Greatest Strategic Air Missions

"Venik" wrote in message
...
BUFDRVR wrote:

Not according to interviews conducted with Japanese civilian and
military
leaders following WW II. Take a look at the U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey.

I am sure the answers would have been different if these interviews were
conducted by the Soviets.

Well yes Beria had a way of getting the answers Stalin wanted to hear.

Keith




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"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
...

"WalterM140" wrote in message
...
Hiroshima. Nothing ever even came close in effect importance or end
result.
End of story.


Gee, Art.

That just whacked a huge number of civilians.

Most of them Japanese Catholics who while loyal Japanese were often
conscientious objectors.

I am told by some Malaysian friends of Eurasian extraction that the
Nunneries, Catholic schools etc were treated with deference by the
Japanese
because they had enough soldiers in their own forces concerned about this.


Bull****

1) Most Malays are Muslim, Buddhist or Daoist

2) The Japanese brutall repressed the catholic population
of the Phillipines and had no qualms when it came to dsetroying
catholic schools , nunneries etc

3) less than 1% of Japanese were Catholic

4) The centre of the Cathlic church in Japan was
Nagasaki

5) The Cathlic church in japan collaborated quite
happily with the Japanese Government during
ww2 with churches issuing proclamations urging
their parishioners to fight on to total victory.

Keith






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It took a double-whammy of the A-bomb and Ivan crossing into Manchuria and
Korea to end the war. The A-bomb alone might not have been enough. Anything
that prevents OLYMPIC and CORONET from having to be executed had to be done.
Period. The Japanese Cabinet was meeting to discuss Hiroshima and the Soviet
invasion when word reached them of the Nagasaki strike. Next day Hirohito
decides that enough is enough. 14 Aug is the attempted putsch that fails
and the Surrender announcement comes on the 15th. Next probable nuclear strike
date was on 18 Aug with Kokura as the primary. Bomb #3 was about to leave
Los Alamos on 10 Aug when a hold order arrived. Two bombs and a million and
a half Russians in the space of four days forced Japan's surrender. End of
story and of war.




Venik wrote:
Keith Willshaw wrote:

That just whacked a huge number of civilians.



Well no.

Are you saying that a large number of civilians
was not killed in that
bombing?


Hirsohima was not only the home port for much
of the
Japanese Navy it was also the home of 2nd
Army Headquarters,
which commanded the defense of all of southern
Japan.
There were large numbers of troops based there.
At
least 3 divisions IRC

The bombing did not target any specific military
facilities. According
to the Japanese figures, military casualties
from the attack accounted
for less than 3% of the overall casualties.
Thus, for every Japanese
soldier killed in the Hiroshima bombing there
was 97% of "collateral
damage." So, no, it was not the greatest strategic
air mission.

Getting the enemy to surrender unconditionally
is about as
strategic as it gets.

The Soviet advances were the primary reason
for the fact that the Japs
were even considering a surrender. They figured
maybe Stalin won't stop
with the Kurils. Same situation as with the
Germans trying to surrender
to the Americans and nobody nuked them.

--
Regards,

Venik

Visit my site: http://www.aeronautics.ru
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"Matt Wiser" wrote in message
news:412a26b3$1@bg2....

It took a double-whammy of the A-bomb and Ivan crossing into Manchuria and
Korea to end the war. The A-bomb alone might not have been enough.
Anything
that prevents OLYMPIC and CORONET from having to be executed had to be
done.
Period. The Japanese Cabinet was meeting to discuss Hiroshima and the
Soviet
invasion when word reached them of the Nagasaki strike. Next day Hirohito
decides that enough is enough. 14 Aug is the attempted putsch that fails
and the Surrender announcement comes on the 15th. Next probable nuclear
strike
date was on 18 Aug with Kokura as the primary. Bomb #3 was about to leave
Los Alamos on 10 Aug when a hold order arrived. Two bombs and a million
and
a half Russians in the space of four days forced Japan's surrender. End of
story and of war.

