Hiroshima/Nagasaki vs conventional B-17 bombing

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...


I dont think all the population of Tokyo were in the area
affected by its bombing either

Correct. Only about 1 million people.




but the target at Hiroshima was the military HQ and there
were at least 30,000 soldiers in the area.

43,000 Japanese soldiers (20,000 of which were killed by the bomb).

I never saw figures for injuries, but I imagine a lot of the rest had
some serious injuries.




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.




In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted

Not half population of the cities. But half the population in the
areas affected by the bombs.

"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...

So presumably the "affected area/population" is being defined as
something less than the total city, only the districts damaged to a
defined extent and affects on people again to a defined extent.

Yes.



Arthur Harris' acreage destroyed table says 75% of Hamburg and
59% of Dresden were destroyed during the war. The Tokyo fire
storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all
buildings in the city, over 1,000,000 left homeless.

The attack on Hiroshima killed around 80,000 and made a further
180,000 homeless, so 80/260 or 31% of the people affected, using
homeless and killed as the definition of affected. As noted above
Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8% using this measure.

The figures behind the 10% claim presume 1 million affected and
100,000 killed.

I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
for the estimate I was quoting.




I agree with the rest:

One problem with comparing the data is the non atomic attacks
were against alerted cities, with people in shelters, the atomic
strikes were against unalerted cities and it makes a big difference
to the casualty figures. On 5 April 1943 the USAAF hit the Antwerp
industrial area with 172 short tons of bombs, killing 936 civilians,
it would appear the population assumed the bombers were going
somewhere else. There are plenty of such examples from the air
war in Europe, as late as April 1945 with the RAF attack on
Potsdam, the population appears to have assumed an attack on
Berlin, one estimate is perhaps 5,000 dead, the pre war population
was 74,000, 1,962 short tons of bombs dropped.

Given the difficulty in knowing the population numbers at the time
of the attacks on axis cities it would be interesting to know how
the estimates of populations in specific parts of the cities were done.

I would expect a nuclear weapon to be more lethal to those in the
target area, mainly the difference between most damage being
inflicted almost instantaneously and fires breaking out rapidly
versus the time it takes to put hundreds of bombers over the target.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

"John Keeney" wrote in message ...

I think you are going to have to very carefully define what *you*
mean by "the affected area". You apparently don't mean to include
the entire cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. I would like to see your
interpretation of "the affected area" as applied to Tokyo as well.


I don't have all the methodology that went into the estimate, but I
presume "affected area" refers to the areas that were leveled in the
attack.

The "affected area" for the nukes was counted as "within 2 km".

Cub Driver wrote in message . ..

It would appear that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the
Hiroshima population was killed.


But how many of them were in the area affected by the bomb?


But that, surely, is the whole point! The atomic bomb makes rubble
bounce. The same or less kilotonnage spread over a wide area might
well do much more damage.


To structures, perhaps.

But even if we use the lower mortality figures of 7-8% for Tokyo, and
31% for the nukes, there are still a lot more killed within the
affected area with nukes.

To put it another way, compare the number killed with one of the
A-bombs with the number killed in Tokyo. Then compare the area
destroyed and the population density of that area.

It is true that "people not taking cover from the nukes" is going to
skew this some, but I expect that there would still be a considerable
difference even if that was taken into account.

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


I dont think all the population of Tokyo were in the area
affected by its bombing either

Correct. Only about 1 million people.



Cite please, a million people were left homeless but the
main damage mechanism in Tokyo as at Dresden,
Hamburg and Hiroshima was the firestorm that
developed. There was no firestorm in the case
of Nagasaki.



but the target at Hiroshima was the military HQ and there
were at least 30,000 soldiers in the area.

43,000 Japanese soldiers (20,000 of which were killed by the bomb).

I never saw figures for injuries, but I imagine a lot of the rest had
some serious injuries.




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



In neither case were half the population killed as you asserted

Not half population of the cities. But half the population in the
areas affected by the bombs.

Incorrect, 67% of the buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed
or severely damaged. This means at least 2/3rds of the city
was affected by the bomb

In the case of Nagasaki 40% of the cities buildings were
either totally or partly destroyed.

source

The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by The Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946

Keith

"hiroshima facts" wrote in message
om...


I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
for the estimate I was quoting.


This is an oversimplification

According to the Manhattan Engineer district survey
the relationship of mortality to range was as follows

Distance in feet Per-cent Mortality
0 - 1000 93.0%
1000 - 2000 92.0
2000 - 3000 86.0
3000 - 4000 69.0
4000 - 5000 49.0
5000 - 6000 31.5
6000 - 7000 12.5
7000 - 8000 1.3
8000 - 9000 0.5
9000 - 10,000 0.0

The same source states

"Nearly everything was heavily damaged up to a radius of
3 miles from the blast and beyond this distance damage,
although comparatively light, extended for several more miles."

Clearly the area affected was much more than that within
a radius of 2 kms

Keith

hiroshima facts wrote in message . ..
"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...

So presumably the "affected area/population" is being defined as
something less than the total city, only the districts damaged to a
defined extent and affects on people again to a defined extent.

Yes.

Which makes the figures very vulnerable to arbitrary definitions.

Arthur Harris' acreage destroyed table says 75% of Hamburg and
59% of Dresden were destroyed during the war. The Tokyo fire
storm raid destroyed nearly 16 square miles or nearly 25% of all
buildings in the city, over 1,000,000 left homeless.

