Hiroshima/Nagasaki vs conventional B-17 bombing

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

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"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?

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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,

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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.

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"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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.