Hiroshima/Nagasaki vs conventional B-17 bombing

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"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.

I think the estimate was just based on the 1 million homeless number,
but I didn't see any explanation.

I'll accept 7-8% as valid.




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


They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.

There are some links here that mention the shipyards being the
intended target:

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=na...h i+shipyards

They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might have
ended up in front of a court marshal for it.

They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.

It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because they
did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay (although
I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb fizzle would
already be one with no survivors).




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

But what percentage of the population within that 2/3 was killed?

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...

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


Heavy damage usually refers to something like that caused by a 3 PSI
overpressure, which will destroy internal walls of a house and leave
the contents of the house all piled up against the far wall, but
doesn't destroy the exterior frame of the house.

I think the estimate probably was considering the area where most
structures were completely destroyed.

I concede that "affected area" was a poor choice of words on my part.
"Area razed to the ground" would be more appropriate.

"hiroshima facts" wrote in message
m...


snip


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.

I think the estimate was just based on the 1 million homeless number,
but I didn't see any explanation.


Then its erroneous as conventional bombing doesnt render all houses
in an area uninhabitable while not touching those around it. Its
likely that many houses were destroyed by the fires started
and were untouched by bombs. In such a situation the population
would be able to flee.

I'll accept 7-8% as valid.


Thats scarcel accurate given the




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


They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.


No its what they said at their debriefing, at the time this was definitely
NOT for public consumption

There are some links here that mention the shipyards being the
intended target:


http://www.google.com/search?as_q=na...h i+shipyards


I prefer to take the word of the men who flew the
mission and those that briefed them.

They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might have
ended up in front of a court marshal for it.

They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.


Not quite, they were instructed not to BOMB using radar,
the drop was made using the Norden visual bombsight


It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because they
did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay (although
I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb fizzle would
already be one with no survivors).


They considered the possibility and you seem to be forrgetting that
landing with an armed weapon of any sort is risky let alone
a nuclear weapon with a barometric fuze.




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

But what percentage of the population within that 2/3 was killed?

I have already pointed you to the source of the post war survey - go look.

Keith

hiroshima facts wrote in message . ..

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.


The trouble yet again is "Affected area" is being defined in a way
to increase the perceived lethality of the atomic attacks.

Also how many of those conventional attacks were against unwarned
populations? Try Pforzheim in 1945 for a very lethal conventional attack.

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

How about we drop the "area affected" for the conventional bombs to
something like their known lethal blast area? In which case 90%
casualties can be expected, just be within so many feet of the bomb
going off. If we ignore anything outside this blast area, since after all
there will be only building damage, not destruction, we can make
conventional explosives quite lethal. Most of the area is actually
"missed" if you use the bomb blast radius.

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

There is the overkill factor, since the blast dissipates as the square
of distance, the buildings near the centre are hit "too much".

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.

hiroshima facts wrote in message
"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".

Let us understand this, fair for nuclear weapons is looking at the
most damaged areas when computing lethality. Fair for conventional
weapons is looking at a much bigger area, where damage is not as
severe in places when computing lethality. Fair also seems to be
assuming multiple larger atomic attacks, presumably also against
unwarned populations.

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.

Actually there were concentrations of deaths, the canals and rivers
became choked with bodies as people tried to escape the heat,
the incoming tide caused drownings.

It all came down to whether the fires cut off people's retreat, if they
did not more people survived. There was not an even x deaths per
square mile in the "affected area", as a simple exercise in logic
the people at the fringes had a better chance of escaping.

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.

There are precisely two atomic strikes against populations, in both
cases unwarned populations, it is clear moving the population to air
raid shelters would have made a significant difference to lethality.

In theory, assuming Little Boy had a 15,000 ton effectiveness,
Hiroshima works out to 1 death per 375 "pounds", Fat Man at
23,000 tons yield works out to around 1 death per 1,300 "pounds".

That is nearly a factor of 3.5 difference between these two strikes and
3.5 times the 7 to 8% Tokyo lethality is 24 to 28%, in the area of the
claimed atomic weapons lethality.

