production. And yes, I used three
months of production.




> Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better
> accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing
> lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons.

Nothing is rigged. 100 PSI overpressure, 1777 MPH winds, 200000 rads
of radiation, and (for many people in the targeted area) exposure to
fireball plasma, all tend to produce very high fatality rates.




> This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack,
> after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal
> the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there
> is no need to rig the results.

There is no rigging of results. Just an accurate statement of the
destructive force produced by nuclear weapons.




> >> It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of
> >> lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks.
> >
> >How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50%
> >of the people in a 2km radius?
>
> I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten
> 40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs?
>
> Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go
> to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can
> drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within
> so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way,
> just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together,
> all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation
> bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those
> well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no
> interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc.

So how many conventional bombs do you think it would take to achieve
that?

[hiroshima facts]

Howard Berkowitz > wrote in message >...
>
> Before assuming that you can salvo nuclear weapons, or drop them in
> formation, read up a bit on the "dense pack" model of ICBM basing. Also
> consider the winds after the first burst.


I don't think they would be dropped quite *that* close to each other
in my example. And if we waited a few minutes between each drop, all
the really intense neutron activity would have diminished.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

hiroshima facts wrote in message >...
>"Geoffrey Sinclair" > wrote in message >...

deleted text,

"No this is not a version, this is a change of subject, from the fact
the definitions were changed when comparing the lethality of
WWII nuclear and conventional attacks."

>> >> >Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
>> >> >resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
>> >> >Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
>> >> >reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.
>> >>
>> >> I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume
>> >> you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes,
>> >> the aiming points were missed.
>> >
>> >Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb
>> >close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed.
>>
>> Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably
>> the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds
>> will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used
>> in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios.
>
>They could always scrub the raid if the weather didn't cooperate.

This is becoming absolutely hysterical, the USAAF found that
bombing from 20 to 25,000 feet around 1 day in 5 was suitable
for clear visual bombing, furthermore even with the better weather
forecasts available over Europe only 2/3 of the visual bombing
weather forecasts proved accurate. Look up the problems the
20th Air Force had with Japanese weather.

Where is the USAAF direct line to the weather gods?

Deleted text,

As an aside when the 8th Air Force measured accuracy in the final
4 months of 1944 it found in good visibility 64.3% of bombs landed
within 1/2 a mile, 91.5% within 3 miles. So a ground burst 1/2 a
mile away (1 in 3 bombs) is considered good enough to destroy
underground shelters, another myth.

The above accuracies were from around 20 to 25,000 feet. Moving
from a bombing altitude of 20,000 feet to 30,000 feet roughly doubled
the average error. The rate of increase in error went up as altitude
went up. The bombing errors at 20,000 feet were around 4/3 those at
10,000 feet on average.

>> I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give
>> them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy
>
>No. I was using WWII technology, which didn't have such.

So the nuclear weapons will achieve great accuracy despite being
dropped from 30,000+ feet and without doing much to make them
aerodynamic.

>> >> I presume you have noticed the
>> >> average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
>> >> I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
>> >> bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
>> >> before it detonates.
>> >
>> >The bombers could release together,
>>
>> Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation
>> bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the
>> wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the
>> middle to escape the blasts.
>
>The area being blasted doesn't seem so great that an aircraft in the
>middle couldn't escape.

lets see now 40 nuclear weapons set to go off around 2,000 feet
from each other. 1 in the middle, next circle at 2,000 feet so say 14
weapons there, then at 4,000 feet so say 28 weapons there.

Bomber moving at say 360 mph, or 1 mile every 10 seconds, 528
feet per second. Now it comes down to time for the bomb to drop
and its explosive yield.

>> Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like
>> this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual
>> bombers?
>
>They could have decoy aircraft fly in each time a bomb was dropped.


The ignorance you are displaying in order to try and make up
these absurd scenarios is quite amazing. A single decoy?
How about a formation with escorts with all the friendly fire
risks that means.

>> Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes
>> played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next
>> mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again?
>
>The mushroom clouds themselves can become landmarks.


The hysterical idea the mushroom clouds are landmarks, simply
assume they are all in the correct spot I presume and they do
not count for dust and smoke when obscuring the target.

>> Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding
>> effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy
>> wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the
>> bomb failing to explode.
>
>I am not sure that topography would be that significant that close to
>a nuclear explosion.

I like this effort to assume yet again that topography can be
ignored given the results at Nagasaki.

>I am skeptical that the bomb would fail to explode. I'd think a
>reliable contact fuse could be devised using WWII technology. If not,
>an extremely close range proximity fuse would work.

One day you may notice the large number of UXBs in all wars,
mass produced fuses fail, armourers fail to load them correctly,
the bomb hits at an incorrect angle, the valve electronics in
proximity fuses shatter and so on. This is reality.

>> >Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear
>> >technology.
>>
>> Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities
>> than historical,

Deleted text,

just ignore WWII experience, go with the 1930's the
bomber will always get through, and destroy civilisation.

>I see no basis for saying that WWII technology could not achieve a
>ground burst.


Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities
than historical, just ignore WWII experience, go with the 1930's the
bomber will always get through, and destroy civilisation.

It is quite simple, if the bombers had the sort of abilities postulated
for these theoretical nuclear strikes, and the targets that defenceless,
then WWII would have been over years before any nuclear weapons
would have been built. Indeed there would be little call for them, given
the results of conventional bombing.

>> So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your
>> opinion to destroy an underground shelter?
>
>Depends on the shelter's blast resistance. A 49kt bomb would have a
>blast overpressure of 200 PSI at 1,000 feet.


So we have the bombers dropping bombs around 1,000 to 1,500 feet
apart, and a miss in the order of 1,000 feet becomes significant, the
8th air force figures, for 3 boxes of bombers from 29,000 feet was
an average error of 1,605 feet expected.

>> >Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does
>> >experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be
>> >directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense
>> >radiation.
>>
>> Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an
>> area of no cover etc.
>
>The 100+ PSI overpressure, followed by 1,777+ MPH winds, would do a
>good job of removing any cover that might protect against the 200,000+
>rads of penetrating radiation that people would experience, unless
>they were in a shelter designed to resist it.

Yes folks, the population are all on the surface walking around, and the
shelters with all that concrete are transparent to the radiation produced.

By the way 1,777 MPH? how about 1,800 MPH at a given distance,
after all could it not be a 1,776 MPH wild, or 1,778 MPH?

>> This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear
>> cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught
>> well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is
>> the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure?
>
>For a 37kt groundburst, 0.228416 mile.

My we have a spreadsheet jockey present it seems, this translates to
1,206 feet 0.4368 inches. Presumably at standard atmospheric
pressure and temperature? So at 1,606 feet 0.4369 inches the people
start to survive in much greater numbers? How about given the realities
of physics and uncertainties weapons yields in we say around 1,200 feet?

>> This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so
>> we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack.

deleted text,

"This will be launched in crystal clear weather, with no interceptions,
no interference from fires already started, with accurate intelligence
as to air raid shelters, with precision unheard of in WWII and is
still unheard of for free falling bombs from 30,000+ feet, against an
unwarned population, and so on.

Since we are now moving into mass produced weapons the problems
of fusing and weapons assembly need to be made clear. When the
allies inspected the unexploded bombs dropped on German oil
installations they found around 15% had not exploded, many due to
the tails falling off, but also fuses. A 2.5% failure rate would be 1
unexploded nuclear weapon per 40 weapon strike."

>By 1946, we would have been able to produce 37kt bombs at a rate of
>7.76 per month. And we would have been able to produce some
>additional 18kt bombs at a rate of 2.516667 per month. The material
>for the 18kt bombs could have been used instead to produce 49kt bombs,
>but at a much lower rate.

