Thanks DFG.
Posted on 05/16/2023 2:49:07 PM PDT by DFG
Aviation fans gathered to see a World War Two Lancaster bomber fly over England as a memorial flight tours the country on the 80th anniversary of the 617 Squadron's legendary raids.
The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is commemorating the Operation Chastise attack on the Nazi Germany reservoirs which took place on the night of May 16, 1943.
The 617 Squadron carried out the raid which involved 133 aircrew and 19 Lancaster Bomber aircraft unleashing bouncing bombs to deal a major blow to Adolf Hitler.
Large crowds were seen standing with cameras as they prepared to witness the Lancaster bomber this evening.
Tonight's flypast involved one of the last two airworthy Lancaster bombers flying over the RAF Museum located on the former Hendon Aerodrome in Colindale, north London, then all 28 former Bomber Command bases in Lincolnshire.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The only surprise to the British must have been the speed by which the Germans put the dam back into service.
Kept sinking their merchant marine fleet go ahead with operation Starvation. Continue bombing military targets—wage war. They would eventually run out of food and supplies.
The Japanese sent out peace feelers both to Sweden and the USSR before the end. The USSR didn’t pass on the approach as Stalin wanted the easy win in Manchuria. Supposedly Ultra picked up the Soviet codes and read them so Eisenhower/Truman knew the Japanese wanted to negotiate surrender. Now WHY he didn’t want it is another matter…maybe he didn’t trust the Japanese or maybe he wanted to use the A-Bomb as a way to scare the USSR???
“ On 30 June, Tōgō told Naotake Satō, Japan’s ambassador in Moscow, to try to establish “firm and lasting relations of friendship.” Satō was to discuss the status of Manchuria and “any matter the Russians would like to bring up.”[59] Well aware of the overall situation and cognizant of their promises to the Allies, the Soviets responded with delaying tactics to encourage the Japanese without promising anything. Satō finally met with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on 11 July, but without result. On 12 July, Tōgō directed Satō to tell the Soviets that:
His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender, the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honor and existence of the Motherland.[60]”
The Japanese also reputedly sent offers to Sweden to act as an intermediary. Even earlier than the USSR I think.
I don’t think we would have to have invaded just negotiate with them in a conditional manner. My grandfather was an army Air-force engineer in the 821st AEF Battalion in the SW Pacific. I certainly don’t want him to have had to have gone to Japan in a bloody invasion as I possibly wouldn’t be here now if he had.
The British were the good guys.
The United States were the good guy.
Germany & Japan were evil incarnate.
At least 50 million people killed by them in the wars they started that brought down a iron curtain. China had communist take over and the communists killed 60 million of the Chinese people. Billions lived miserable lives in eastern europe and asia.
Not sorry at all what happened to those that started WW2.
“...US strategic bombing campaign switch from factories and military bases (legitimate war targets) to civilian population centers in Japan...removing most of the defensive armaments and switching to night...increase the bomb load by something like 1/3...targeting...civilian centers with small, numerous incendiary devices. Carpet fire bombing.
War is hell but I still (perhaps naively) don’t think it should target civilians.” [Phoenix8, post 11]
So you’re unhappy the Allies beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan back in 1945?
Japan and Germany were totalitarian nations. They dragooned their populace into their Almighty States. No civilians remained. In Japan more than any other nation, there were no purely “legitimate” targets.
Targeteers serving the Western Allies understood this. Why are you reluctant to accept it?
Sorry can’t you read my mind? /sarc
I agree with you. re judging past actions.
WW2 (total war) is really the only type of war that is worthy of sacrificing Americans. Somehow we have gotten away from that. If we are going to go in to win, we shouldn’t send our boys and girls to die.
If we aren’t willing to bomb dams, we shouldn’t send Americans to their death.
Kept sinking their merchant marine fleet go ahead with operation Starvation. Continue bombing military targets—wage war. They would eventually run out of food and supplies.
The first ones to run out of food and supplies would have been the civilian population.
Your approach would have killed the entire Japanese civilian population slowly and gradually, rather than a million or two, quickly.
Some humanitarian you are.
I seriously doubt the Japanese vision of “peace” would have been cessation of hostilities, return of troops from the occupied territories, disarmament, and acceptance of an occupying force.
That would have been humiliating, and I suspect even you would admit that the Japanese, especially of that era, would prefer death to dishonor.
Their view of “peace” would have been more of a ceasefire, in which the American stopped bombing them and sinking their ships, they kept their occupied territories and their armaments.
Little Boy and Fat Man saved the lives of Tens. Of. Millions. of Japanese.
Even after being nuked twice, there was still a faction within the Japanese army that attempted a coup to prevent the emperor’s planned surrender.
Imagine the British recruits had a time machine that could take them to Britain in 2023.
They would have said “I guess we lost the war, right?”
The difference is blockading is allowable under the Geneva convention. As long as the intent isnt genocide, which it wouldn’t be.
Also as far as calling/suggesting me inhumane that is laughable. You endorse burning and radiating civilians—children and women alive …not I.
Blocking off food shipments puts the ownership of the deaths of Japanese civilians on THEM not us. Can’t you see the difference?
You are just postulating your opinion they would not have disarmed or given up territory. Likely they would have accepted surrender with keeping their emperor, Korea and partial disarmament. We will never know but as they in fact did seek peace terms before much of ye mass fire bombing s and nuclear attacks. This does support my theory.
Thanks DFG.
“If we are going to go in to win, we shouldn’t send our boys and girls to die.”
So, how can we go to war to win without risking American lives?
I meant to say:
If we are not going to go in to win, we shouldn’t send our boys and girls to die.