One of the first things to learn about WWII bombing is how variable
the results could be. It is clear from the atomic attack survivors many
were killed or lethally injured in the open and others were killed when
trapped in damaged/destroyed buildings that burnt. Put the population
in shelters and many/most of these injuries go away.

Hamburg was so lethal partly because the shelters were not designed
to cope with a firestorm, normally the best thing to do was head for the
shelters, on this night it would have been flee the area even as the
raid began. The Hamburg raid killed people at a rate 34 times the
average per ton of bombs dropped on Germany. And you want to
think a factor of 4 is somehow large between Tokyo and Hiroshima,
and that is after altering the definitions in favour of the atomic attack.

If the Oxford companion to WWII is correct air raids on Austria were
3 times as lethal per ton of bombs dropped on average than those
on Germany.

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

Yes night of 23/24 February 1945 RAF Bomber Command versus
Pforzheim. The city, pre war population of 80,000, had been the
target of Mosquito harassment raids by night plus some day strikes
in the order of 100 to 300 tons of bombs before the big raid. On
23/34 February 1945 some 1,740 tons of bombs caused a firestorm,
around 17,000 to 18,000 people killed on this night. This raid was
responsible for most of the damage to the city during hostilities.
Some 83% of the built up area destroyed for the war. In terms
of deaths per bomb it works out to a maximum of 1 death per 190
pounds of bombs, around 2/3 the lethality of the Hamburg firestorm.

Assuming no growth in population the Pforzheim raid's lethality works
out at 21 to 23% of the total population, but around 20% of the city
survived, so 5/4 times 21 to 22 is 26 to 28%.

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.

Simply given the reality there are only two atomic strikes to go on
and their lethality per "ton" of bomb varied so much and they were
against unwarned populations, and the variability seen in WWII
conventional bombing means claims about how much more lethal
atomic weapons can be do not have solid evidence to back them.
Hopefully it stays this way. As I said before I would expect a higher
lethality for nuclear weapons thanks to the instantaneous nature of
much of the damage and the much higher "explosive" yield, how
much higher is another question.

The only comparable strikes to the atomic weapons in "explosive"
yield were the RAF Bomber Command strikes against Duisberg on
14 October 1944 by day and again that night, the two operations
put around 10,000 short tons of bombs on the city, about 5,000
tons each, around 16% incendiaries. No idea of casualties, the
city did not put together a final report but there were clearly not
Hamburg etc. casualty levels.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...
This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.

hiroshima facts wrote in message
"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".

Let us understand this, fair for nuclear weapons is looking at the
most damaged areas when computing lethality. Fair for conventional
weapons is looking at a much bigger area, where damage is not as
severe in places when computing lethality.

I think the comparison was using the area where most buildings were
razed to the ground in each case.

There are zones of far more intense damage with nukes, such as the
zone exposed to at least a 20 PSI overpressure.




Fair also seems to be assuming multiple larger atomic attacks,

Since a modern nuclear attack would use enough nukes to achieve
whatever level of damage was desired, I don't see why it isn't fair to
consider that.

I also think it would also be fair to count any intensity/numbers of
conventional bombs that are within the limits of practicality for
delivering the attack.

But I think with conventional bombs there will always be a large
number who will be able to successfully flee the firestorm before it
takes hold, no matter how intense the bombing.




presumably also against unwarned populations.

I think it is reasonable to account for that. I just don't think it
accounts for *all* the difference. Also, given that a nuclear strike
can hit with very little warning, there might not be much time for a
population to prepare.

The two things that strike me as being unique about nukes is that they
can take out an large area rapidly, giving no time to flee once the
attack starts, and the prompt radiation kills people in the areas of
heavier damage who might otherwise survive the blast.




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.

Actually there were concentrations of deaths, the canals and rivers
became choked with bodies as people tried to escape the heat,
the incoming tide caused drownings.

But that is due to the geography of the target, not the nature of the
bomb. And the people only ended up in that concentration because they
ran there once the bombing started.




It all came down to whether the fires cut off people's retreat, if they
did not more people survived. There was not an even x deaths per
square mile in the "affected area", as a simple exercise in logic
the people at the fringes had a better chance of escaping.

I think it would be fair to trim off the fringe areas and count the
casualty rate in the core area.




