HIROSHIMA!

[Sir John]

saved a million lives!



SJ

[Deleted]

Hiroshmia was not the primary target the primary target was clouded in so shit happens .

[Deleted]

One of the weirdest, most spooky feelings I ever had when I was in the Army was when we flew a mission in the mid-60s that took us over and around Hiroshima several times. Looking down only 20 years after the bomb was dropped left me with a profound feeling of not understanding what really happened.

[johnhsime]

<saved a million lives!>

One of whom was my father, all slated to be part of the invasion of Japan in the upcoming November, just like he had been on Iwo Jima........ If you liked Vietnam, you would have loved the US invasion of Japan, ....for the next 1, 2, 3, 4+ years.

[Swampy]

Aug 6, 2013 3:29:51 GMT -5 Sir John said:

saved a million lives!

Many of whom were Japanese.

[Sir John]

MS,


Almost correct. Hiroshima was the primary target but Nagasaki was not. From memory the second city on the list was Nagoya.

SJ

[Sir John]

Swampy,

Correct, but even more were Chinese.

The Pacific War was costing 10,000 lives A DAY, and at that stage most were Chinese.

SJ

[Swampy]

Consider the number of Japanese that would have been killed if the Allies had to invade.

[Sir John]

'Operation Ketsu-Go'

[griffin]

Hiroshima and Kokura were the primary targets. Nagasaki was the secondary target if Kokura weather conditions weren't right.

What a lot of people don't understand is that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were important naval bases. Hiroshima was where the Yamato was built and Mitsubishi built Yamato's sister ship the Battleship Musashi in Nagasaki. The magnitude of these BB were incredible. As an example each of the 18-inch gun turrets weighed about the same as some allied destroyers. Even the USN Iowa Class BB were smaller and outgunned.

These were definite military bases and readily identified as good targets.

[Deleted]

I read an interesting story years ago about allied soldiers POWs who were being held in the cargo hold of a Japanese freighter tied up to a wharf in Hiroshima when the city was bombed, they were the only ones left alive because they were below water level inside the steel hull.

[Sir John]

griffin,

They were selected not only because they were military targets, but also because the were relatively undamaged and able to show clear picture of the effects of a nuke.

The US had bomb #3 in bits on Tinian and ready to use a week after Nagasaki. 'Manhattan' had set up a production line that was churning out a new bomb ever 7 to 10 days.

The final target list had I think EIGHT cities on it!


SJ

[griffin]

Aug 6, 2013 10:47:40 GMT -5 Swampy said:

Aug 6, 2013 3:29:51 GMT -5 Sir John said:

saved a million lives!

Many of whom were Japanese.

A potential loss of Japanese military and civilians was expected to be in the range of several million. On the allied side they were looking at more than 100,000 casualties if landings proceeded. The large number of US ships sunk or seriously damaged due to Kamikaze raids during the Okinawan campaign, caused the USN, Marines, and Army to reassess upwards the number of expected casualties, including civilian deaths.

Faced with such losses, even if just factoring in allied losses, President Truman made the right decision. The bombings as terrible as they were, saved millions of lives on both sides of the conflict.

Paul

[Sir John]

Paul,

The planes carefully saved and hidden on Kyushu were to be used primarily against the troop-ships as soon as they came within range. Also, they were to be used all at once instead of the Okinawa method of groups of 100 or so.

Imagine waves of kamikazis taking out 50 or so troops ships, all holding maybe 5000 soldiers. IMHO, Olympic would have failed.


'Operation Ketsu-Go'


SJ

[Swampy]

Those pilots had zilch training, and, if their compatriots couldn't stop the landings at Okinawa, they wouldn't have stopped it at Kyushu.