"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"hiroshima facts" wrote in message
m...


I'll accept 7-8% as valid.


Thats scarcel accurate given the

I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
figures for the Tokyo raid.




Actually the arms plant was the target.

It was the target the pilot was aiming for because it was all
he could see. But the target he was supposed to be hitting
at Nagasaki was the Mitsubishi Shipyards.


Not according to the crew who dropped it

Quote
We started an approach [to Nagasaki]," Olivi said, "but Beahan
couldn't see the target area [in the city east of the harbor].
Van Pelt, the navigator, was checking by radar to make sure we
had the right city, and it looked like we would be dropping the
bomb automatically by radar. At the last few seconds of the
bomb run, Beahan yelled into his mike, 'I've got a hole! I can
see it! I can see the target!' Apparently, he had spotted an
opening in the clouds only 20 seconds before releasing the
bomb."
In his debriefing later, Beahan told Tibbets, "I saw my aiming
point; there was no problem about it. I got the cross hairs on
it; I'd killed my rate; I'd killed my drift. The bomb had to
go."

/Quote


They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.


No its what they said at their debriefing, at the time this was
definitely NOT for public consumption

Well, they were stretching the truth for someone.

Unless they actually thought the arms factories were the shipyards.




They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might
have ended up in front of a court marshal for it.

They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.

Not quite, they were instructed not to BOMB using radar,

Thus my raised eyebrows at the statement "and it looked like we would
be dropping the bomb automatically by radar".




It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because
they did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay
(although I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb
fizzle would already be one with no survivors).

They considered the possibility

Yes, but I think it unlikely. I'm not sure how hard you have to smack
composition B to make it go off, but I wouldn't think anyone would
survive a crash that was that violent.



and you seem to be forrgetting that landing with an armed weapon of
any sort is risky let alone a nuclear weapon with a barometric
fuze.

The barometer was just part of the system. There was little danger of
the bomb going off without the arming cords pulled out.