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#21
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Fred the Red Shirt wrote:
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. LeMay is ridiculous, Eisenhower (in his memoirs) claimed he opposed the decision when asked for his advice and MacArthur (also in his memoirs) confessed to being upset (sick to his stomach) when informed of the decision, but made no protest. BUFDRVR "Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips everyone on Bear Creek" |
#22
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Dan wrote:
Actually Truman told Stalin at Potsdam we had the bomb. Well...not really. He told Stalin (who already knew about the Manhatten project) that we had a new weapon that could end the war. That was about as specific as it got. Meanwhile Truman briefed Churchill in detail. BUFDRVR "Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips everyone on Bear Creek" |
#23
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#24
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"B2431" wrote in message ... From: (BUFDRVR) Date: 8/23/2004 6:29 PM Central Daylight Time Message-id: Fred the Red Shirt wrote: 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. LeMay is ridiculous, Eisenhower (in his memoirs) claimed he opposed the decision when asked for his advice and MacArthur (also in his memoirs) confessed to being upset (sick to his stomach) when informed of the decision, but made no protest. BUFDRVR Based on what I have read over the years I think MacArthur was upset he wouldn't get to invade. Bingo! You hit the nail on the head. Hardly surprising, I am afraid, given his previous pique over not being able to invade Rabaul and his insistence upon clearing the entire PI archipelago--rather typical of his notion that his own glory came before the dictates of mission or men. Brooks Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired |
#25
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Every time this subject comes up I am both amazed and appalled at the
revisionist/PC thinking based on fragmentary knowledge of the situation existing then. The US had just been thorugh the Peleliu, Iwo Jma, Phillipines and Okinawa campaigns and the casualties were horrendous. Now we were going to invade the Japanese Home Islands and we could reliably expect the fighting to be grimly intense. I strongly recommend y'all find books on the above campaigns and read through them and then look up the plans to invade Kyushu and then the Tokyo beaches. Especially study the Japanese planned counteractions - they had deduced where the landings were to take place. Not very difficult - there's not that many choices. The Combined Japanese Air Forces had held back 5,000 air-lanes for Kamikaze use! Note that the Services of Supply had ordered 400,000 Purple Hearts for the two invasions. Also note that President Truman had been in combat in WW1. ISTR he was a field artillery battery CO - not a staff officer. He knew plenty about battle casualties from real personal knowledge. So, with the atomic bomb handy, would you-all have the guts (and gall) to sened your troops into battle knowing that the casualties would be horrendous, far greater than Iwo or Okinawa? And you would have to recycle ETO infantry combat vets to replace the fully expected losses - guys that had already 'seen the elephant'? Face it - the US was running low on front line troops - Now - would I have given the order? Damn right I would - given the choice between killing the enemy and saving my own troops or doing a grim trade-off of my guys for theirs - I'd nuke and re-nuke them until they quit. They fro damn sure earned it. Unlike most of you-all I've lost enough very close friends in combat, men I've trusted my life to. Now stop all your maunderings until you've done some study of the situation - as it existed back then! As for collateral damage - the Russkies did a pretty good job on Warsaw and points west, culminating in Berlin. Massive artillery barrages take a little longer than nuking the places but the result was pretty much the same except the area of destruction is larger. Walt BJ |
#26
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"WaltBJ" wrote in message om... Massive artillery barrages take a little longer than nuking the places but the result was pretty much the same except the area of destruction is larger. Walt BJ Do not forget the far larger losses from the ongoing firebombing of Tokyo that could have continued until there was nothing left to firebomb. Jack G. |
#27
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"Venik" wrote in message ... 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. Incorrect, the militarists in charge wanted to hold out for a deal that would leave them in control of Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. Keith ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- |
#28
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"Keith Willshaw" wrote: "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 ----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- You've got that right: supposedly Stalin was displeased with Beria's predecessor Yezhov about not getting a confession out of Bukharin-Beria told Stalin "Let me have him. I'll have him confessing he's the King of England." Stalin got the confession, Beria got promoted, and both Bukharin and Yezhov were liquidated.... Posted via www.My-Newsgroups.com - web to news gateway for usenet access! |
#29
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"Kevin Brooks" wrote: "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 And there was no way that the Kyushu invasion (OLYMPIC) could have been repelled: Most Japanese defenses were on the beaches and inland in range of NGFS, and a suggestion that the defense of Okinawa and Luzon be emulated was rejected-the plan was defend on the beaches and in strength inland, but once the beach defenses are broken, the Japanese coastal divisions have had it, and the attempts to move reserves from South-Central Kyushu to counterattack (Ariake Bay, where XI Corps with 1st Cav, 43rd and Americal Divisions would have landed was considered by the Japanese to be the main battle area in Kyushu) would have been exposed to air attack and have had very poor roads on which to move anyway. Mostly grunts with little heavy equipment anyhow and what armor they had would have suffered from air and naval gunfire before even getting to the battle. Best case for Kyushu is 30 days, more likely 45-50 days before Southern Kyushu is relatively secure and the base-building gets underway for to support CORONET. Posted via www.My-Newsgroups.com - web to news gateway for usenet access! |
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