I haven't heard that Paul, but it wouldn't surprise me. The Japanese were deathly afraid of a Soviet occupation. As a matter of fact, Saburo Sakai, the top suviving Japanese fighter ace of WW2 (who became an ardent pacifist after the war) once said the only way he'd ever climb in a fighter cockpit again was if "...the Soviet slavemasters ever reach out for Japan."
Sakai was offered a commission in the Japanese air force when it was re-established in the 1950's, but turned it down.
I'll defer to Firelock or any other history buff on this, but I heard that sometime after the war some Japanese dignitaries were visiting D. C. and learned that one scenario being considered was to work with Russia to invade Japan, then divide it the way it was done in Germany. Their response was something like, "Thank God you used the bomb."
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
I think what we are all trying to say - as horrific as the A-Bombs were. Their use saved countless lives - American and Japanese, as the succeeded in bringing a quick end of the war.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Firelock76 SD70Dude The Americans were also preparing to use chemical weapons in the invasion of Japan, they were stockpiling several kinds of poison gas in the Phillippines when the atomic bombs were dropped. Chemical weapons were stockpiled all right, but they were considered a last resort and were only to be used if the Japanese used them first. 'One chemical weapon that was definately being considered for use was actually what's called today a defoliant, an it was a precursor to the "Agent Orange" "used in Vietnam.' The idea was to attack the Japanese crops, rice, wheat, barley, any vegetables at all, causing mass starvation. So, it could have been worse, much worse. After the horrors of Iwo Jima and Okinawa the American forces weren't too crazy about an actual invasion, especially the Navy and Marine Corps, and were looking for alternatives.
SD70Dude The Americans were also preparing to use chemical weapons in the invasion of Japan, they were stockpiling several kinds of poison gas in the Phillippines when the atomic bombs were dropped.
The Americans were also preparing to use chemical weapons in the invasion of Japan, they were stockpiling several kinds of poison gas in the Phillippines when the atomic bombs were dropped.
Chemical weapons were stockpiled all right, but they were considered a last resort and were only to be used if the Japanese used them first.
'One chemical weapon that was definately being considered for use was actually what's called today a defoliant, an it was a precursor to the "Agent Orange" "used in Vietnam.' The idea was to attack the Japanese crops, rice, wheat, barley, any vegetables at all, causing mass starvation.
So, it could have been worse, much worse.
After the horrors of Iwo Jima and Okinawa the American forces weren't too crazy about an actual invasion, especially the Navy and Marine Corps, and were looking for alternatives.
One chemical weapon that was definately being considered for use was actually what's called today a defoliant, an it was a precursor to the "Agent Orange" used in Vietnam. The idea was to attack the Japanese crops, rice, wheat, barley, any vegetables at all, causing mass starvation.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Penny Trains Remember the Hibakusha on August 6th and 9th.
Remember the Hibakusha on August 6th and 9th.
If the War had been fought to a conventional weapons conclusion - there would likely have been up to a combined 10 Million more casualities than with the A-Bomb conclusion - most of those casualities would have been Japanese.
Tragic all right. Blame the Japanese warlords who were willing to fight to the last drop of everyone's blood but their own.
Lady Firestorm and I met a hibakusha years ago. She was the wife of a Marine warrant officer I worked with. Lady F asked where she was from (not knowing) and she said "Nagasaki." And then she said "Yes, I was there for the bombing."
You could have heard our jaws hitting the floor! Her story was she actually lived on the outskirts of the city, and was swimming with her brother that morning when the bomb fell. She was standing on the dock when the blast came and the shock wave knocked her into the water. Luckily neither she or her brother had any ill effects from the bomb.
Later I was talking with her husband and said "Bill, I didn't know your wife was from Nagasaki!" He said "Yeah, it's amazing. My wife's got as much combat time as I do!"
By the way, I had to look up hibakusha. That's a new word for me.
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
For those interested, years back aviation writer Martin Caidin wrote a book on the B-29 bombardment campaign on Japan called "A Torch To The Enemy." While telling the whole story and the "whys and wherefores" Caidin pulled no punches. He didn't glamorize the bombing campaign and showed it as an ugly but necessary job that had to be done.
