Posted on 08/02/2014 8:08:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
And in the months leading up to dropping the bomb upwards of 125,000 people were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo yet nobody talks about that. Upwards of 135,000 were killed in the firebombing of Dresden yet nobody talks about that. But everyone calls Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes.
A very wise man once said, "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it..." The goal of the war is to end it as soon as you can so that the killing could stop. The atomic bombs accomplished that.
Furthermore, most of the starvation would have been inflicted upon peasants and civilians, not upon the military and political rulers of Japan.
“Read my post from wikipedia, it describes the generally accepted fact that Japan was in decline and there was not coming back. It was all downhill. “
First off, you’re an idiot for relying on Wiki to be a source of fact.
Second, your an ignorant idiot for not having read the now declassified reports that show Japan was withholding their forces and building them up to a very significant size in preparations for our invasion.
So one lone B-29 loaded with incendiaries. What's your point? Mine is:less Jap citizens supporting the Jap army, less Jap army. War is hell. SO is living under a jackboot
There is no 'payback' for destroying an AA gun. Nothing to put on the + side of the ledger. Destroying the factory that makes them OTOH is a +. As for 'fighting civilians', dispering manufacuring through out the populated areas, wasn't our idea, it was the Japanese.
The idiotic "bomb their cities into submission" idea kept being floated around. When in reality - duh - the military will keep fighting if you bomb civilian targets and leave the military alone to fight.
Yet you espouse the same tactic of Douhet and transfer it to the military. It doesn't work on either. But it does salve your conscience. Armies moves, factories and cities don't. Only one class of these targets lended itself to the technology of the day. Your supposed real time intelligence and communications network, didn't exist at the time, and wouldn't for at least 40+ years.
That makes no sense at all - we had to carpet bomb civilians because we would have had too many training losses if we tried to field a force that actually attacked military targets ?
Not what I said. You posited 5000 dive bomber sorties daily. An impossibility. You want to fight the end of WWII with today's weapons and systems, when you have to fight it in a different way with what they had at the time. You have failed to do so. Your pie in the sky tactics and battle plan are twaddle. Both unrealistic in execution and impossible even in theory considering the resources available. You try and have the world shaped by the end of the war, instead of realizing that the beginning/middle of the war shaped the endstate. You want to act like the endstate was the norm and so fight based on the enemy capabilities at that point in time.
Why would you conduct an invasion without first conducting an air war to gain air supremecy and then destroy as much of the opposing ground force as possible beforehand ?
That's just what the planners did, realizing that air power was NOT going to attrite the Japanese armed forces enough to validate the time and momentum lost by delaying the invasion. Might more Allied men die as a result of this decision in the short term, yeah, but less than would die in the long term. War is Politics, and politics and mercy demanded an end to the conflict. Prolonging it would sentence our POWs to death, cause more men to not come home, and continue the disruption of the world's economy.
how many would you be willing to slaughter by sending them charging into hardened positions with only token support and practially no body armor ? IMHO, frontal assault into overlapping fields of fire with practically no cover or armor is nuts, but it does make for a lot of propaganda movies about dead heroes.
There would be no 'token' support. The full effects of the available weapons would be brought to bear. AFA body armor, the whole war was fought without it, another tech that wasn't possible or practical then. The hardened positions would be taken like they always had been up to that point, by hard men and valor. AFA 'frontal assaults' even then the Army and the Corps were about maneuver, if there is no room to maneuver, it doesn't mean we go home.
but it does make for a lot of propaganda movies about dead heroes.
Nothing misleading or biased about men under extreme conditions and duress performing valorously in battle. Sacrifice for ones brothers-in-arms is honorable, it isn't some cheap stunt like those on the Left perceive. Your method dishonors that commitment by condemning a segment of the armed forces to an idiotic pollyannaish perpetual battle with no strategic objectives solely for the purposes of your own morality or sensibilities.
It’s generally accepted dude. By April of 45 their air defenses were about useless.
If they had such “huge” armies, and sent them at our positions, they would have to form up into large units to have any effect.
They would then have been destroyed from the air.
We saw the pattern on the other islands.
They dig out tunnels and deep fortifications. They take potshots at you until you destroy them with shelling and fire. They set up multiple defensive lines and successively retreat, you have to keep fighting them until they get to their final fortifications, then you burn/bomb them out. They have no way to get food into those final fortifications. They are military combatants, it matters not according to any sort of moral rules of war if you starve them out, as they can surrender any time they please.
Japan was withering into nothing by April of 45.
Anything that moved would have been blasted.
Could it have cost a lot of American lives ? It would depend entirely on how needlessly aggressive a manner the ground war was conducted. If you send thousands of men into overlapping fields of fire of well-trained and fortified gun positions with no body armor, it would be a slaughter. If you take your time, knowing that your enemy is trapped on their own island and they have no relief possibly on the way, you can mop up a lot more safely than if you push your men to run into their guns and take positions with bloody frontal assaults.
Of course wikipedia quotes other sources, which you can look up and debate whether you like those sources. It is generally accepted, of course, ss of April 1945, Japan was withering fast, and the buildup forces readying for an invasion were simply an act of desperation. IMHO, if an invasion was simply postponed until 1946, and Japan was thoroughly blockaded for the winter of ‘45-’46, it would have “softened naturally” to a significant degree. It’s not like they were going to “get away”. This would also have allowed for all those months of continued war production and preparation for the invasion, and putting into service even more naval and air forces. I doubt that surrender would have even taken that long. But the final scene in the heroic movies would have to be Japan simply surrending instead of a climatic battle, or in the actual case, the atomic bombs. The real goal of the elites all along was putting nuclear weapons into active military service.