The attack on Hiroshima killed around 80,000 and made a further
180,000 homeless, so 80/260 or 31% of the people affected, using
homeless and killed as the definition of affected. As noted above
Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8% using this measure.

The figures behind the 10% claim presume 1 million affected and
100,000 killed.

(10% for Tokyo)

Yet those figures should then read 9%, 100,000 dead out of 1,100,000
dead and homeless, since the two categories are mutually exclusive.

I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
for the estimate I was quoting.

In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.

It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
therefore invalid.

The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
toll like for the 2 km circle?

On a comparative scale Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8%, Hiroshima 31%
deaths when you count the dead and homeless as the "affected
population", making the atomic strikes about 4 times as lethal.
Though this ignores the reality Hiroshima was not under air raid alert
at the time but Tokyo was, which could account for much to even all
of the difference in lethality.

It looks like the bombing campaign against Germany killed around 1
person per 4,600 pounds of bombs dropped, using the pre war German
borders definition of Germany. The strike on Antwerp I mentioned killed
at a rate much higher than that. Now it could be the reason this strike made
it to the history books was because it was an extreme example of lethality,
but it does show how variable the results could be. In the bombing
campaign against French targets the civilian death toll was around 1 death
per 20,000 pounds of bombs. In theory, assuming Little Boy had a 15,000
ton effectiveness, Hiroshima works out to 1 death per 375 "pounds", the
Antwerp raid 1 death per 360 pounds. Fat Man at 23,000 tons yield works
out to around 1 death per 1,300 "pounds".

The RAF Hamburg firestorm raid dropped 2,707 short tons of bombs,
some of which missed, but killed around 40,000 people, that is around
1 death per 135 pounds of bombs. Many of the deaths were to lack
of oxygen/carbon monoxide in the shelters which had not been set up
to handle such bad fires.

Back to Tokyo,

Put it another way, the Tokyo Police report has 1 injured for every 2
dead, assume the same ratio applies to housing and you have over
1,000,000 homeless and over another 500,000 whose house was
damaged, they would be "affected" as well. That means the dead
as a percentage of affected goes to 84,000 out of 1,600,000, back
down to the 5% range of the European fire storms.

Or again Tokyo had nearly 25% of buildings destroyed, again assume
a 2 to 1 ratio destroyed to damaged, and we have over 1/3 of the city
affected, which would mean, in theory 2,000,000 people. So the
percentage drops to 4%. Just choose the definitions and drop out
the numbers.

This ignores the problems in determining a good population figure for
the city, let alone a subset of districts, given the attacks by definition
would destroy some of the records needed to determine the population
present.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

On 22 Mar 2004 06:54:55 -0800, (hiroshima
facts) wrote:

To put it another way, compare the number killed with one of the
A-bombs with the number killed in Tokyo. Then compare the area
destroyed and the population density of that area.

No. Compare the kilotonnage per fatality.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...
hiroshima facts wrote in message . ..

I tried to track down the 50% claim, and it apparently is based on
"Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan" published by Oughterson
in 1956. I don't have that on hand, but I understand that on page 84,
they say that 48% of people within 2 km of ground zero were killed.
And "within 2 km of ground zero" was counted as the "affected area"
for the estimate I was quoting.

In which case the affected area being defined as significantly less than
the area of blast and fire damage. There were deaths and damage
beyond the 2 km/6,600 feet radius.

I'm guessing the estimate tried to pick the area where most of the
buildings were leveled, and came up with 2 KM. Since a modern nuclear
attack that wanted to level a city would use either large enough
warheads (or a large enough numbers of warheads) to level everything,
this seems fair to me, although perhaps I should use a more precise
term than "area affected".




It is also different to the measure used for Tokyo, since it does not
use dead plus homeless, substituting a 2 km circle instead. It makes
the atomic attacks look more lethal by changing the choice of
measurement. The comparison between the two as reported is
therefore invalid.

The Tokyo raid destroyed 16 square miles, which is the area of a
circle of around 2.25 miles or 3.6 km in radius, what was the death
toll like for the 2 km circle?

As far as I know, there was no concentration of deaths in the Tokyo
raid that would change the ratio if we focused on a smaller area.




On a comparative scale Tokyo comes in at 7 to 8%, Hiroshima 31%
deaths when you count the dead and homeless as the "affected
population", making the atomic strikes about 4 times as lethal.
Though this ignores the reality Hiroshima was not under air raid alert
at the time but Tokyo was, which could account for much to even all
of the difference in lethality.

I don't think it could account for all of it.

Are there *any* instances of conventional weapons ever killing more
than 8% (either of the "area affected" or the "area leveled")?

Cub Driver wrote in message . ..
On 22 Mar 2004 06:54:55 -0800, (hiroshima
facts) wrote:

To put it another way, compare the number killed with one of the
A-bombs with the number killed in Tokyo. Then compare the area
destroyed and the population density of that area.

No. Compare the kilotonnage per fatality.


Nuclear weapons may well be more costly that way, but you get what you
pay for.

I don't think there are any instances of conventional weapons killing
more than 10% of people in the affected area, and arguments here point
to even less than 10%, even for the most deadly use of conventional
weapons.

However, I have not seen any arguments that have credited the A-bombs
with fewer than 30% fatalities in the area affected.

By using more explosive per person killed, you also kill a greater
portion of the people in the area you are bombing.