If you can find it, grab it. It's a good story well told.
20th Air Force B-29's were routinely overloaded before they got off the ground at Tinian. More than a few didn't make it into the air.
LeMay was indeed a military genius. But he had no illusions about what he was doing. He once said:
"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."
Harris started showing what large scale incendiary bombing raids could do. LeMay however according to many in the 20th Air Force turned it into an art form. It was said LeMay had a map of every major Japanese city laid out on a table in the planning room. When 80 percent of the city was burned to ash he put a pin in it and supposedly said time for the next BBQing. He removed 4 tons of armor and guns from the B29 when he made them low level bombers. The weight he saved was converted into 4 tons more bombs. Normal raid high level was 20k lbs or 10 tons his low level planes staggered into the air with up to 29k lbs sometimes.
Firelock76 'Dude, here's something even scarier. When the V-2's started falling on London, and there was no defense against them, to say Winston Churchill was furious about it is putting it mildly. He wanted to hit back against the Germans, and hit back hard, but how to do it? Well, you know the Brits had a biological warfare research program of their own, and had developed a particularly virulent form of anthrax. Churchill knew about it and immediately proposed hitting the Germans with it, gentlemanly warfare be damned! The RAF chiefs talked him out of it. In the first place, to get a thorough blanketing of anthrax on Germany, that is enough to have an effect, would call for more bomber assets than the RAF could spare at the time. In the second place, Germany was losing the war anyway, it was just a matter of time until Hitler's defeat, and as terrifying as the V-2's were they weren't going to change that. In addition, the Allies would be occupying Germany after the war, and there's no such thing as a "patriotic germ," all that anthrax would kill Brits, Yanks, Russians, anyone it came in contact with just as well as it would kill Germans. So the proposal was dropped. Winston calmed down and saw reason. Scary, huh?
'Dude, here's something even scarier.
When the V-2's started falling on London, and there was no defense against them, to say Winston Churchill was furious about it is putting it mildly. He wanted to hit back against the Germans, and hit back hard, but how to do it?
Well, you know the Brits had a biological warfare research program of their own, and had developed a particularly virulent form of anthrax. Churchill knew about it and immediately proposed hitting the Germans with it, gentlemanly warfare be damned!
The RAF chiefs talked him out of it. In the first place, to get a thorough blanketing of anthrax on Germany, that is enough to have an effect, would call for more bomber assets than the RAF could spare at the time. In the second place, Germany was losing the war anyway, it was just a matter of time until Hitler's defeat, and as terrifying as the V-2's were they weren't going to change that. In addition, the Allies would be occupying Germany after the war, and there's no such thing as a "patriotic germ," all that anthrax would kill Brits, Yanks, Russians, anyone it came in contact with just as well as it would kill Germans.
So the proposal was dropped. Winston calmed down and saw reason.
Scary, huh?
"Butcher" Harris came up with a better plan anyway. Who needs anthrax when you have incendiary bombs, and lots of them!
I bet Dresden didn't find the RAF's response to be very gentlemanly.
Penny TrainsOne of the Manhattan project physicists said of the V-2 "those weapons made very little sense to me without nuclear warheads."
Just not in the modern sense. Heisenberg's effort was not aimed at prompt fission (and would likely not have produced anything technically usable for the required quantities of element needed for prompt chain reaction). It was clear to me even in my teens that the effort was aimed at radiological poisons, regardless of what Heisenberg tried to say about sabotaging the Nazi bomb effort later. Note that the issues (later brought up in connection with SCUDs in the Iraqi context) of degradation of chemical/biological weapons in ballistic flight do not apply to radiological material.
Now, how much the implicit (or explicit if Firelock's story is accurate) Porton Down threat governed the absence of radiological strikes remains an open question. Perhaps we will learn more when the wartime archives are fully opened.
This is second hand information from my hubby. According to his late grandfather the USN Medical corps learned one hell of a lesson at the Canal when close to 50% of the 1st Marines came down with Malaria during their time there that mosquito control was vital in the tropics and DDT and mosquito netting was almost as important as the bullets and helmets. It was nothing for the Navy to spray in the rear areas enough DDT to kill every single bug that was there.
