Posted on 04/20/2018 9:55:26 AM PDT by ExpatCanuck
Just wondering if that would have put a halt to the Japanese aggression and given them a sense of what they were up against and what we were willing to do. Could it have saved thousands of American lives in the South Pacific? As an alternative history buff I’m curious about the opinions here.
Exactly. Good to see correct history posted.
Granted. Doesn’t change the observation it took two not one
We could have used our phased plasma weapons on them.
If only FDR had deployed the Death Star
Yes, I guess you have no idea why the US didn’t use B-2 Bombers armed with cruise missiles against Japan right after Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps they were having trouble fitting them into the time travel machine.
Dream on. Double the range and that was still not feasible. And on B-17s, I assure you I possess some unique expertise that you do not. I’ll just leave it at that.
Just to make sure I have you straight, you believe early B-17s were capable of Missions from Clark Field to Japan and back, and that early models were well protected from lightly armed Japanese fighters?
Interesting alternative history.
Yeah...but it was secret from us too.
“The absolutely best response”
The blind squirrel and nut theory sometimes breaks in my favor.
“At the tail end of the war, the Japanese had a very sophisticated and technologically advanced jet fighter program underway. It was at least on a par with the ME 262 and would have given Japan air superiority. But like Germany, too little and too late.”
Ref the B-36, it would have been safe from a 262. It was even fairly safe from a MiG-15. Its an interesting read about the B-36 mission profile. Its speed and altitude during the attack was truly a protection in the early jet age. It was in service in 1949 and was safe until Soviet radars and jets improved.
The B-36 could literally -outmaneuver- a MiG-15 at 48 or 50,000 feet. It chugged along at 5000 feet and around 200 kts for the first 2500 miles or so, then it began a slow climb 500 miles out. It would dash over the target at 430 kts and close to 50k feet. Dropping its load it would escape in a very very long and shallow dive with high speed. Then it would chug back home.
If a B-36 flew right over a MiG base, a Soviet radar needed to see it about 200 miles out, or it was impossible for a jet fighter to get up to it in time. Even more fun for the MiG, the pilot had no radar and had to rely on vectors from the ground. The Ground radars at the time could not give altitude, only a target and a course. He also had no air refueling or missiles.
An intercept would fail if it missed by 5 minutes, 5 miles, or 5000 feet altitude differential. The Mig would run out of gas before he could adjust and fix the mistake. And if he got close, a B-36 with the enormous wing could make a turn that would stall out the MiG.
This advantage was gone by the mid 50s with SAMs, better radars, afterburning interceptors, and onboard radars.
Interestingly the US Navy Banshee was probably able to intercept one and the USAF never wanted to demonstrate or test it against a Banshee. The Banshee had a straight wing the Navy liked for carriers, but that gave it an extreme high altitude capability. (Similar to the Canberra later)
Me-262 had a service ceiling of 37,500. A B-36 would have sailed along 2 miles above it, invulnerable. The only German that had a chance was a TA-152 that could get up to 49,500 ft at 470 mph. Small margin for error, but possible.
B-36 was an astonishing plane, for a few short years. And Yes, the USN would have probably enjoyed shooting them down as much as the Soviets would have! :)
Japanese had difficulty intercepting and shooting down even the early 'sharktail' B-17's.
Yes, those early B-17's could make it to Southern Japan from Clark, there were even plans for it.
All of which went up in smoke when the 3 dozen B-17's became less than one dozen when bombed on the ground the first day.
Because they would have been vulnerable to the SA-21 Growler surface-to-air missiles that Stalin would have shipped to the Japanese under the terms of the 1941 Molotov-Matsuoka Agreement.
They literally ran out of missiles to shoot at us, and then we found out later that they wondered why we did not press the attack and just walk in to hanoi.
“Carpet bombing” is a catchphrase concocted by civilian journalists who didn’t know the first thing about bomber aircraft: no such words, not in the official doctrine of either Britain’s RAF Bomber Command doctrine nor USAAF strategic bombardment doctrine.
Both British and US air theorists and leaders intended to use air strikes against future adversaries’ home territory using extreme precision, but actually sustaining such air efforts in the face of Third Reich air defenses proved too costly, in terms of attrition. It drove RAF Bomber Command to undertake night strikes, which proved to be less accurate. To compensate, they developed specially trained and experienced “Pathfinder” crews that preceded the main force and dropped color-coded marker flares on the targets (or as close as they could get to targets). Then the main force came over in huge numbers, saturating defenses and dumping munitions on the colored marker flares (when they could see them). Additionally, there was the policy of deliberate “de-housing” - attacking the residences of German industrial labor force, to kill them or drive them from the vicinity of the factories. This became problematic over time as Nazi propaganda made hay of it, and British public opinion wavered as German civilian morale did not implode completely, as did that in Britain during World War One: riots occurred after Imperial German air strikes on London.
