If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#51
|
|||
|
|||
"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...
This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area. Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit. I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes, the aiming points were missed. Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed. I presume you have noticed the average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet. I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another before it detonates. The bombers could release together, or they could fly in one bomb every few minutes. It would work either way. Direct hits presumably mean ground bursts? Yes. All the bombs in my example were ground bursts. Why not parachute commandos in with machine guns and line up the population and just shoot them? It seems as realistic. Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear technology. Note deliberately targeting air raid shelters is more than any air force did in WWII, also such structures would best be attacked by armour piercing bombs. A nearby groundburst from an A-bomb would be quite effective. I expect that this will result in 99.9999% casualties amongst any part of the populace within the 100 PSI zone that is not inside an inconspicuous 100 PSI blast shelter. It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit. My assumptions are that nuclear weapons are incredibly effective. They are perfectly capable of producing a 100 PSI shock. You can explain how come 7% of the people caught within 1,000 feet survived the real attacks despite no warning but you have decided to announce only 1 survivor in a million for your hypothetical attack? None of the survivors experienced a 100+ PSI overpressure. Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense radiation. I included the one-in-a-million survivor just to be conservative in my estimate. Had WWII continued, our weapons output in early 1946 should have been able to produce enough A-bombs every three months to achieve that level of destruction over an area of 3.5 square miles. The Tokyo fire storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all buildings in the city. Right so we have nuclear attacks delivering 60 to 100,000 kt being compared to conventional attacks delivering around 5% the explosive yield. My example used about 1,000kt total explosive power. Furthermore the aircrew delivering the nuclear attacks have superb intelligence and well above average accuracy, no weather problems, interceptions, mechanical failures and so on. The bomb tonnage delivered by the 20th Air Force looks like this, month, tonnage Jun-44 547 Jul-44 209 Aug-44 252 Sep-44 521 Oct-44 1,669 Nov-44 2,205 Dec-44 3,661 Jan-45 3,410 Feb-45 4,020 Mar-45 15,283 Apr-45 17,492 May-45 24,285 Jun-45 32,542 Jul-45 43,091 Aug-45 21,873 Now add the arrival of the previously European based bomber units to the 1946 attacks if we are going to talk 1946, including RAF units. After all there was still 75% of Tokyo to go. I saw nothing in any three month period that would equal 1,000kt worth of explosive. I expect that no conventional weapons attack, from any era you choose, could achieve that level of casualties. This is hardly surprising, since the nuclear attacks are simply allowed to be so good and so much bigger than the attacks they are being compared to. The result was in before the experiment was run. Nuclear weapons are allowed to be so much bigger because they ARE so much bigger. Had the war continued into 1946, our bomb output would have been 332.42 kilotons per month (although no single bomb would be over 50kt). Since nuclear weapons have to potential to provide much more explosive power than can be achieved by conventional weapons, and thus kill far more people than can be achieved by conventional weapons, I think it is fair to note this when comparing nukes to conventional weapons. Try again, fair is comparing lethality versus the effort expended, tonnage of explosives used for example, not by changing the definitions. It is fair to note that by providing much more tonnage of explosive than could ever be provided by conventional weapons, nuclear weapons can kill far more people. Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call that "fair". I acknowledge that bioweapons are equal to nukes in killing people. They are considered WMDs for very good reason. I suggest rather than changing the subject you start to analyse why you need to bias the results in favour of nuclear weapons. I have no need to bias anything. Nuclear weapons are far more deadly than conventional weapons on their own, with no need of bias. It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks. How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50% of the people in a 2km radius? |
#52
|
|||
|
|||
|
#53
|
|||
|
|||
hiroshima facts wrote in message . ..