Overly simplistic, at least those last two sentences. A hell of a lot more
than that went into the Japanese surrender equation. The tightening sea
blockade, effective inshore mining by B-29's, the creeping effects of the
B-29 raids against industrial and urban areas, the gaining of bases at Iwo
Jima and Okinawa that now moved even more landbased airpower into range of
Kyushu and Honshu, the isolation of large troop garrisons in far-flung and
by then bypassed areas, the fact that they no longer had any navy to speak
of outside kamikaze attack light combatants being horded, along with their
remaining aircraft, to counter the feared invasion of Kyushu, and of course
that feared homeland invasion itself (and the fact that the more reasonable
Japanese leaders by then realized that "Ketsu-Go" was invariably doomed to
failure when that invasion did come)...all of these factors contributed to
the Japanese surrender. The first atomic bomb was an attention getter, the
Soviet invasion was the closure of their forlorn negotiated surrender hopes,
and the second bomb was the final closer.

Brooks

snip

Venik wrote:

Truman's decision to use the A-bombs was opposed by most of his military
advisers

That's not correct. There were descenting voices but they were the minority.

including Le May, Eisenhower and MacArthur

Only 1 of 3. Eisenhower was the only one of the above who opposed it.
MacArthur, after the war, admitted he was upset when told of the decsion, but
he made no protest. LeMay fully supported it.

And the public
reaction in the US to the use of the A-bomb was split close to the
middle.

Wrong. The U.S. public didn't care what device was used, just that it ended the
war. There was no public descent outside of scientific circles.

In the end, the US changed its policy of Unconditional Surrender

Wrong. The U.S. chose to allow the Emporer to stay because they felt it would
allow for a more secure occupation.

And the use of the nukes
allowed the US to obscure this rather embarrassing policy change from
public scrutiny, as well as to give Stalin something to think about.

Wrong. No reputable historian would agree with that statement.

Truman even
attributed Stalin's lack of response to the news of the A-bomb test to
his failure to grasp the significance of the event.

What history books are you reading? Truman never briefed Stalin on the results.
He briefed Churchill, but never told Stalin a thing.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

BUFDRVR wrote:

Wrong. The U.S. chose to allow the Emporer to stay because they felt
it would
allow for a more secure occupation.

Of course they did, that why the US changed its policy of unconditional
surrender. They knew that if the Emperor is not allowed to stay, no
amount of nukes will solve the problem. In the end the Japanese got what
they wanted in a surrender deal.

Wrong. No reputable historian would agree with that statement.

Since you are not one of them, your opinion, while appreciated, makes
little impression on me.

What history books are you reading? Truman never briefed Stalin on the results.
He briefed Churchill, but never told Stalin a thing.

Apparently not the same books you were reading in school :-) Would
Truman's own memoirs satisfy you?

"On July 24 I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of
unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed no special
interest. All he said was he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make
"good use of it against the Japanese." Harry S. Truman, Year of
Decisions , 1955, p. 416

How about Churchill's memoirs?

""I was perhaps five yards away, and I watched with the closest
attention the momentous talk. I knew what the President was going to do.
What was vital to measure was its effect on Stalin. I can see it all as
if it were yesterday. He seemed to be delighted. A new bomb! Of
extraordinary power! Probably decisive on the whole Japanese war! What a
bit of luck! This was my impression at the moment, and I was sure that
he had no idea of the significance of what he was being told. " Winston
Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy , 1953, p. 669

I can give you several dozen other references or you can visit your
local library and lookup interviews and memoirs of James Byrnes, Charles
Bohlen, Anthony Eden, or Georgii Zhukov.

--
Regards,

Venik

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Venik wrote in message ...
BUFDRVR wrote:

Not according to interviews conducted with Japanese civilian and military
leaders following WW II. Take a look at the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey.

...

As you know, during the Yalta conference Stalin promised to attack Japan
ninety days from the surrender of Germany. In return the USSR got the
Allied blessing to grab some territory back from Japan. It's hard to
imagine that the Japanese were not aware of the details of this deal.

Not hard for me. Like, who was going to tell them?

The Japanese had something like a million troops on the Asian Mainland,
yet less than 100,000 were positioned to resist the Soviet attack.


Even before the Germany's surrender, the Japanese sent a diplomatic
delegation to the USSR to work out some sort of a surrender deal that
would allow Japan to keep the Emperor. By that time the US diplomats
have already got themselves into a bottle by pronouncing the policy of
Unconditional Surrender. The Soviets, on the other hand, had no
particular problem with the Emperor.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Soviets were happy to receive the
delegation to help mislead the Japanese into thinking that a Soviet
attack was NOT imminent


Germans surrendered on May 8, which meant that Stalin was obligated to
attack Japan no later than August 8. US plans called for a limited
invasion of the Ryuku Islands in November and the invasion of the
mainland Japan was to take place in January of 1946 at the earliest. So
there definitely was a big gap between the timing of the Soviet invasion
of Japan and the US invasion. If the negotiations between Japan and the
USSR produced results (and there was no reason why they shouldn't have,
since both countries were not even at war with each other), the Soviet
"attack" on Japan could have been a very brief and victorious affair for
Stalin.