American theory centered around the “industrial bottleneck” - the idea that there existed a handful of key industrial products common to all weapons production: if their production could be taken out or simply degraded by high-precision strikes, output of war materiel would slow or stop. Ball bearings were the first to be attacked; the German effort did not falter much, and after severe attrition due in part to bungled timing and bad luck, USAAF dropped that approach.
Precision bombing depended not only on precise delivery of bombs by the aircrews, but equally heavily on precision surveillance and intelligence - first to find and identify the targets, then assess damage after strikes, and finally to determine change in output.
Not until well after World War Two ended did the Western Allies discover that they’d left off striking too early, in several cases only a strike or two short of terminating an industry completely. In the case of the ball-bearing attacks, production was reduced to a trickle, and German workers were in some instances forced to carry the day’s output of ball bearings to their customers assembling tank transmissions or aircraft - in knapsacks on bicycles. This wasn’t publicized until the 1980s.
In the end, the general conclusion about targeting air strikes against the Nazi war machine was to hit oil production and the transportation network.
The problems of hitting the warmaking capability of the Home Islands of Imperial Japan were somewhat different.
It was found that precision strikes from B-29s flying above 30,000 feet were tough to prosecute, because of the previously unknown jet stream, which was impossible to predict given the level of meteorological knowledge of those days. It was found that a bomber that flew into the jet stream quickly overran rate limits of its bombing computers.
Post-strike analysis discovered that Japanese industrial facilities had succeeded in dispersing machinery and production activities to a degree hitherto unknown. Simply striking what was known to be a factory building thus accomplished very little: Curtis E Lemay was quoted about his examination of a post-war photo that showed a row of drill presses, standing all alone in the ruins of what had been a workers’ housing neighborhood, burned to ash otherwise.
Hence the decision to abandon high altitude daylight precision strikes in favor of strikes with incendiaries, against large urban areas. In an echo of what the RAF did earlier, the B-29s went in at night at relatively low altitudes, with most defensive armament and ammunition removed, to save weight in favor of more incendiaries.
Over 60 cities were thus hit, not merely Tokyo. Several senior USAAF leaders remarked after the war that they foresaw a Japanese surrender before the scheduled invasion (1 November 1945) and without the use of the atomic bombs.
Another aspect of the air attack against Imperial Japan was the interdiction of coastal maritime traffic. Japan was dependent on merchant-ship deliveries from northern China and its conquered territories southwest and south, but was also dependent on inshore shipping to move a lot of stuff around the Home Islands. Submarines of the US Navy had already done much to halt the over-ocean traffic, but they could not operate well in shallow coastal waters. A portion of the B-29 force was devoted to dropping mines in ports and along shore-hugging sea-lanes; though this effort lasted only a couple months near the end of the war, it accounted for 8 to 11 percent (if memory serves) of total merchant-vessel tonnage lost by Japan.
Forum members are invited to research the topic further, in the US Strategic Bombing Survey. Also, Richard B Frank’s book “Downfall” summarizes the strategic situation and decision rationales neatly.
I appreciate your response. It is among those I wanted to solicit to further enlighten myself. Notwithstanding that your personal insults of ‘ridiculous’ and ‘nonsensical’ are unnecessary to make your point, I do understand what you have said and will follow up with further reading. That was, in fact, the point of my question - to get feedback from those more informed on the subject so that I might learn. There are thousands of untold stories of WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War that have been lost in obscurity despite the heroism and valor involved.
We did. It just took awhile to get close enough to do it.
“I have worked with the Japanese and I have yet to find a single one who is not trustworthy, kind and caring.”
That’s not their history. They were brutal in War II and deserved to be obliterated.
If you are interested in those who actually fought the wars, the Military History Channel has a lot of the action giving the big picture and a lot of interviews with the men who fought them. Japanese, Soviet and German soldiers who also fought those battles are interviewed which is both informative and interesting. This gives the view from the ground.
Information which had been classified is now being released to the public divulging new information which fills in a lot of blanks and questions.
When the History Channel is not tracking the “Ancient Aliens,” it has many of the same programs. There are also programs on the wars of the ancient world which are fascinating as well.
The subject most treated is Adolf Hitler so much so that we called the History Channel - the Hitler Channel.
I loved reading the accounts of the POWs in the Hanoi Hilton who said that during the. B-52 raids, the guards were literally scared Sh*******, and even though the POW’s were terrified too, they all cheered like they were at a football game!
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