Posted on 08/05/2012 4:49:23 PM PDT by moonshot925
This is a telephone conversation transcript between Colonel Seaman of the Manhattan Project and General Hull of Marshall's staff that took place on 13 August 1945. The subject is atomic bomb deployment and production timeline.
There was. The Soviets effected the most their most flawlessly choreographed attack of the war against the Japs in Manchuria just days before the Nagasaki Bomb.
Thank you for the correct numbers. Back when wars were fought with no regard to the cost - only the outcome.
Cliff notes version: The Japanese had correctly deduced that the Allies were going to land on the Japanese home island of Kyushu, and correctly deduced the 3 landing beaches. The Japanese planned a furious defense called "Ketsu-Go" ("Decisive Operation") on Kyushu, with the goal of making the invasion so costly that the Americans would negotiate terms favorable to the Japanese. The American planners had anticipated 350,000 defenders on Kyushu, while the Japanese had actually managed to deploy 750,000 defenders there. US Navy CNO Adm. King was about to withdraw his support for the invasion when these new figures came to light.
The Japanese Army was in de facto control of the government as the war drew to its close. Even after the 2nd atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Army refused to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and insisted on no Allied occupation of Japanese territory, Japanese self-disarmament, and Japanese control of War Crimes trials none of which would have been acceptable to the Allies. Had the Emperor not personally intervened to end the war, Japanese Army intransigence would have led to a pre-invasion continuation of atomic bombings, a destruction of the Japanese rail network (leading to mass starvation as the Japanese merchant fleet had already suffered such losses that the Japanese had trouble moving food between the home islands) and selected firebombing of Japanese cities.
Frank's conclusions are the atomic bombs negated the Ketsu-Go strategy in the eyes of the Emperor and more moderate Japanese leaders, and were the immediate cause of the Emperor's decision to terminate the war. The Japanese knew that the army in Manchuria was a lost cause if the Soviets launched a major attack against it (one Japanese message described the Manchurian Army as “hopeless”). Frank also concludes that 150,000 Asians were dying each month under the brutal Japanese occupation, and that these lives are never considered in the calculation of the human cost of the atomic bombings versus their effect on ending the war.
The bottom line is that Fat man and Little Boy saved millions of lives, most of those lives being Japanese. A fanatical, firebombed, invaded and starving Japan in which poorly-equipped Japanese civilians were trained to resist Allied invading forces would have rapidly doubled the eventual cost of over 3 million dead Japan lost during the war.
And the one after that would have been labeled "FU".
bump for future reference
“Back when wars were fought with no regard to the cost - only the outcome.”
Someday the war with Islam will have to be fought that way as well.
If not, the “outcome” will be inevitable.
And it will “cost” The West its freedom, perhaps forever.
I've been saying that for years. See my tagline.
I disagree, America has a lot of good leaders.
None, or very few, are in positions of influence, but when TSHTF, as many here like to say, they’ll show up all over the place.
“In building the first large reactor they needed something like 16 tons of copper. But none available. They went to the treasury department and got 16.5 tons of silver to use instead! (Or some-such numbers). “
If I remember correctly from reading the report on the Manhattan project, they needed the copper to make the huge electromagnets for the magnetic separators at Oak Ridge.
That much copper just could not be spared so they did indeed get pure silver from the treasury and they made 100% silver conductor electromagnets for the project.
After they were done, the silver wire was recovered and remelted and returned to the treasury. It was worth a mind boggling amount of money compared to the cost of using copper, had copper been available.
The Test was NOT at Los Alamos. Closer to Alamogordo on White Sands, know as the Trinity Site.
***Some book I read in the past convinced me that it was a huge military loss in Manchuria that led to the Jap surrender more so than the bombs****
Years ago I was listening to Vladimer Posner on Radio Moscow. The said the reason the Japanese surrendered was that after the explosion of the first two bombs, the Russians entered the war against Japan, and THAT is what made them surrender.
So right you are.
It was a big mistake not to kill hundreds of thousands, millions, following 9/11.
I agree with you. We don't have a great leader because we don't need a great leader just at this moment. We're too rich and feel too safe, in absolute terms. Most Americans don't even know what "worried" means, in the sense that people were "worried" in 1940, '41, 42.
But that time will come, as I'm sure you know.
Wholeheartedly agree. It may be the best WWII book that I’ve ever read. If you like the topic I recommend one that I about halfway through now - Pacific Crucible by Ian Toll. It deals with the first two years of the war in the Pacific.
The Russians were sweeping through Manchuria like a hot knife through butter, and would likely been on Hokkaido by the end of September of 1945.
The “Trinity” device wasn’t a weapon - it was a test device designed to demonstrate the plutonium/implosion fission method for bringing the core to critical mass and creating the explosion. The test was because while the yield was theorized to be larger and created more efficiently than the uranium/gun-style fission method (as used in Little Boy), it was also much more complex due to the need for all the compression “lenses” to trigger at the right moments.
They didn’t want to risk dropping an implosion device on Japan and have it fail.
“Fat Man”, dropped on Nagasaki, was the first real plutonium/implosion bomb. I’m not sure what the sequence of production was (it was laid out in several books I read) between the two types, but the 3rd bombing was going to be Tokyo, with Tibbets piloting Enola Gay again. The Nagasaki mission didn’t go well at all, between missed rendezvous, Nagasaki being the secondary target, the apparent decision by the strike aircraft crew to violate orders and drop the bomb using radar targeting (ultimately not needed because there was a last minute opening in the cloud cover) and even then missing the AP by a HUGE amount ... and topped off by Bocks Car pretty much running out of gas and just about needing to be dead-sticked into Okinawa, Tibbets decided that HE needed to lead the 3rd strike.
And then FU-2
“I will remind them that it was the government that developed the atomic bomb.”
Yes, it was the Leftist government of FDR & Truman that did this terrible thing to that poor innocent country known as Japan. And now the Leftists in Govt are doing it to this country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.