That suggests a regional variation in the term, then. Speaking solely from my Canadian experience, I wouldn’t think of “Brit” as a pejorative. But I can see why it would have that connotation in Ireland.
For a similar word with regional variation in meaning, there’s “paki”. In Britain and to some extent in Canada, it is a pejorative, but not in Pakistan itself, as explained by some Pakistani Dopers.
The pacifists and public opinion kept the US out of the war in Europe. Roosevelt recognized the need for the war and would have moved earlier if he felt he would have had a chance of congress approving it.
The message which was accidentally delivered after Pearl Harbor was not a declaration of war, rather an ambiguous statement that they would be breaking off negotiations.
A discussion on wiki concerning Japanese war crimes:
The actual declaration of war was published in Japanese papers in the evening of December 8th, it starts off
Actually, Japan fully expected the US to fight, however they anticipated that the US would give up fairly soon and negotiate a settlement.
Japan did not have the resources to design and make an atomic bomb, with or without any help the Germans could have provided.
Regarding Roosevelt and keeping the US out of war, it is worth noting that 1940 and 1941 featured some massive expansion and modernization of the US military. Without that, WWII would have started with the Japanese air forces fighting against American pilots flying biplanes. Whether or not he wanted to stay out of the fight, he definitely saw the need to be prepared for it. Si vis pacem…
And 1940 and 1941 did see the US Atlantic Fleet carrying out Neutrality Patrols, where they would engage any German ships they found in the western Atlantic. Arguably, Hitler simply saw a declaration of war as giving permission for his ships to shoot first rather than second.
In 1941 the US was not in any mood for war. The memories of WW1 were fresh in everyones minds and the anger of why we had gotten into that war had not been forgotten either. The peace movement was huge and Roosevelt knew no Lusitania incident alone could get the people riled up enough to do the massive mobilization needed to win such a war. They needed another incident on the scale of the firing on Fort Sumter by the Confederates in 1861 and Pearl Harbor was it.
No, but they were trying and what they did do is create a bunch or radioactive material and the plan was to send these submarine aircraft carriers to the US which could then launch their planes and dump this material over several west coast cities like San Fransisco. Poisoning possibly hundreds of thousands of people.
Thankfully they were not able to do so.
Which is more than you can say about North Korea and Iran!
This is absurd. Marvel Comics is not the best source material for actual history.
Well, there’s a tiny kernel of truth in there : the Japanese did have a plan to send all three of their I-400 submarine aircraft carriers due east. However, their mission was not to spray radiological material around, rather they were to make a “simple” bombing run on the locks of the Panama canal in order to prevent the now free (because Germany had gone bye-bye) Atlantic Fleet from merging with the Pacific one.
The plan was scrapped when the Allies took over Okinawa, the submarines ordered back home with a quickness to try and attack American aircraft carriers.
And of course, the submarine aircraft carriers were sunk. I’m not sure if they were ever even equipped with planes.
Huh ? Yes, they did have planes, and pilots for them too.
The subs were surrendered as part of Japan’s defeat, then sunk after the war was over (and after the US could get a good long look at their nuts and bolts. But before the Russians could).
After the Sen Toku Type subs had successfully tested transporting and launching planes, they were sent to attack the Caroline Islands. No actual air attacks were made but the planes did make the trip.
M6A Seiran - I-400 Torpedo Bomber
*The Japanese Navy formed 631st Naval Air Group to operate these submarine-borne seaplanes. The group initially operated at Kure, Japan, but the presence of surrounding mountains which posed danger led to the relocation of the group by Yashiro Island further south in mid-Mar 1945. Shortly after, they joined their submarine carriers at Nanao on the coast of the Sea of Japan. Although the original vision for M6A Seiran attack aircraft involved dropping bombs on New York, New York, United States to demoralize the American people or destroying the top of the Gatun Locks thus using the power of water to seriously damage the Panama Canal, no such mission would ultimately be executed; planning for such strikes was canceled in early Jun 1945 in favor of targets closer to Japan. In Jul 1945, two I-400-class submarines each carrying three M6A1 Seiran aircraft and two modified AM-class submarines each carrying two M6A1 Seiran aircraft were sent on an attack on the American anchorage of Ulithi in the Caroline Islands, but the Japanese surrender was announced before the task force reached their target, and the mission was ultimately aborted. Thus, none of the M6A Seiran aircraft were ever used in combat.
