Greatest Strategic Air Missions

Fred the Red Shirt wrote:

Truman's decision to use the A-bombs was opposed by most of his military
advisers, including Le May, Eisenhower and MacArthur.

I am very interested in your source of information here.

LeMay is ridiculous, Eisenhower (in his memoirs) claimed he opposed the
decision when asked for his advice and MacArthur (also in his memoirs)
confessed to being upset (sick to his stomach) when informed of the decision,
but made no protest.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

Dan wrote:

Actually Truman told Stalin at Potsdam we had the bomb.

Well...not really. He told Stalin (who already knew about the Manhatten
project) that we had a new weapon that could end the war. That was about as
specific as it got. Meanwhile Truman briefed Churchill in detail.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"

From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 8/23/2004 6:29 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

Fred the Red Shirt wrote:

Truman's decision to use the A-bombs was opposed by most of his military
advisers, including Le May, Eisenhower and MacArthur.

I am very interested in your source of information here.

LeMay is ridiculous, Eisenhower (in his memoirs) claimed he opposed the
decision when asked for his advice and MacArthur (also in his memoirs)
confessed to being upset (sick to his stomach) when informed of the decision,
but made no protest.


BUFDRVR


Based on what I have read over the years I think MacArthur was upset he
wouldn't get to invade.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 8/23/2004 6:29 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

Fred the Red Shirt wrote:

Truman's decision to use the A-bombs was opposed by most of his
military
advisers, including Le May, Eisenhower and MacArthur.

I am very interested in your source of information here.

LeMay is ridiculous, Eisenhower (in his memoirs) claimed he opposed the
decision when asked for his advice and MacArthur (also in his memoirs)
confessed to being upset (sick to his stomach) when informed of the
decision,
but made no protest.


BUFDRVR


Based on what I have read over the years I think MacArthur was upset he
wouldn't get to invade.

Bingo! You hit the nail on the head. Hardly surprising, I am afraid, given
his previous pique over not being able to invade Rabaul and his insistence
upon clearing the entire PI archipelago--rather typical of his notion that
his own glory came before the dictates of mission or men.

Brooks

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Every time this subject comes up I am both amazed and appalled at the
revisionist/PC thinking based on fragmentary knowledge of the
situation existing then. The US had just been thorugh the Peleliu, Iwo
Jma, Phillipines and Okinawa campaigns and the casualties were
horrendous. Now we were going to invade the Japanese Home Islands and
we could reliably expect the fighting to be grimly intense. I strongly
recommend y'all find books on the above campaigns and read through
them and then look up the plans to invade Kyushu and then the Tokyo
beaches. Especially study the Japanese planned counteractions - they
had deduced where the landings were to take place. Not very difficult
- there's not that many choices. The Combined Japanese Air Forces had
held back 5,000 air-lanes for Kamikaze use! Note that the Services of
Supply had ordered 400,000 Purple Hearts for the two invasions. Also
note that President Truman had been in combat in WW1. ISTR he was a
field artillery battery CO - not a staff officer. He knew plenty about
battle casualties from real personal knowledge. So, with the atomic
bomb handy, would you-all have the guts (and gall) to sened your
troops into battle knowing that the casualties would be horrendous,
far greater than Iwo or Okinawa? And you would have to recycle ETO
infantry combat vets to replace the fully expected losses - guys that
had already 'seen the elephant'? Face it - the US was running low on
front line troops -
Now - would I have given the order? Damn right I would - given the
choice between killing the enemy and saving my own troops or doing a
grim trade-off of my guys for theirs - I'd nuke and re-nuke them until
they quit. They fro damn sure earned it. Unlike most of you-all I've
lost enough very close friends in combat, men I've trusted my life to.
Now stop all your maunderings until you've done some study of the
situation - as it existed back then! As for collateral damage - the
Russkies did a pretty good job on Warsaw and points west, culminating
in Berlin. Massive artillery barrages take a little longer than nuking
the places but the result was pretty much the same except the area of
destruction is larger. Walt BJ

"WaltBJ" wrote in message
om...
Massive artillery barrages take a little longer than nuking
the places but the result was pretty much the same except the area of
destruction is larger. Walt BJ

Do not forget the far larger losses from the ongoing firebombing of Tokyo
that could have continued until there was nothing left to firebomb.