Yet again we have this wonder precision,

7.76 is 93.12 bombs in 12 months, what was the 0.12 bomb about?
2.516667 is 30.2 bombs in 12 months, what was the 0.2 bomb about?

Like any mass production line it takes time to ramp up production,
if you are serious then in around the end of year 2 or early year 3
you are producing around as much in a month as during all of year
1. Assuming a nice linear delivery schedule is against the laws of
mobilisation. Also do not forget things like accidents or fires causing
delays in production.

>I used a three-month production of 18kt and 37kt bombs. However, I
>was conservative in my initial figures, and the specified level of
>damage could be achieved by the 37kt bombs alone. This would give the
>US the opportunity to forgo the 18kt bombs and make some 49kt ones for
>use against bunkers.

You are not being conservative you are assuming so many "perfects"
it is showing appalling ignorance of bombing raids, you are busily
playing with mathematical models to absurd levels of precision.

>> Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just
>> chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who
>> hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it.
>
>I am cooking nothing. These ARE the levels of damage that nukes can
>provide.


Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just
chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who
hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it.

deleted text,

"Yet again we have someone giving their preferred outcome a
helping hand and trying to pretend the "competitor" will not also
improve.

Instead we have a 1 megaton atomic attack, 40 times the biggest
attack in WWII, with more precision than any WWII attack short of
those low level types, skip bombing ships or sending bombs through
the walls of Gestapo HQs."

>> It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around
>> 150,000 tons of bombs dropped.

deleted text,

The above figures for the 20th air force were without any transferred units.

>Which was less than half of the explosive output that our A-bomb
>program would have been able to produce once it got going.


Congratulations on noticing nuclear weapons have greater yields,
just pretend to ignore the assumptions of perfect precision delivery
of the weapons on a perfect, unwarned target as the basis for
figuring out lethality.

>> How many Japanese cities would be left by the time the
>> nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike would be ready?
>
>However many cities we chose to spare from conventional bombing.


So provide the list, the USAAF had real trouble finding such targets
by mid 1945.

>> The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months
>> supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it
>> could do so in 1946.
>
>It would have reached that level of production. And yes, I used three
>months of production.


So we have 1 strike per 3 months, in the mean time the conventional
bombers are delivering their standard, increasing, tonnage every month,
joined by the Navy aircraft and even battleships on coastal targets.

>> Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better
>> accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing
>> lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons.
>
>Nothing is rigged. 100 PSI overpressure, 1777 MPH winds, 200000 rads
>of radiation, and (for many people in the targeted area) exposure to
>fireball plasma, all tend to produce very high fatality rates.


Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better
accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing
lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons.

Remember the 2km radius for the nuclear attacks but a different
definition for the conventional attacks?

>> This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack,
>> after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal
>> the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there
>> is no need to rig the results.
>
>There is no rigging of results. Just an accurate statement of the
>destructive force produced by nuclear weapons.


This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack,
after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal
the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there
is no need to rig the results.

deleted text,

The RAF used 2.7kt to kill 40,000 people at Hamburg, call it 3kt, now
multiply by 333 to give the RAF a 1,000 kt strike. Other attacks could
drop 3kt bombs and kill only a few people. Rather than trying to
understand this we have the attempts to use 2 (nuclear) strikes and
extrapolate them using the sort of precision and weather the modern
USAF would be envious of and multiplying the explosive yields by a
factor of 40 or more.

After all the Nagasaki bomb was around 10 times the explosive yield
of the Hamburg raid and killed fewer people. Yet we have a strike at
40 times the Nagasaki yield going in and casualties going up about
linearly, but then it is assumed to be a perfect strike.

>> >> It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of
>> >> lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks.
>> >
>> >How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50%
>> >of the people in a 2km radius?
>>
>> I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten
>> 40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs?
>>
>> Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go
>> to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can
>> drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within
>> so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way,
>> just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together,
>> all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation
>> bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those
>> well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no
>> interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc.
>
>So how many conventional bombs do you think it would take to achieve
>that?