"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ... This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server deleted text, "No this is not a version, this is a change of subject, from the fact the definitions were changed when comparing the lethality of WWII nuclear and conventional attacks." Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area. Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit. I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes, the aiming points were missed. Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed. Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios. As an aside when the 8th Air Force measured accuracy in the final 4 months of 1944 it found in good visibility 64.3% of bombs landed within 1/2 a mile, 91.5% within 3 miles. So a ground burst 1/2 a mile away (1 in 3 bombs) is considered good enough to destroy underground shelters, another myth. The above accuracies were from around 20 to 25,000 feet. Moving from a bombing altitude of 20,000 feet to 30,000 feet roughly doubled the average error. The rate of increase in error went up as altitude went up. The bombing errors at 20,000 feet were around 4/3 those at 10,000 feet on average. I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy I presume you have noticed the average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet. I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another before it detonates. The bombers could release together, Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the middle to escape the blasts. or they could fly in one bomb every few minutes. It would work either way. Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual bombers? Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again? Direct hits presumably mean ground bursts? Yes. All the bombs in my example were ground bursts. Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the bomb failing to explode. Why not parachute commandos in with machine guns and line up the population and just shoot them? It seems as realistic. Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear technology. Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities than historical, just ignore WWII experience, go with the 1930's the bomber will always get through, and destroy civilisation. Note deliberately targeting air raid shelters is more than any air force did in WWII, also such structures would best be attacked by armour piercing bombs. A nearby groundburst from an A-bomb would be quite effective. So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your opinion to destroy an underground shelter? I expect that this will result in 99.9999% casualties amongst any part of the populace within the 100 PSI zone that is not inside an inconspicuous 100 PSI blast shelter. It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit. My assumptions are that nuclear weapons are incredibly effective. They are perfectly capable of producing a 100 PSI shock. It is becoming clear that your assumptions are nuclear weapons incredibly bad, definitions altered to suit. You can explain how come 7% of the people caught within 1,000 feet survived the real attacks despite no warning but you have decided to announce only 1 survivor in a million for your hypothetical attack? None of the survivors experienced a 100+ PSI overpressure. So we are talking about the 7% of people within 1,000 feet who survived so presumably we are talking about the nuclear explosions being within less than 1,000 feet of each other. Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense radiation. Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an area of no cover etc. I included the one-in-a-million survivor just to be conservative in my estimate. This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure? Had WWII continued, our weapons output in early 1946 should have been able to produce enough A-bombs every three months to achieve that level of destruction over an area of 3.5 square miles. The Tokyo fire storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all buildings in the city. Right so we have nuclear attacks delivering 60 to 100,000 kt being compared to conventional attacks delivering around 5% the explosive yield. Oops my mistake above should be tons, not kilotons. My example used about 1,000kt total explosive power. This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack. This will be launched in crystal clear weather, with no interceptions, no interference from fires already started, with accurate intelligence as to air raid shelters, with precision unheard of in WWII and is still unheard of for free falling bombs from 30,000+ feet, against an unwarned population, and so on. Since we are now moving into mass produced weapons the problems of fusing and weapons assembly need to be made clear. When the allies inspected the unexploded bombs dropped on German oil installations they found around 15% had not exploded, many due to the tails falling off, but also fuses. A 2.5% failure rate would be 1 unexploded nuclear weapon per 40 weapon strike. Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it. Furthermore the aircrew delivering the nuclear attacks have superb intelligence and well above average accuracy, no weather problems, interceptions, mechanical failures and so on. The bomb tonnage delivered by the 20th Air Force looks like this, month, tonnage Jun-44 547 Jul-44 209 Aug-44 252 Sep-44 521 Oct-44 1,669 Nov-44 2,205 Dec-44 3,661 Jan-45 3,410 Feb-45 4,020 Mar-45 15,283 Apr-45 17,492 May-45 24,285 Jun-45 32,542 Jul-45 43,091 Aug-45 21,873 Now add the arrival of the previously European based bomber units to the 1946 attacks if we are going to talk 1946, including RAF units. After all there was still 75% of Tokyo to go. I saw nothing in any three month period that would equal 1,000kt worth of explosive. Yet again we have someone giving their preferred outcome a helping hand and trying to pretend the "competitor" will not also improve. Instead we have a 1 megaton atomic attack, 40 times the biggest attack in WWII, with more precision than any WWII attack short of those low level types, skip bombing ships or sending bombs through the walls of Gestapo HQs. It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around 150,000 tons of bombs dropped. The above figures for the 20th air force were without any transferred units. How many Japanese cities would be left by the time the nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike would be ready? I expect that no conventional weapons attack, from any era you choose, could achieve that level of casualties. This is hardly surprising, since the nuclear attacks are simply allowed to be so good and so much bigger than the attacks they are being compared to. The result was in before the experiment was run. Nuclear weapons are allowed to be so much bigger because they ARE so much bigger. Ah yes, just ignore the way the definitions have been altered to make them look even worse. Had the war continued into 1946, our bomb output would have been 332.42 kilotons per month (although no single bomb would be over 50kt). The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it could do so in 1946. I like the two digits precision when calculating yields given the 10% variation in estimates of the yields of the weapons used. Since nuclear weapons have to potential to provide much more explosive power than can be achieved by conventional weapons, and thus kill far more people than can be achieved by conventional weapons, I think it is fair to note this when comparing nukes to conventional weapons. Try again, fair is comparing lethality versus the effort expended, tonnage of explosives used for example, not by changing the definitions. It is fair to note that by providing much more tonnage of explosive than could ever be provided by conventional weapons, nuclear weapons can kill far more people. Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons. Now stop comparing the lethality of conventional and nuclear attacks from WWII which were nothing like the new "fair" standard. How about we change the HE bombs into biowar weapons, then call that "fair". I acknowledge that bioweapons are equal to nukes in killing people. They are considered WMDs for very good reason. I suggest rather than changing the subject you start to analyse why you need to bias the results in favour of nuclear weapons. I have no need to bias anything. Nuclear weapons are far more deadly than conventional weapons on their own, with no need of bias. This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack, after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there is no need to rig the results. The RAF used 2.7kt to kill 40,000 people at Hamburg, call it 3kt, now multiply by 333 to give the RAF a 1,000 kt strike. Other attacks could drop 3kt bombs and kill only a few people. Rather than trying to understand this we have the attempts to use 2 (nuclear) strikes and extrapolate them using the sort of precision and weather the modern USAF would be envious of and multiplying the explosive yields by a factor of 40 or more. After all the Nagasaki bomb was around 10 times the explosive yield of the Hamburg raid and killed fewer people. Yet we have a strike at 40 times the Nagasaki yield going in and casualties going up about linearly, but then it is assumed to be a perfect strike. It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks. How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50% of the people in a 2km radius? I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten 40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs? Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way, just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together, all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc. The rest of the post is simply deleted text, It was also quite possible to have minimal loss of life in a major conventional attack. These are the results of thousands of WWII bombing raids. Trying to selectively choose results and definitions to make the 2 nuclear attacks look more lethal is foolish, after all in absolute terms Nagasaki was around 1/2 the casualties, and in explosive terms around 2/7 the casualties. Those figures alone should give pause to the creation of wonder nuclear strikes. The limit on conventional delivery of explosives is aircraft over target, the Lancaster delivered around 10,000 pounds of bombs, put a modern bomber on the job and the number goes up by a factor of 4 or so. Or simply switch to a combination of conventional bombing and missile strikes to increase the explosive delivery rate. Just as the WWII limitations on nuclear strikes have gone away, keep the bomb small enough for the aircraft to survive, the limitations on delivering conventional bombs have been significantly reduced. Hamburg was so lethal because of the firestorm killing people in otherwise safe shelters. Normally the best thing to do in an air raid is get into a shelter. Large numbers of people running away on the surface are going to be killed by blast, stampedes, vehicle collisions and so on. The IJN strike on Pearl Harbor used around 0.1 to 0.15 kt of bombs, killed 2,400 people. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was around 100 times more powerful, it should have killed 240,000 people at this level of lethality. Take away the people killed on the Arizona and you still end up with the Hiroshima bomb needing to kill around 120,000 for equivalent lethality. Try to understand the results of air raids in WWII varied dramatically, using 2 attacks to generalise the effects is an exercise in selective quotation, not facts. I would have thought the sudden attack ability comes down to the delivery system, aircraft, ICBM, shipping container, truck, and the warning system in place to detect the approaching delivery system. There are clear examples from WWII of populations ignoring warnings until it was too late because the bombers had previously always attacked somewhere else. Again this assumes people are unprotected and ignores the fact fleeing during an attack is likely to raise the number of dead. The protection from blast gives good protection from radiation. A machine gun can kill thousands of people per hour if they have no protection. Now we have "core area" to go with "area affected". Understand there are plenty of raids in WWII that killed more people than the atomic strikes per ton of explosive dropped. Even in terms of absolute numbers killed Hiroshima comes in at 1 or 2 with Tokyo, Nagasaki at 4 behind Hamburg at 3, Dresden at 5. It has everything to do with it if you want to compare conventional and nuclear attack lethalities, otherwise why not simply compare the lethality of say 2 Zeppelins in WWI and 100 Lancasters in WWII. No guess as to which one kills more people. Sigh, to minimise casualties move people before or after the raid, not during it, keep shelters away from flammable areas, keep the people in the shelters during the raid. Movement during a raid is obscured by smoke and dust and exposes people to shrapnel, blast, stampedes and rapidly changing conditions, the "bridge" to safety being hit for example, the confusion as landmarks are destroyed or obscured. In WWII the lethality of conventional attacks varied widely, starting large fires was the usual way of killing large numbers of people, incendiary bombs were the best way to start fires. The WWII nuclear attacks were at least 3 times more powerful in explosive terms than the biggest conventional raid, but the biggest conventional raid was not the most lethal, in either absolute terms or deaths per ton of bombs used. So far instead of supplying facts you are supplying opinions and showing a great lack of knowledge about the results of conventional air raids. Then you bias the definitions to make the nuclear attacks look more dangerous. Geoffrey Sinclair Remove the nb for email. |
#54
|
|||
|
|||
"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...
Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area. Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit. I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes, the aiming points were missed. Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed. Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios. They could always scrub the raid if the weather didn't cooperate. I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy No. I was using WWII technology, which didn't have such. I presume you have noticed the average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet. I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another before it detonates. The bombers could release together, Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the middle to escape the blasts. The area being blasted doesn't seem so great that an aircraft in the middle couldn't escape. Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual bombers? They could have decoy aircraft fly in each time a bomb was dropped. Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again? The mushroom clouds themselves can become landmarks. Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the bomb failing to explode. I am not sure that topography would be that significant that close to a nuclear explosion. I am skeptical that the bomb would fail to explode. I'd think a reliable contact fuse could be devised using WWII technology. If not, an extremely close range proximity fuse would work. Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear technology. Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities than historical, I see no basis for saying that WWII technology could not achieve a ground burst. So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your opinion to destroy an underground shelter? Depends on the shelter's blast resistance. A 49kt bomb would have a blast overpressure of 200 PSI at 1,000 feet. Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense radiation. Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an area of no cover etc. The 100+ PSI overpressure, followed by 1,777+ MPH winds, would do a good job of removing any cover that might protect against the 200,000+ rads of penetrating radiation that people would experience, unless they were in a shelter designed to resist it. This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure? For a 37kt groundburst, 0.228416 mile. This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack. By 1946, we would have been able to produce 37kt bombs at a rate of 7.76 per month. And we would have been able to produce some additional 18kt bombs at a rate of 2.516667 per month. The material for the 18kt bombs could have been used instead to produce 49kt bombs, but at a much lower rate. I used a three-month production of 18kt and 37kt bombs. However, I was conservative in my initial figures, and the specified level of damage could be achieved by the 37kt bombs alone. This would give the US the opportunity to forgo the 18kt bombs and make some 49kt ones for use against bunkers. Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it. I am cooking nothing. These ARE the levels of damage that nukes can provide. It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around 150,000 tons of bombs dropped. Which was less than half of the explosive output that our A-bomb program would have been able to produce once it got going. How many Japanese cities would be left by the time the nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike would be ready? However many cities we chose to spare from conventional bombing. The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it could do so in 1946. It would have reached that level of production. And yes, I used three months of production. Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons. Nothing is rigged. 100 PSI overpressure, 1777 MPH winds, 200000 rads of radiation, and (for many people in the targeted area) exposure to fireball plasma, all tend to produce very high fatality rates. This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack, after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there is no need to rig the results. There is no rigging of results. Just an accurate statement of the destructive force produced by nuclear weapons. It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks. How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50% of the people in a 2km radius? I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten 40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs? Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way, just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together, all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc. So how many conventional bombs do you think it would take to achieve that? |
#55
|
|||
|
|||
Howard Berkowitz wrote in message ...
Before assuming that you can salvo nuclear weapons, or drop them in formation, read up a bit on the "dense pack" model of ICBM basing. Also consider the winds after the first burst. I don't think they would be dropped quite *that* close to each other in my example. And if we waited a few minutes between each drop, all the really intense neutron activity would have diminished. |
#56
|
|||
|
|||
hiroshima facts wrote in message . ..