Jack G.

"Venik" wrote in message
...
BUFDRVR wrote:

Wrong. The U.S. chose to allow the Emporer to stay because they felt
it would
allow for a more secure occupation.

Of course they did, that why the US changed its policy of unconditional
surrender. They knew that if the Emperor is not allowed to stay, no
amount of nukes will solve the problem. In the end the Japanese got what
they wanted in a surrender deal.


Incorrect, the militarists in charge wanted to hold out for a
deal that would leave them in control of Korea, Taiwan
and Manchuria.

Keith




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"Keith Willshaw" wrote:

"Venik" wrote in message
...
BUFDRVR wrote:

Not according to interviews conducted with
Japanese civilian and
military
leaders following WW II. Take a look at
the U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey.

I am sure the answers would have been different
if these interviews were
conducted by the Soviets.

Well yes Beria had a way of getting the answers
Stalin wanted to hear.

Keith




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You've got that right: supposedly Stalin was displeased with Beria's predecessor
Yezhov about not getting a confession out of Bukharin-Beria told Stalin "Let
me have him. I'll have him confessing he's the King of England." Stalin got
the confession, Beria got promoted, and both Bukharin and Yezhov were liquidated....

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"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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Hear, Hear. I came to the same conculusion in my MA thesis when I researched
the planned invasion (DOWNFALL). While U.S. and Allied casualties would have
been high (at least some 75,000 for Kyushu in OLYMPIC and 2x that for the
Kanto in CORONET), Japanese losses both military and civilian would have
been much, much worse than those of the Allies. Add to that the probable
U.S./Allied use of gas, and Marshall asking if the A-bomb could be used in
a tactical role in the preinvasion bombardment of the beaches in Kyushu,
and that adds up the butcher's bill very quickly. Be glad 15 Kt on Hiroshima
and 20 Kt on Nagasaki were used-it ended the war within a week of the Nagasaki
strike.


(WaltBJ) wrote:
Every time this subject comes up I am both amazed
and appalled at the
revisionist/PC thinking based on fragmentary
knowledge of the
situation existing then. The US had just been
thorugh the Peleliu, Iwo
Jma, Phillipines and Okinawa campaigns and the
casualties were
horrendous. Now we were going to invade the
Japanese Home Islands and
we could reliably expect the fighting to be
grimly intense. I strongly
recommend y'all find books on the above campaigns
and read through
them and then look up the plans to invade Kyushu
and then the Tokyo
beaches. Especially study the Japanese planned
counteractions - they
had deduced where the landings were to take
place. Not very difficult
- there's not that many choices. The Combined
Japanese Air Forces had
held back 5,000 air-lanes for Kamikaze use!
Note that the Services of
Supply had ordered 400,000 Purple Hearts for
the two invasions. Also
note that President Truman had been in combat
in WW1. ISTR he was a
field artillery battery CO - not a staff officer.
He knew plenty about
battle casualties from real personal knowledge.
So, with the atomic
bomb handy, would you-all have the guts (and
gall) to sened your
troops into battle knowing that the casualties
would be horrendous,
far greater than Iwo or Okinawa? And you would
have to recycle ETO
infantry combat vets to replace the fully expected
losses - guys that
had already 'seen the elephant'? Face it - the
US was running low on
front line troops -
Now - would I have given the order? Damn right
I would - given the
choice between killing the enemy and saving
my own troops or doing a
grim trade-off of my guys for theirs - I'd nuke
and re-nuke them until
they quit. They fro damn sure earned it. Unlike
most of you-all I've
lost enough very close friends in combat, men
I've trusted my life to.
Now stop all your maunderings until you've done
some study of the
situation - as it existed back then! As for
collateral damage - the
Russkies did a pretty good job on Warsaw and
points west, culminating
in Berlin. Massive artillery barrages take a
little longer than nuking
the places but the result was pretty much the
same except the area of
destruction is larger. Walt BJ


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