"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 [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

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


http://www.google.com/search?as_q=na...h i+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.




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