Photos 36+ hours old on a mobile asset? Yeah, recipe for success. You realize that they had to have hard copy of the photo? Couldn't just zoom it over on the computer. Once the Japs figured out an idiot was in charge of targeting and cities and factories by cities were off the list, those guns would disappear. Then you could search Kyushu Shikoku and Honshu with aerial photography from the 40's. This is getting painful.
Dude ! There are after action reports. "golly, there was AA on the west side of town by X. Ok, tomorrow we'll be sure to drop them a visit".
"Golly Higher HQ, you really are stupid if you think these things will still be there now that there is no reason to protect a point target. The Japs will camouflage these things, and now that our dummy CiC has us flying at 1500 feet, we won't be able to find them if they move them 300 meters. Course we can try again tomorrow and search based on the wreckage from today's flight."
You act as if it is nuclear bomb or NOTHING. If there WAS NO nuclear bomb available, it would have been an invasion.
Hey dumski, those were the two options, and it was an atomic weapon, not a nuke. The other COAs like blockade etc including I'm sure some versions of your idiotic plan were considered and rejected.
I know that it contradicts your heroic atomic bomb dogma, but how many would you be willing to slaughter by sending them into a ground war - and leaving the Japanese air force happily operating because they are "off limits" ?
Yeah, that's my plan, Jap forces off limits. Casualty estimates for invasion were around a million Allied men. No force of the Japs was untouchable before or after. The Japs shepherded their resources for the invasion, they were ready to sacrifice their children in this battle.
LOL, that's funny, you're a funny guy. So because I'm opposed to dropping an atomic bomb on civilians, suddenly now I must also be oppposed to a handful of civilians being killed unintentionally by bombs targeted at military targets ! LOL, that's funny, you're a funny guy. So because I'm opposed to dropping an atomic bomb on civilians, suddenly now I must also be oppposed to a handful of civilians being killed unintentionally by bombs targeted at military targets !
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had military and industrial targets in them. You are opposed to the deaths of the civilians there, what the hell is the difference when you could have 5000 a DAY in your plan? One on every sortie, in 4 months we exceed the toll of the bombs. I guess you just hate the idea that we did it all at once.
Once one buys into the "atomic bomb saved us all" myth, one must cling to the idea that any and all other options would have destroyed America and lost the war, and we'd all be speaking Japanese today.
No, once one doesn't drop the bomb for their morality's sake one has to take the credit for the lost million and their progeny. All of our POWs. The utter devastation of the Jap home islands, millions of civilian casualties, and a hardening of sentiment where forgiveness and healing could occur.
By the lefties that edit Wiki. The occupation force found a different story. Your way means the POWs die. Fixed fortified defenses like in Iwo were impervious to bombs and shell.. They Japs didn't have to attack, just defend, just like Iwo. 21000 Japs accounted for 26000 Americans. The casualty estimate was likely too low. And food water are pre-positioned in defensive positions, the Japs knew about logistics too. It was the proximate cause of the war absent Jap aggression in general.
Good points.
I have read that President Truman was interested in using the A-bomb for this very reason, that it was hoped it would bring a quick end to the war.
The war could have dragged on for years if we didn’t use the bomb. A conventional invasion of Japan would have resulted in many more casualties, on both sides, than the number who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Liberal revisionist historians condemn the atomic bomb, but tend not to condemn the firebombing of Tokyo, or the bombing of Dresden as harshly. It’s as if liberals are ok with people dying with conventional weapons, but somehow, using an atomic bomb was not proper.
As if bombing them with tons of conventional weapons (as we did in Germany) would be more humane.
General W.T. Sherman sends his regards.
Again, targeting military forces on land requires intel that is near real time. Even more so when the accuracy of the systems is considered. Sinking ships bombing a known fort, no problem. Finding the military in a sea of civilians an impossibility at that time, and very time consuming today.
Mercy is ending the unrelenting suffering of war even when the means themselves are not merciful.
As an aside, my conscience is not bothered in least by any of this since I was not born yet.
What a surprise! Yet your stance never fails to denigrate the efforts of those who handed you your present.
There's no reason not to carpet bomb the fortifications ahead of time if you can. If you have air supremecy, you can carpet bomb at will. It's just not so glamorous to just walk up and find everything obliterated, as opposed to charging up at firing guns and half the guys getting killed. Always bomb the crap out of it first. Then, if there's anything left, go mop up. Better to have boring movies.
Your tactical acumen is breath-taking, where would these fleets of aircraft come from? How long between strikes? This plan of yours might take longer than your other stupid idea. Here the Japs are motivated because they can see and affect the members of the invading force. With your ridiculous bombing offensive Operation Milk Run there would only be the local morale boost.
Neither of the plans is decisive. Putting a force shore within range of enemy artillery that is bombed at best once a day, or sacrificing airmen while you search an area 3/4 the size of California at 200kts. There is always going to be 'something left' Douhet. What part of impervious to bomb and shell did you miss? Always! Every one of those positions would have to be rooted out, thousands of them. Hardly a 'boring movie'.
Your analysis is flawed because it includes a justification that can only be applied retroactively. By your own admission, 125,000+ people were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo and 135,000+ people were killed in the firebombing of Dresden ... and yet neither one of these attacks brought about the end of the war. With that in mind, what would be the basis of anyone's determination that dropping atomic bombs on two smaller targets would do anything to bring about the end of the war any faster?
The other flaw in your argument is that it is based on the premise that the end justifies the means. One of the problems there is that this same rationale can be used to justify anything, if the intended result is achieved. By those standards, both the Khobar Towers attack in 1998 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 must have been justified because they achieved Osama bin Laden's objective of removing U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia.
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