But this one was The Dude. 
Another example of japanese intransigence: the case of the “superbattleship” Yamato (the only battleship to mount 18" guns-along with its sister ship, Musashi). The japanese sent this ship on a suicide mission, to attack the US Navy ships supporting the Okinawa invasion. The admirals knew they were sending these men to certain death-they had NO chance to inflict a single casualty!
The ship was caught steaming south, by US Navy dive bombers-who sank it in 45 minutes. Over 1600 men lost their lives…for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!:eek:
(Historical aside)
Most of us know about Einstein’s letter to FDR about the possibility of an atomic bomb, which emphasized the potential threat of the Nazi’s getting it first. FDR was inclined to dismiss it as just another crackpot super-weapon, and he was being inundated by such schemes. FDR had very, very little expertise in the hard sciences, and was unimpressed by the threat of Hitler inventing a “uranium bomb”.
He was, however, a big believer in spy stuff, he insisted on having all manner of the latest intel routed to his desk. On one such report, the intelligence reported as a minor afterthought that the Nazi’s, having taken Czechoslovakia, had placed an embargo on the export of uranium ore from Czechoslovakia. This was at a time when, so far as anyone knew, uranium was of no special strategic value.
He scratched his head for a while, then re-read the Einstein letter. The little light went on.
Actually, what Senor Beef said coincides with what I was told one time, and one time only, as a young adult. I THINK it came from one of my history profs, but if it didn’t, I did hear or read it during my college days. The way I remember it being told was they allowed a known Japanese agent – not Japanese himself of course, but rather someone working for the Japanese – to believe he was slipping onto the site to witness the test for himself. He thought he was being sneaky watching the test from a hiding spot and did not realize he had been allowed through. The thinking was he would get word back to the Japanese about just what was in store for them if they did not surrender. Supposedly, all the agent knew ahead of time was that some secret weapon was being tested. Since this was … what, July? The bombings came so soon after that they didn’t feel they had to worry much at that point about breaking the secrecy; either the Japanese would surrender upon hearing of this new wonder weapon from their own agent or it would be swiftly used on them.
Again, I heard this only one time and have never been able to find corroborating evidence. I am pretty certain it came from a history prof I had.
As for alternative targets, although I for one believe bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right thing to do, I have found one suggestion intriguing, that of blowing the top off of Mt. Fuji. The thinking was the mountain could be seen from so many points in Japan, and it was their spiritual home, so the message would have been a powerful one. What nixed the idea, so I’ve heard, was a feeling that it would have utterly broken the Japanese people to have their spiritual home devastated in this manner and thus played havoc with trying to restore Japan as a nation.
Look…
I get that Little Boy was a more reliable design.
Nevertheless no one had ever blown one up before. Ever.
Things may look great on paper but I think most engineers will tell you there are all sorts of fiddly things that can crop up no matter how hard you try to account for everything. Think of the number of rockets that blew up on launch pads despite the best efforts to see them launch on the first try. Or things like the de Haviland Comet which crashed because the windows were the wrong shape (i.e. something that no one had considered and why should they have?).
Some things are just not foreseeable till after the fact.
While I am pretty sure they had confidence the thing would work at the end of the day no one could say with certainty it would. Just that they thought it should.
Clearly from my link in my previous post the military thought a dud was a legitimate concern, among other things, to decide to not go with a demonstration.
Well, yeah, but if it fizzled we had another nuclear bomb. We could have pasted the crap out of a real city and then they’d have to confront the thought that the damned things worked after all.
If ALL the bombs fizzled, demonstrations or real attacks would have been moot either way, right?
No chance? The Yamato had come within a hair’s breadth of destroying much of the Leyte Gulf invasion fleet previously. A fairly small chance, sure, but no chance is not just an exaggeration, it shows an overconfidence in the competence of US Admirals like King and Halsey, both of whom committed titanic screwups at certain points during the war, allowing enemies to inflict heavy casualties on American forces.
I’m not sure exactly where the Allies were supposed to get “an evacuated city or similar structure” for the test bombing from. Do you think that an attack on a deserted island (the only thing I can think of as possible) would have had anywhere near the impact that the attack on Hiroshima did?
Even if the invited military from Japan had believed it (which I doubt they would) the Japanese command did not want to surrender after the second attack - it was the Emperor’s intervention that led to the surrender. Do you think the Japanese military would have informed the Emperor truthfully of the details of the test?