I'm sure that he didn't. Groves wasn't going to win any popularity contests (his picture probably turned up on dartboards) but he did see that the job got done.
One of the Manhattan project physicists said of the V-2 "those weapons made very little sense to me without nuclear warheads." And he also went on to say "I listened to the BBC every night. Not so much because I wanted to hear the news, but rather because I was afraid one night I'd turn it on and they wouldn't be there." Luckily Von Braun's team was miles ahead of Heisenberg's which was proven by the time the Alsos group arrived at Heigerloch where the Nazi research reactor was built:
"Alsos" by the way is Greek for "a grove of trees", and General Leslie Groves who was in charge of the Manhattan District Engineers probably wouldn't have liked the ONI, OSRD and G-2 naming their mission a play on words using his name!
They had far more sinister ambitions for the Plague:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cherry_Blossoms_at_Night
I don't think those fleas would have accomplished very much. It was standard operating procedure for the Navy and Marine Corps to spray those Pacific islands with DDT during combat operations.
The purpose was to kill disease carrying flies and mosquitos, however DDT doesn't care what kind of bugs it kills, it would have gotten the fleas too.
The Japanese had sent a submarine carrying bubonic plague infested fleas to Saipan to help repel the invasion, fortunately for all, the submarine was sunk before it arrived at Saipan. Had those fleas been released in combat, the US would have likely retaliated with massive chemical and biological attacks against Japanese forces.
Here's something I caught yesterday while watching a documentary on the invasion of Saipan. Out of the 21k troops the Japanese had there to defend it only 200 even saw Japan after the war. The rest died for their emperor. Yet people today wonder why Truman ordered the atomic bomb dropped. This should show what we faced. In 1945 in order to take Iwo Jima and Okinawa it cost the USA a combined loos for those 2 islands 85 thousand killed or wounded. We also lost 26 ships from suicide attacks. The War Department in May of 45 while the battle for Okinawa was still going on got the initial estimated cost in men killed or wounded for Operation Downfall the invasion of Japan. They ordered 1.2 million Purple Hearts to give out. The USA as not ordered replacement Purple Hearts since 45.
Several years back I read a story by a survivor of the Yamato, he was a young officer at the time, newly commissioned.
Anyway, those 296 planes the US Navy sent out to get Yamato had gotten it well and truly. The admiral commanding the Japanese task force, the Yamato's captain, and other senior officers on the bridge were preparing to go down with the ship. The young officers said to each other "We'll go down with the ship too!" and began tying themselves to stanchions, railings, pipes, and other things when the admiral's chief of staff saw what they were up to.
"What are you people doing?"
"Oh, sir, the admiral's going to go down with the ship, so's our captain, and we're going down with him!"
"Have you lost your minds?" the staff chief roared at them. "You're all young men, you have your whole lives ahead of you! Stop that nonsense right now, get out of here, and try to save yourselves as best you can! Now! THAT'S AN ORDER!"
Well, orders are orders, so they all went over the side. One at least survived to tell the tale. He said he was forever grateful to that staff chief for saving him from his own foolishness.
Isn't that something?
BaltACDRemains of the vessel were scattered all over the ocean floor.
Yeah. It's a bit of a mess down there:
I guess my Starblazers fantasies of the 70's won't come to pass after all...
I'll have to look it up. My husband is a WW2 history buff to the point on Veterans and Memorial day the only channels he watches are TCM and any other channel showing Military movies. He has the Director's cut of Das Boot that he loves to play on our blueray disc player on the living room tv. Before his health failed him he used to be one of the players of Taps for deceased military men in this town for their funerals. He flat out told me they risked their lives for us it is the least he could do for them.
Shadow the Cats owner My hubby's late grandfather was part of the other half of this battle. He was on one of the transport ships that the boy's from Taffey group saved from meeting the Yamato and her fleet. Even before the Japanese Fleet had totally retreated out of the area his ships captain without orders headed into the battle area. They started pulling men from the water 2 hours after the Yamato ran away. His grandfather always said the men on those Escort Carriers groups never had to buy a drink at liberty the rest of the war if anyone from a transport ship was around. This should give you an idea how outweighed they were. The Yamato on her own displaced more water than every ship she faced that day and we still won the battle.