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

Yes night of 23/24 February 1945 RAF Bomber Command versus
Pforzheim. The city, pre war population of 80,000, had been the
target of Mosquito harassment raids by night plus some day strikes
in the order of 100 to 300 tons of bombs before the big raid. On
23/34 February 1945 some 1,740 tons of bombs caused a firestorm,
around 17,000 to 18,000 people killed on this night. This raid was
responsible for most of the damage to the city during hostilities.
Some 83% of the built up area destroyed for the war. In terms
of deaths per bomb it works out to a maximum of 1 death per 190
pounds of bombs, around 2/3 the lethality of the Hamburg firestorm.

Assuming no growth in population the Pforzheim raid's lethality works
out at 21 to 23% of the total population, but around 20% of the city
survived, so 5/4 times 21 to 22 is 26 to 28%.

Thanks. I didn't know their proportion got so high.




Simply given the reality there are only two atomic strikes to go on
and their lethality per "ton" of bomb varied so much and they were
against unwarned populations, and the variability seen in WWII
conventional bombing means claims about how much more lethal
atomic weapons can be do not have solid evidence to back them.
Hopefully it stays this way. As I said before I would expect a higher
lethality for nuclear weapons thanks to the instantaneous nature of
much of the damage and the much higher "explosive" yield, how
much higher is another question.

I don't see what lethality per ton has to do with it.

No matter how much conventional explosive is dropped on a city, a lot
of people are still going to be able to flee the raid once it starts.
This is something that nukes can overcome.

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


I'll accept 7-8% as valid.


Thats scarcel accurate given the

I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
figures for the Tokyo raid.




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


They seemed to be stretching the truth a bit for the public.


No its what they said at their debriefing, at the time this was
definitely NOT for public consumption

Well, they were stretching the truth for someone.

Unless they actually thought the arms factories were the shipyards.




They are lucky it worked out OK in the end, otherwise they might
have ended up in front of a court marshal for it.

They were also forbidden to use radar guidance.

Not quite, they were instructed not to BOMB using radar,

Thus my raised eyebrows at the statement "and it looked like we would
be dropping the bomb automatically by radar".




It seems like I heard somewhere that they broke the rules because
they did not want to have to land with the bomb still in the bay
(although I would think any crash violent enough to make the bomb
fizzle would already be one with no survivors).

They considered the possibility

Yes, but I think it unlikely. I'm not sure how hard you have to smack
composition B to make it go off, but I wouldn't think anyone would
survive a crash that was that violent.



and you seem to be forrgetting that landing with an armed weapon of
any sort is risky let alone a nuclear weapon with a barometric
fuze.

The barometer was just part of the system. There was little danger of
the bomb going off without the arming cords pulled out.

"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...

How about we drop the "area affected" for the conventional bombs to
something like their known lethal blast area? In which case 90%
casualties can be expected, just be within so many feet of the bomb
going off. If we ignore anything outside this blast area, since after all
there will be only building damage, not destruction, we can make
conventional explosives quite lethal. Most of the area is actually
"missed" if you use the bomb blast radius.

That just changes the way the difference is stated. Nukes don't
"miss" any of the area affected, and so kill people that are in areas
otherwise missed.




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

There is the overkill factor, since the blast dissipates as the square
of distance, the buildings near the centre are hit "too much".

Airbursts help with that quite a bit.

The blast pressure directly underneath an explosion at a burst height
optimized to maximize 30 PSI, is probably not as strong as the blast
pressure near an exploding conventional bomb.

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


I'll accept 7-8% as valid.


Thats scarcel accurate given the

I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
figures for the Tokyo raid.



Sorry I wont fudge the facts for your benefit

Keith

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


I'll accept 7-8% as valid.


Thats scarcel accurate given the


I'll also listen to your numbers if you want to claim different
figures for the Tokyo raid.


Sorry I wont fudge the facts for your benefit


I wasn't asking for you to fudge any facts, and I would hardly gain
any benefit from it.

What I was saying was that I would listen if you had a case that the
numbers were different.

But you clearly have no case. Your response is good evidence that the
numbers were accurate as stated.