Your entire scenario seems based on post event knowledge. We didn’t know if the Japanese would surrender after 1, 2, 3 or 20 cities were nuked. What seems a pretty genuine calculation in the lack of this knowledge is that the more cities went up in smoke, the more likely a surrender would be, or, if the surrender did not come, the more Japan would be inhibited from resistance to Allied landings. Given that, it would strike me as the height of irresponsibility to deliberately reduce your capacity to strike the enemy in the face of years of experience that a demonstration would do absolutely bugger all.
So, sending a battleship (without air cover) over 500 miles of ocean (controlled by the US Navy) was an action that had a “small chance” of success? Look what happened to the Royal Navy (HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse) off Maylaya in 1941-both ships sunk in 4-5 hours.
Sounds like a plan to me!:smack:
Yamato was critically short of ammo, & lacked the fuel to get home.
One way trip.
http://member.tripod.com/~american_almanac/FDRlw95.htm
According to this website (written by a Lyndon LaRouche fan):
"His son Elliot, as well as others close to him, say that FDR already believed that the military use of the atomic bomb was unnecessary to gain a victory over Japan and would have never consented to its use on populated areas. "
The fact that its written by a LaRouche fan throws the article’s credibility into question. But the page does quote some of Elliott Roosevelt’s writings verbatim. So it’s possible that Elliot Roosevelt did in fact hear from his father FDR that atomic bombing of Japanese civilians was an option that was off the table.
Considering that FDR was a pretty radical left-wing hippie by today’s standards, it doesn’t strike me as impossible that FDR would refuse to use nukes if they would cause massive civilian deaths. That being said, FDR apparently OKed the fire bombing of Tokyo, which killed more civilians than the atomic bombs did initially.
I’m thinking about finding Elliot Roosevelt’s book to see more.
I’d strongly advise reading further into it. But then again maybe you shouldn’t,
When you start with the conclusion that the British Monarchy is the source of all evil in the universe weaving conspiracies within conspiracies sowing deliberate disinformation and misdirection at every turn, it might be best to not delve too deep lest you draw the attention of them like the unblinking eye of Sauron.
You have to understand- to the people pre-Atomic, it was just another (much much more powerful) bomb. They would no more refuse to use it than refuse to use the 22000lb “dam buster” bombs. Once you have OKed Dresden and Tokyo, bombing another 50000 civilians isn’t a big step.
They even had ideas of cutting a new canal through Central America with a series of Atomic Bombs!:eek:
It is only post Atomic that we started with the whole “Nuclear warfare is unthinkable” thing.
It was just another weapon. There was absolutely no reason not to use it- except in the light of hindsight.
I’m not so sure FDR, who was a very unique politician of the 20th century, had the “I killed 100,000 civilians already… why not throw more onto my pile of corpses?” mindset that we might assume he had.
If you’ve killed 100,000 civilians already, you might have no problem killing another 50,000, but on the other hand, you might have an even bigger problem with it.
Not only would FDR have been right to drop the bomb, he would have been right to drop as many bombs as necessary to get the job done.
You seem to assume, with no evidence whatsoever, that the choice was between atomic bombing or fewer deaths. Wrong. The choice was between atomic bombing or more deaths.
(FDR, who approved the horrific Tokyo bombing, disapproved of civilian deaths? Your source? FDR’s son?? :dubious: 'nuff said.)
Once again, the original plan was to bomb Germany and Japan. At the same time. This was the plan in 1944, before Truman took office.
The design of the bomb, the plan to drop the bomb, all of it happened before Truman took office. I’m not understanding how FDR would have let all this go on, and then said ‘no, wait, let’s not.’
After tne war, the four Roosevelt sons, who had spent the Thirties and the War years on the sidelines of celebrity, were largely nonentities in the postwar Democratic party. (One of them even ended up running for local office – as a Republican!) Elliot was fond of regaling reporters with inside looks at his father’s thinking. Sometimes he was even accurate – but not often. (Think of those interviews with Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend for a modern parallel.)
Be very skeptical about “what would FDR have done?” comments – he was very cagey about telling people what they wanted to hear without making commitments, and the handful of people who knew his actual views pretty much took them to the grave with them.