My hubby's late grandfather was part of the other half of this battle. He was on one of the transport ships that the boy's from Taffey group saved from meeting the Yamato and her fleet. Even before the Japanese Fleet had totally retreated out of the area his ships captain without orders headed into the battle area. They started pulling men from the water 2 hours after the Yamato ran away. His grandfather always said the men on those Escort Carriers groups never had to buy a drink at liberty the rest of the war if anyone from a transport ship was around. This should give you an idea how outweighed they were. The Yamato on her own displaced more water than every ship she faced that day and we still won the battle.
BaltACD Was watching 'Drain the Oceans' on the National Geographic Channel last night. A segment of the show was centered on finding the Yamato at the bottom of the ocean. While the ship did survive the engagement at Surigao Strait it was then returned to Japan and was outfitted for a 'kamikazi' style mission to challenge the entire American Navy - before it got to its intended attack point it was attacked by US arial forces - a type of attack the Yamato was not designed or equipped to defend against. The vessel sustained numerous bomb and tarpedo hits before taking on water and capsizing. In the process of capsizing ammunition being used in the #2 turret exploded and caused other munitions stored abord to also expolde - tearing the ship apart from the inside out. Remains of the vessel were scattered all over the ocean floor.
Was watching 'Drain the Oceans' on the National Geographic Channel last night. A segment of the show was centered on finding the Yamato at the bottom of the ocean. While the ship did survive the engagement at Surigao Strait it was then returned to Japan and was outfitted for a 'kamikazi' style mission to challenge the entire American Navy - before it got to its intended attack point it was attacked by US arial forces - a type of attack the Yamato was not designed or equipped to defend against. The vessel sustained numerous bomb and tarpedo hits before taking on water and capsizing. In the process of capsizing ammunition being used in the #2 turret exploded and caused other munitions stored abord to also expolde - tearing the ship apart from the inside out. Remains of the vessel were scattered all over the ocean floor.
A former co-worker stated that the US torpedo bombers were instructed to attack only one side of the ship with the intent of causing the ship to capsize.
On a related story, I remember seeig the obituary for one of the captains of the two subs that saw the main fleet heading for Leyte Gulf. Don't remember whther he was the capain of the Darter or of the Dace. It's scary to realize tha I first read about that battle less than 20 ears after it happened.
Shadow the Cats owner Backshop About 12 years ago, I was working in a sporting goods store and a much older gentleman came in wearing a BB43 USS Tennessee ballcap. I had just reread my copy of the Battle of Surigao Strait so everything was fresh in my mind. I asked him if that was "his" ship. He said yes and we talked for around 10 minutes. He had a huge smile because he was talking to someone who actually knew about his war. I asked him about Surigao Strait and he said "When our first salvo hit, I knew it was going to be a good night". My hubby's late grandfather was part of the other half of this battle. He was on one of the transport ships that the boy's from Taffey group saved from meeting the Yamato and her fleet. Even before the Japanese Fleet had totally retreated out of the area his ships captain without orders headed into the battle area. They started pulling men from the water 2 hours after the Yamato ran away. His grandfather always said the men on those Escort Carriers groups never had to buy a drink at liberty the rest of the war if anyone from a transport ship was around. This should give you an idea how outweighed they were. The Yamato on her own displaced more water than every ship she faced that day and we still won the battle.
Backshop About 12 years ago, I was working in a sporting goods store and a much older gentleman came in wearing a BB43 USS Tennessee ballcap. I had just reread my copy of the Battle of Surigao Strait so everything was fresh in my mind. I asked him if that was "his" ship. He said yes and we talked for around 10 minutes. He had a huge smile because he was talking to someone who actually knew about his war. I asked him about Surigao Strait and he said "When our first salvo hit, I knew it was going to be a good night".
About 12 years ago, I was working in a sporting goods store and a much older gentleman came in wearing a BB43 USS Tennessee ballcap. I had just reread my copy of the Battle of Surigao Strait so everything was fresh in my mind. I asked him if that was "his" ship. He said yes and we talked for around 10 minutes. He had a huge smile because he was talking to someone who actually knew about his war. I asked him about Surigao Strait and he said "When our first salvo hit, I knew it was going to be a good night".
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