In all, 29 aircraft of this design were built, including 8 M6A1 prototypes, 18 M6A1 production aircraft, 2 M6A1-K Nanzan land-based trainers, and 1 M6A2 prototype. Production ceased in Jul 1945.*
I-400 found -
What about the I-400 submarine that launched a seaplane that fire bombed Oregon hoping to start a huge forest fire?
I think an I-400 sunk 700 miles off San Francisco, but I’m not sure it was the same sub that fire bombed Oregon.
Cite? (Hint, you’ll never find one, but please look.)
Where do you get the ideas you’ve shared in this thread?
The Oregon Lookout Air Raid firebombing was carried out by a Yokosuka E14Y1 floatplane launched from the I-25. The I-25 was smaller than the I-400 type.
The E14Y1 had an air cooled radial engine and could carry 2- 168 lb incendiary bombs.
The I-400’s M6A1 Seiran had a liquid-cooled V12 engine and could carry an 1,870 lb torpedo or 2- 550 lb bombs.
No evidence that subs were used in the program.
There were two separate firebombing efforts. One by hot air balloon and one by submarine aircraft. The balloon attacks were more successful.
Nah. Allied bombing raids were reducing Germany’s industrial capacity to nearly nothing from some months before D-Day until right up near the end of the war. The Allies had long since won the Battle of Britain, and it was clear that with American supplies, material, and pilots and aircraft flooding into Britain, the Germans weren’t going to be able to mount a successful attack of the islands, especially not while they were busy losing millions of soldiers in Russia.
From England. Even after the Allied armies had crossed into Germany proper, most of the bombing raids were launched from bases in England. There wasn’t really a good reason to launch from newly-freed France or Germany; those places were too recently bombed by the Allies and looted by the Germans during their retreat. Much easier to keep your supply lines intact within England when you’re talking about something as complex as thousands of high-tech aircraft.
One point that I haven’t seen anyone make is that there was a real and realistic fear that the Germans might develop the atomic bomb first. After all, it was the Einstein-Szilard Letter that kicked off the Manhattan Project. Many of the researchers working on the Manhattan Project were German or German-Jewish refugees, and Germany has a historical reputation for being one of the top scientific countries in the world; indeed, German chemists and physicists were among the best in the world at that time, and have historically contributed more to the field of chemistry than most nations, arguably more than any other single nation.
While we know now that there was no realistic possibility of the Germans developing the bomb before America, the idea that the Germans might make a workable bomb first would be a major worry for those Allied planners who knew of the possibility. The D-Day invasion was a necessity partly because we couldn’t know that the Germans weren’t ready to
I figured “let the Nazis run loose in Europe and sort it all out later with A-bombs” implied no Lend-Lease either (what for ? A-bombs !), no ships given, no convoy escorts, no USAAF bombers & fighters based in England, no Torch landings and so on. Why put these men at risk ? A-bombs !
In that paradigm, it’s not particularly unlikely that Britain would have fallen. They came pretty close as it is. For that matter, the bombing raids that brought Germany to its knees involved quite a few American birds and men, bombers and fighters both. I’m sure that bastard Harris could have gone to town regardless, but the magnitude of destruction would have been very different.
I guess nuclear runs could still have been flown from Russia (again, with the caveat that absent Lend-Lease, they might very well have thrown in the towel), but I highly doubt Joe would have forgone such a golden opportunity to put his greedy little hands on an early nuke.
Sure, sure. I thought that the OP was talking about 1944, three years after the US’s entry into the war. The question was whether it was better to stay in a holding pattern, bombing the crap out of mainland Europe and waiting for the A-bomb to be ready, or invade in June 1944, like we did in the real world. Since by June 1944 the Allies were already doing a damn good job achieving air superiority over occupied Europe and even over Germany itself, if they’d focused their energy, money, and industrial capacity into expanding that air war for another year without the massive investment in land forces, I’m positive that they could have delivered Fat Man or Little Boy to Berlin from England without a hitch.
Absolutely. But hell, once Japan is out of the picture, you could probably deliver a nuke from a carrier-based B-25, like the ones that made the Doolittle raid.
A B-25 Mitchell? You’d never fit Little Boy or Fat Man in that, it was only a medium bomber with two engines. Enola Gay and Bockscar were a four engined B-29 and even they had to be specially modified to fit the payload (the ‘Silverplate’ modifications for nuclear missions), they had to replace the entire bomb bay for instance.