Against an unwarned population out in the open a few hundred loads
of fragmentation bombs, plus maybe a 100 precision guided AP
weapons on the well known shelters and a few hundred loads of
mixed HE and incendiary to burn the city, to ensure the injured have
little chance of escaping. Using the "bomber is perfect" school of
attack lethality calculation, no smoke problems, interceptions etc.

The rest of the post is simply deleted text,

It was also quite
possible to have minimal loss of life in a major conventional attack.
These are the results of thousands of WWII bombing raids. Trying
to selectively choose results and definitions to make the 2 nuclear
attacks look more lethal is foolish, after all in absolute terms
Nagasaki was around 1/2 the casualties, and in explosive terms
around 2/7 the casualties. Those figures alone should give pause
to the creation of wonder nuclear strikes.

The limit on conventional delivery of explosives is aircraft over
target, the Lancaster delivered around 10,000 pounds of
bombs, put a modern bomber on the job and the number goes
up by a factor of 4 or so. Or simply switch to a combination
of conventional bombing and missile strikes to increase the
explosive delivery rate.

Just as the WWII limitations on nuclear strikes have gone
away, keep the bomb small enough for the aircraft to survive,
the limitations on delivering conventional bombs have been
significantly reduced.

Hamburg was so lethal because of the firestorm killing people
in otherwise safe shelters. Normally the best thing to do in an
air raid is get into a shelter. Large numbers of people running
away on the surface are going to be killed by blast, stampedes,
vehicle collisions and so on.

The IJN strike on Pearl Harbor used around 0.1 to 0.15
kt of bombs, killed 2,400 people. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima
was around 100 times more powerful, it should have killed 240,000
people at this level of lethality. Take away the people killed on the
Arizona and you still end up with the Hiroshima bomb needing to
kill around 120,000 for equivalent lethality.

Try to understand the results of air raids in WWII varied dramatically,
using 2 attacks to generalise the effects is an exercise in selective
quotation, not facts.

I would have thought the sudden attack ability comes down to the
delivery system, aircraft, ICBM, shipping container, truck, and the
warning system in place to detect the approaching delivery system.
There are clear examples from WWII of populations ignoring
warnings until it was too late because the bombers had previously
always attacked somewhere else.

Again this assumes people are unprotected and ignores the fact
fleeing during an attack is likely to raise the number of dead. The
protection from blast gives good protection from radiation.

A machine gun can kill thousands of people per hour if they have
no protection.

Now we have "core area" to go with "area affected". Understand
there are plenty of raids in WWII that killed more people than the
atomic strikes per ton of explosive dropped. Even in terms of
absolute numbers killed Hiroshima comes in at 1 or 2 with Tokyo,
Nagasaki at 4 behind Hamburg at 3, Dresden at 5.

It has everything to do with it if you want to compare conventional
and nuclear attack lethalities, otherwise why not simply compare
the lethality of say 2 Zeppelins in WWI and 100 Lancasters in WWII.
No guess as to which one kills more people.

Sigh, to minimise casualties move people before or after the raid,
not during it, keep shelters away from flammable areas, keep the
people in the shelters during the raid. Movement during a raid is
obscured by smoke and dust and exposes people to shrapnel,
blast, stampedes and rapidly changing conditions, the "bridge" to
safety being hit for example, the confusion as landmarks are
destroyed or obscured.

In WWII the lethality of conventional attacks varied widely, starting
large fires was the usual way of killing large numbers of people,
incendiary bombs were the best way to start fires. The WWII
nuclear attacks were at least 3 times more powerful in explosive
terms than the biggest conventional raid, but the biggest conventional
raid was not the most lethal, in either absolute terms or deaths per ton
of bombs used.

So far instead of supplying facts you are supplying opinions and
showing a great lack of knowledge about the results of conventional
air raids. Then you bias the definitions to make the nuclear attacks
look more dangerous.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.