Sorry for the confusion. I noticed that typo after I posted. Of course it reversed the meaning of my statement.
The Wikipedia article on WWII deaths shows Japanese civilian dead somewhere in the range of 550,000 to 800,000, which I suspect is low. I would have guessed around 1,000,000.
The population of Japan at the time was a little over 70,000,000.
The blockade/starvation option may have killed half the civilian population. 30,000,000+.
One million versus ten or twenty or thirty times that.
“Oh, but that would have been allowable under the Geneva Convention”.
Yeah, you’re inhumane.
According to the BBC, the raids were “infamous”...
Key word there is “may”.
Yeah well they may have surrendered as well.
Given the way they fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, not likely.
“Kept sinking their merchant marine fleet go ahead with operation Starvation. Continue bombing military targets—wage war. They would eventually run out of food and supplies.
The Japanese sent out peace feelers both to Sweden and the USSR before the end...Eisenhower/Truman knew the Japanese wanted to negotiate surrender. Now WHY he didn’t want it is another matter…” [Phoenix8, post 22]
“You do know what “starvation” means, don’t you?...” [DuncanWaring, post 26]
“The difference is blockading is allowable under the Geneva convention. As long as the intent isnt genocide, which it wouldn’t be.
Also as far as calling/suggesting me inhumane that is laughable. You endorse burning and radiating civilians—children and women alive …not I.
Blocking off food shipments puts the ownership of the deaths of Japanese civilians on THEM not us. Can’t you see the difference?
... they in fact did seek peace terms before much of the mass fire bombings and nuclear attacks. This does support my theory.” [Phoenix8, post 28]
Your approach here isn’t clear.
Are you theorizing that it’s better to starve an adversary’s population than to firebomb urban areas?
The Geneva Convention is not a solve-all document agreed to universally at every point by the signatories. Neither do nations cary it out in honesty and good faith.
The Imperial Germans went on record - quite noisily - against the inhumane results of Allied blockade during the First World War. Folks did starve then. Before much of the Conventions assuredly, but international usage and accepted rules of “civilized” warfare already were in place.
In 1945 the Imperial Japanese weren’t being honest about peace feelers; after American warnings, the senior leaders decided to abide by the principal of “mokusatsu” - approximately, to negate a diplomatic proposal with scornful silence.
Whether Allied leaders knew this at the time is less than clear. The message interception and decoding process was far from the magical key to the kingdom you apparently believe it was. “We’re reading the enemy’s orders before they get them themselves” was more hot air than historical fact.
You seem more interested in flaunting your own morality than in conducting any supportable historical analysis. And your condescension is obvious, in declaring your moral take to be so unimpeachable as to be beyond challenge from the rest of us.
“You seem more interested in flaunting your own morality than in conducting any supportable historical analysis. And your condescension is obvious, in declaring your moral take to be so unimpeachable as to be beyond challenge from the rest of us.”
That’s your opinion. We are speaking of counterfactual history, there is no solid way to support it.
Condescension…? How so? It’s not obvious. You are like almost every other person I debate with on this subject. You get angry because I don’t wish to fully follow the history channel version of war then you try to make me seem like I am getting personal and insulting. The anger is with you and your history channel BRO DuncanWaring.
Beyond challenge? Why would I think that?…you don’t know me and I’m glad.
Let me remind you of who got personal first, it was DuncanWaring
“ You do know what “starvation” means, don’t you?” WHICH IS AN OBVIOUS SLIGHT IM STUPID
“Some humanitarian you are.” WHICH MEANS IM COLD BLOODED, EVIL, RUTHLESS.
“yeah your inhumane” SOS…
You are pissed off because you want and believe with every fiber of your being fire Bombing and radiating Japanese civilians is morally justifiable because The Japanese would fight to the last man, the only alternative solution to an invasion which would kill a million Allied and 10 million Japanese was to radiate civilians to the point they surrendered. That they surrendered was proof to you the path saved millions.
Was that the only path? That’s all I was saying. The Japanese put out peace feelers, we knew it then and now, with pressure from conventional war practices like blockade and bombing combined with negotiation we might have got them to surrender. Perhaps sooner than the way we did. We were pushing UNCONDITIONAL surrender by the Democrat POTUS Eisenhower and Truman after him and the blood thirsty Stalin (Churchill seems to have given mixed messages). A completely STUPID policy. We should have allowed conditions.
All I did was to offer my opinion of an alternative that was never followed the you twist that around and make me seem as if I’m insulting you and your BRO being rude. Even other guys jumping in and insinuating I was for the axis etc. But who knows if the Japanese militarists would have allowed the more pacifist to act, who knows what the Emperor would have done? You for sure don’t.
Here is what I said: “ I don’t think we would have to have invaded just negotiate with them in a conditional manner. My grandfather was an army Air-force engineer in the 821st AEF Battalion in the SW Pacific. I certainly don’t want him to have had to have gone to Japan in a bloody invasion as I possibly wouldn’t be here now if he had.”
How is that being condescending? How is that “FLAUNTING MY OWN MORALITY”??? I’m giving my opinion that’s all.
It’s not —-you are just being argumentative and personal.
After Nagasaki was bombed, the Emperor decided to surrender, and made a recording to be played on Aug 15.
A faction within the armed forces still wanted to fight to the last man, woman and child, and attempted a coup on the night of Aug 14, disrupted by a blackout in response to a formation of B-29s on their way to another target.
Even after being nuked twice there were still some who wanted to fight on.
Any “peace” they pursued could have been nothing other than a cease-fire during which they would re-group and re-arm and start Act II of their Greater East Asia Co-Prospherity Sphere.
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