"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ... deleted text, "No this is not a version, this is a change of subject, from the fact the definitions were changed when comparing the lethality of WWII nuclear and conventional attacks." Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area. Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit. I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes, the aiming points were missed. Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed. Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios. They could always scrub the raid if the weather didn't cooperate. This is becoming absolutely hysterical, the USAAF found that bombing from 20 to 25,000 feet around 1 day in 5 was suitable for clear visual bombing, furthermore even with the better weather forecasts available over Europe only 2/3 of the visual bombing weather forecasts proved accurate. Look up the problems the 20th Air Force had with Japanese weather. Where is the USAAF direct line to the weather gods? Deleted text, As an aside when the 8th Air Force measured accuracy in the final 4 months of 1944 it found in good visibility 64.3% of bombs landed within 1/2 a mile, 91.5% within 3 miles. So a ground burst 1/2 a mile away (1 in 3 bombs) is considered good enough to destroy underground shelters, another myth. The above accuracies were from around 20 to 25,000 feet. Moving from a bombing altitude of 20,000 feet to 30,000 feet roughly doubled the average error. The rate of increase in error went up as altitude went up. The bombing errors at 20,000 feet were around 4/3 those at 10,000 feet on average. I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy No. I was using WWII technology, which didn't have such. So the nuclear weapons will achieve great accuracy despite being dropped from 30,000+ feet and without doing much to make them aerodynamic. I presume you have noticed the average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet. I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another before it detonates. The bombers could release together, Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the middle to escape the blasts. The area being blasted doesn't seem so great that an aircraft in the middle couldn't escape. lets see now 40 nuclear weapons set to go off around 2,000 feet from each other. 1 in the middle, next circle at 2,000 feet so say 14 weapons there, then at 4,000 feet so say 28 weapons there. Bomber moving at say 360 mph, or 1 mile every 10 seconds, 528 feet per second. Now it comes down to time for the bomb to drop and its explosive yield. Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual bombers? They could have decoy aircraft fly in each time a bomb was dropped. The ignorance you are displaying in order to try and make up these absurd scenarios is quite amazing. A single decoy? How about a formation with escorts with all the friendly fire risks that means. Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again? The mushroom clouds themselves can become landmarks. The hysterical idea the mushroom clouds are landmarks, simply assume they are all in the correct spot I presume and they do not count for dust and smoke when obscuring the target. Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the bomb failing to explode. I am not sure that topography would be that significant that close to a nuclear explosion. I like this effort to assume yet again that topography can be ignored given the results at Nagasaki. I am skeptical that the bomb would fail to explode. I'd think a reliable contact fuse could be devised using WWII technology. If not, an extremely close range proximity fuse would work. One day you may notice the large number of UXBs in all wars, mass produced fuses fail, armourers fail to load them correctly, the bomb hits at an incorrect angle, the valve electronics in proximity fuses shatter and so on. This is reality. Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear technology. Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities than historical, Deleted text, just ignore WWII experience, go with the 1930's the bomber will always get through, and destroy civilisation. I see no basis for saying that WWII technology could not achieve a ground burst. Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities than historical, just ignore WWII experience, go with the 1930's the bomber will always get through, and destroy civilisation. It is quite simple, if the bombers had the sort of abilities postulated for these theoretical nuclear strikes, and the targets that defenceless, then WWII would have been over years before any nuclear weapons would have been built. Indeed there would be little call for them, given the results of conventional bombing. So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your opinion to destroy an underground shelter? Depends on the shelter's blast resistance. A 49kt bomb would have a blast overpressure of 200 PSI at 1,000 feet. So we have the bombers dropping bombs around 1,000 to 1,500 feet apart, and a miss in the order of 1,000 feet becomes significant, the 8th air force figures, for 3 boxes of bombers from 29,000 feet was an average error of 1,605 feet expected. Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense radiation. Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an area of no cover etc. The 100+ PSI overpressure, followed by 1,777+ MPH winds, would do a good job of removing any cover that might protect against the 200,000+ rads of penetrating radiation that people would experience, unless they were in a shelter designed to resist it. Yes folks, the population are all on the surface walking around, and the shelters with all that concrete are transparent to the radiation produced. By the way 1,777 MPH? how about 1,800 MPH at a given distance, after all could it not be a 1,776 MPH wild, or 1,778 MPH? This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure? For a 37kt groundburst, 0.228416 mile. My we have a spreadsheet jockey present it seems, this translates to 1,206 feet 0.4368 inches. Presumably at standard atmospheric pressure and temperature? So at 1,606 feet 0.4369 inches the people start to survive in much greater numbers? How about given the realities of physics and uncertainties weapons yields in we say around 1,200 feet? This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack. deleted text, "This will be launched in crystal clear weather, with no interceptions, no interference from fires already started, with accurate intelligence as to air raid shelters, with precision unheard of in WWII and is still unheard of for free falling bombs from 30,000+ feet, against an unwarned population, and so on. Since we are now moving into mass produced weapons the problems of fusing and weapons assembly need to be made clear. When the allies inspected the unexploded bombs dropped on German oil installations they found around 15% had not exploded, many due to the tails falling off, but also fuses. A 2.5% failure rate would be 1 unexploded nuclear weapon per 40 weapon strike." By 1946, we would have been able to produce 37kt bombs at a rate of 7.76 per month. And we would have been able to produce some additional 18kt bombs at a rate of 2.516667 per month. The material for the 18kt bombs could have been used instead to produce 49kt bombs, but at a much lower rate. Yet again we have this wonder precision, 7.76 is 93.12 bombs in 12 months, what was the 0.12 bomb about? 2.516667 is 30.2 bombs in 12 months, what was the 0.2 bomb about? Like any mass production line it takes time to ramp up production, if you are serious then in around the end of year 2 or early year 3 you are producing around as much in a month as during all of year 1. Assuming a nice linear delivery schedule is against the laws of mobilisation. Also do not forget things like accidents or fires causing delays in production. I used a three-month production of 18kt and 37kt bombs. However, I was conservative in my initial figures, and the specified level of damage could be achieved by the 37kt bombs alone. This would give the US the opportunity to forgo the 18kt bombs and make some 49kt ones for use against bunkers. You are not being conservative you are assuming so many "perfects" it is showing appalling ignorance of bombing raids, you are busily playing with mathematical models to absurd levels of precision. Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it. I am cooking nothing. These ARE the levels of damage that nukes can provide. Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it. deleted text, "Yet again we have someone giving their preferred outcome a helping hand and trying to pretend the "competitor" will not also improve. Instead we have a 1 megaton atomic attack, 40 times the biggest attack in WWII, with more precision than any WWII attack short of those low level types, skip bombing ships or sending bombs through the walls of Gestapo HQs." It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around 150,000 tons of bombs dropped. deleted text, The above figures for the 20th air force were without any transferred units. Which was less than half of the explosive output that our A-bomb program would have been able to produce once it got going. Congratulations on noticing nuclear weapons have greater yields, just pretend to ignore the assumptions of perfect precision delivery of the weapons on a perfect, unwarned target as the basis for figuring out lethality. How many Japanese cities would be left by the time the nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike would be ready? However many cities we chose to spare from conventional bombing. So provide the list, the USAAF had real trouble finding such targets by mid 1945. The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it could do so in 1946. It would have reached that level of production. And yes, I used three months of production. So we have 1 strike per 3 months, in the mean time the conventional bombers are delivering their standard, increasing, tonnage every month, joined by the Navy aircraft and even battleships on coastal targets. Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons. Nothing is rigged. 100 PSI overpressure, 1777 MPH winds, 200000 rads of radiation, and (for many people in the targeted area) exposure to fireball plasma, all tend to produce very high fatality rates. Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons. Remember the 2km radius for the nuclear attacks but a different definition for the conventional attacks? This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack, after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there is no need to rig the results. There is no rigging of results. Just an accurate statement of the destructive force produced by nuclear weapons. This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack, after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there is no need to rig the results. deleted text, The RAF used 2.7kt to kill 40,000 people at Hamburg, call it 3kt, now multiply by 333 to give the RAF a 1,000 kt strike. Other attacks could drop 3kt bombs and kill only a few people. Rather than trying to understand this we have the attempts to use 2 (nuclear) strikes and extrapolate them using the sort of precision and weather the modern USAF would be envious of and multiplying the explosive yields by a factor of 40 or more. After all the Nagasaki bomb was around 10 times the explosive yield of the Hamburg raid and killed fewer people. Yet we have a strike at 40 times the Nagasaki yield going in and casualties going up about linearly, but then it is assumed to be a perfect strike. It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks. How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50% of the people in a 2km radius? I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten 40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs? Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way, just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together, all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc. So how many conventional bombs do you think it would take to achieve that? Against an unwarned population out in the open a few hundred loads of fragmentation bombs, plus maybe a 100 precision guided AP weapons on the well known shelters and a few hundred loads of mixed HE and incendiary to burn the city, to ensure the injured have little chance of escaping. Using the "bomber is perfect" school of attack lethality calculation, no smoke problems, interceptions etc. The rest of the post is simply deleted text, It was also quite possible to have minimal loss of life in a major conventional attack. These are the results of thousands of WWII bombing raids. Trying to selectively choose results and definitions to make the 2 nuclear attacks look more lethal is foolish, after all in absolute terms Nagasaki was around 1/2 the casualties, and in explosive terms around 2/7 the casualties. Those figures alone should give pause to the creation of wonder nuclear strikes. The limit on conventional delivery of explosives is aircraft over target, the Lancaster delivered around 10,000 pounds of bombs, put a modern bomber on the job and the number goes up by a factor of 4 or so. Or simply switch to a combination of conventional bombing and missile strikes to increase the explosive delivery rate. Just as the WWII limitations on nuclear strikes have gone away, keep the bomb small enough for the aircraft to survive, the limitations on delivering conventional bombs have been significantly reduced. Hamburg was so lethal because of the firestorm killing people in otherwise safe shelters. Normally the best thing to do in an air raid is get into a shelter. Large numbers of people running away on the surface are going to be killed by blast, stampedes, vehicle collisions and so on. The IJN strike on Pearl Harbor used around 0.1 to 0.15 kt of bombs, killed 2,400 people. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was around 100 times more powerful, it should have killed 240,000 people at this level of lethality. Take away the people killed on the Arizona and you still end up with the Hiroshima bomb needing to kill around 120,000 for equivalent lethality. Try to understand the results of air raids in WWII varied dramatically, using 2 attacks to generalise the effects is an exercise in selective quotation, not facts. I would have thought the sudden attack ability comes down to the delivery system, aircraft, ICBM, shipping container, truck, and the warning system in place to detect the approaching delivery system. There are clear examples from WWII of populations ignoring warnings until it was too late because the bombers had previously always attacked somewhere else. Again this assumes people are unprotected and ignores the fact fleeing during an attack is likely to raise the number of dead. The protection from blast gives good protection from radiation. A machine gun can kill thousands of people per hour if they have no protection. Now we have "core area" to go with "area affected". Understand there are plenty of raids in WWII that killed more people than the atomic strikes per ton of explosive dropped. Even in terms of absolute numbers killed Hiroshima comes in at 1 or 2 with Tokyo, Nagasaki at 4 behind Hamburg at 3, Dresden at 5. It has everything to do with it if you want to compare conventional and nuclear attack lethalities, otherwise why not simply compare the lethality of say 2 Zeppelins in WWI and 100 Lancasters in WWII. No guess as to which one kills more people. Sigh, to minimise casualties move people before or after the raid, not during it, keep shelters away from flammable areas, keep the people in the shelters during the raid. Movement during a raid is obscured by smoke and dust and exposes people to shrapnel, blast, stampedes and rapidly changing conditions, the "bridge" to safety being hit for example, the confusion as landmarks are destroyed or obscured. In WWII the lethality of conventional attacks varied widely, starting large fires was the usual way of killing large numbers of people, incendiary bombs were the best way to start fires. The WWII nuclear attacks were at least 3 times more powerful in explosive terms than the biggest conventional raid, but the biggest conventional raid was not the most lethal, in either absolute terms or deaths per ton of bombs used. So far instead of supplying facts you are supplying opinions and showing a great lack of knowledge about the results of conventional air raids. Then you bias the definitions to make the nuclear attacks look more dangerous. Geoffrey Sinclair Remove the nb for email. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
How accurate was B-26 bombing? | ArtKramr | Military Aviation | 59 | March 3rd 04 10:10 PM |
Area bombing is not a dirty word. | ArtKramr | Military Aviation | 82 | February 11th 04 02:10 PM |
WW2 bombing | Bernardz | Military Aviation | 10 | January 14th 04 01:07 PM |
WarPac War Plans-any conventional? | Matt Wiser | Military Aviation | 1 | December 8th 03 09:29 PM |
Looking for Info. on Vietnam Bombing | Seraphim | Military Aviation | 0 | October 19th 03 01:52 AM |