Greatest Strategic Air Missions

"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

"Matt Wiser" wrote
in message
news:412a26b3$1@bg2....

It took a double-whammy of the A-bomb and
Ivan crossing into Manchuria and
Korea to end the war. The A-bomb alone might
not have been enough.
Anything
that prevents OLYMPIC and CORONET from having
to be executed had to be
done.
Period. The Japanese Cabinet was meeting to
discuss Hiroshima and the
Soviet
invasion when word reached them of the Nagasaki
strike. Next day Hirohito
decides that enough is enough. 14 Aug is the
attempted putsch that fails
and the Surrender announcement comes on the
15th. Next probable nuclear
strike
date was on 18 Aug with Kokura as the primary.
Bomb #3 was about to leave
Los Alamos on 10 Aug when a hold order arrived.
Two bombs and a million
and
a half Russians in the space of four days
forced Japan's surrender. End of
story and of war.

Overly simplistic, at least those last two sentences.
A hell of a lot more
than that went into the Japanese surrender equation.
The tightening sea
blockade, effective inshore mining by B-29's,
the creeping effects of the
B-29 raids against industrial and urban areas,
the gaining of bases at Iwo
Jima and Okinawa that now moved even more landbased
airpower into range of
Kyushu and Honshu, the isolation of large troop
garrisons in far-flung and
by then bypassed areas, the fact that they no
longer had any navy to speak
of outside kamikaze attack light combatants
being horded, along with their
remaining aircraft, to counter the feared invasion
of Kyushu, and of course
that feared homeland invasion itself (and the
fact that the more reasonable
Japanese leaders by then realized that "Ketsu-Go"
was invariably doomed to
failure when that invasion did come)...all of
these factors contributed to
the Japanese surrender. The first atomic bomb
was an attention getter, the
Soviet invasion was the closure of their forlorn
negotiated surrender hopes,
and the second bomb was the final closer.

Brooks

snip










And there was no way that the Kyushu invasion (OLYMPIC) could have been
repelled: Most Japanese defenses were on the beaches and inland in range
of NGFS, and a suggestion that the defense of Okinawa and Luzon be emulated
was rejected-the plan was defend on the beaches and in strength inland, but
once the beach defenses are broken, the Japanese coastal divisions have had
it, and the attempts to move reserves from South-Central Kyushu to counterattack
(Ariake Bay, where XI Corps with 1st Cav, 43rd and Americal Divisions would
have landed was considered by the Japanese to be the main battle area in
Kyushu) would have been exposed to air attack and have had very poor roads
on which to move anyway. Mostly grunts with little heavy equipment anyhow
and what armor they had would have suffered from air and naval gunfire before
even getting to the battle. Best case for Kyushu is 30 days, more likely
45-50 days before Southern Kyushu is relatively secure and the base-building
gets underway for to support CORONET.

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