The reason they "shouldn't have" produced results was that Stalin had
made a prior comitment to enter the war against Japan.


The US delayed the Potsdam conference for two weeks, during which the
first nuke was tested. And Truman authorized the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki just two days before the Soviet attack against Japan.
Truman's decision to use the A-bombs was opposed by most of his military
advisers, including Le May, Eisenhower and MacArthur.

I am very interested in your source of information here. It is hard
to imagine Le May not wanting to use any weapon against Japan and
MacArthur (according to a biographical piece I saw recently on PBS)
wanted to use nuclear weapons in Korea.

So this seems to me to be unlikely, but I'm open to evidence.

And the public
reaction in the US to the use of the A-bomb was split close to the
middle.

Again, I'd like to know the source.

At the time, the significance of timing of these events was
quite obvious to anyone reading newspapers.

Japanese negotiated with both the US and the USSR and in both cases
their primary and only real condition was to retain the Emperor. They
would have preferred to surrender to the Americans for obvious reasons:
USSR had territorial claims against Japan and nobody in Japan was
looking forward to living under Kremlin's control. On the other hand,
negotiating with the USSR was less problematic because the two countries
were not at war and because the Soviets, unlike the US, did not demand
unconditional surrender.

In the end, the US changed its policy of Unconditional Surrender and
that's what prompted the Japanese surrender. And the use of the nukes
allowed the US to obscure this rather embarrassing policy change from
public scrutiny, as well as to give Stalin something to think about.

Again, can you show that the US gave Japan any guarantees as to the
Emperor's safety befor they agreed to surender? Such a guarantee
may have been in the formal terms of surrender, but the question
is, was such a guarantee communicated to the Japanese befor
the actual surrender negotiations?

It's also important to remember that Truman counted on a much bigger
impact of the A-bomb on the Soviets, because, of course, he had no idea
that the Soviets have already taken from Los Alamos everything they
needed for their own bomb. During the Potsdam conference Truman even
attributed Stalin's lack of response to the news of the A-bomb test to
his failure to grasp the significance of the event., since Truman,
obviously, expected some sort of an emotional response from uncle Joe.
If Truman knew how quickly the USSR would build its own A-bomb, perhaps
he would have listened to his military commanders on this matter.

Nonsense. While Truman may have given some consideration to what
territory the Soviets might have gained had the war continued for
another year or more there is no reason to believe he did not give
more consideration to American, Chinese, and even Ja[panese casualties
to be expected from a continuation of the war.

--

FF

"Venik" wrote in message
...
BUFDRVR wrote:

snip


I can give you several dozen other references or you can visit your
local library and lookup interviews and memoirs of James Byrnes, Charles
Bohlen, Anthony Eden, or Georgii Zhukov.


Great, but unfortuantely now a bit outdated, since we know the reason Stalin
was not overtly impressed by the mention of the bomb (not really a "brief",
now was it?) was actually because he already knew about it courtesy of folks
like Greenglass and the Rosenbergs.

Brooks

--
Regards,

Venik

From: (BUFDRVR)

snip


Truman even
attributed Stalin's lack of response to the news of the A-bomb test to
his failure to grasp the significance of the event.

What history books are you reading? Truman never briefed Stalin on the
results.
He briefed Churchill, but never told Stalin a thing.


BUFDRVR


Actually Truman told Stalin at Potsdam we had the bomb. Stalin's reply was he
hoped we would use it wisely. He already knew about the bomb through spies in
the Manhattan Project.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Venik wrote;

They knew that if the Emperor is not allowed to stay, no
amount of nukes will solve the problem.

Actually they *thought* even if Japan capitulated that many in the Army (and
there were well over 2 million soldiers still in uniform) would continue to
fight unless the Emporer was still in power and commanded them to surrender.

"On July 24 I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of
unusual destructive force.

Which hardy means he briefed Stalin on the results of the Mahatten Project as
you insinuated.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"