Posted on 08/06/2022 8:49:15 PM PDT by TChad
I always felt McVay got screwed somewhat on the whole thing, but he was the Captain. The Japanese long lance torpedoes were a great weapon and I think The Indy was hit by 3 or 4. A survivor said it went down in 15 minutes or so. It was a shame that close to the wars end.
Not at all what Col. Harry Borowski who wrote “Hollow Threat” wrote in his history of the early bomber program. Quite the contrary, a device is a device, a bomb is a bomb. Things that work well stationary in reasonably controlled conditions may not work at all in different atmosphere, pressure, other conditions. I trust his work.
< shrug > I know what I know. You’re a historian. I’m an engineer and a physicist.
Ha! And I know engineers all the time who are just “sure” something will work . . . til it doesn’t.
And I know historians who are just “sure” of the way things were ... except they weren’t.
Maybe, but I’ll go with all the sources OF THE DAY who said they didn’t know.
Easy in hindsight to claim “Oh, we all knew.” BS. Nobody did. And you don’t waste one of six if there is a chance it won’t work, and you don’t know if the other, totally different design that hadn’t even been tested, worked either.
And finally, remember certain elements of the bomb still had to assembled in flight.
Let me pose it this way, and if we don’t agree we don’t.
You’ve tested a parachute under controlled circumstances but no one has ever jumped out of a plane and pulled a rip cord with it. Do you “know” it will work?
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