(B2431) wrote:
(was Enola Gay: Burnt flesh and other magnificent
technological
achievements)
From:
Date: 12/23/2003 1:30 PM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

(B2431) wrote in message
...

I ask again, how would YOU have taken out
the legitimate targets in
Nagasaki
and Hiroshima using only weapons available
in WW2?

The same way that all previous legitimate targets
were taken out
during WWII.

While I'll admit that the firebombing of German
metros led to civilian
casualties approaching the same number of Hiroshima/Nagasaki,
there is
no comparison between the destruction of architecture
as women and
children huddle underground - and the bright
shining incineration of
all life within miles, poisoning the land for
a generation.

One of the reasons the numbers of the dead
in Hamburg and Dresden are on par
with Hiroshima or Nagasaki is because the women
and children who "huddled"
underground were either cooked alive or had
the air sucked out of them.

When it comes to that there were thre differences
between the firebombings and
atomic attacks: number of allied lives lost,
duration of the attack (read
suffering of the victims) and radiation. Bear
in mind long term radiation
effects were unknown at the time.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

That's correct. Although the Manhattan Project scientists knew about radiation,
they expected the radiation effects to be localized and of short-term duration.
Oppenheimer expected that anyone who had received a lethal dose of radiation
to have been already fatally injured by blast, heat, flying debris, etc.
They were completely suprised by the actual aftereffects they found in September
when Scientists and a military BDA team arrived.

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