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Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 4:51 pm
by randy
...and the men and women of the Manhattan Project. Who answered the question first posed at a meeting of the Imperial War Council on 26 November 1941: "What could go wrong?"

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 5:53 pm
by Netpackrat
As they say, don't start nothing, won't be nothing.

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:08 pm
by HTRN
randy wrote: Mon Aug 06, 2018 4:51 pm Who answered the question first posed at a meeting of the Imperial War Council on 26 November 1941: "What could go wrong?"
That would be Yamamoto, at that very meeting. He was the only member if the war council that had spent any time in America, and thus warned them. They didn't listen.

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:18 pm
by Jericho941
Monster cloud rising over Hiroshima, over the world—monstrous, mushrooming thing, sign of our age, symbol of our sin: growth; bigness, speed: grow, grow, grow—grow in a cancer, enlarge a factory, swell a city, balloon our bellies, speed life, fly to the moon, burst a bomb, shatter a people—explode the world.
So it rose and I shrank in my cot, I who had cringed before the body-squeezing blast of a five-hundred-pound bomb, hearing now this strange cold incomprehensible jargon of the megaton.
Someone had sinned against life, and I felt it in my very person. But then I, too, sinned.
Suddenly, secretly, covertly—I rejoiced. For as I lay in that hospital, I had faced the bleak prospect of returning to the Pacific and the war and the law of averages.
But now, I knew, the Japanese would have to lay down their arms. The war was over. I had survived. Like a man wielding a submachine gun to defend himself against an unarmed boy, I had survived.
So I rejoiced.
— Helmet For My Pillow, by Robert Leckie

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 8:16 pm
by HTRN
I wish i could find my tibbets in valhalla story..

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:02 am
by Termite
Today there are a lot of "Monday morning quarterbacks" who say we should have invaded Japan, instead of dropping the atomic bomb. The difference would have been a million or more deaths, on both sides. And if Truman had done so, when he could have dropped the bomb instead, the American public and Congress would have been enraged, and history books would tell of his impeachment and removal from office.

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:43 am
by Langenator
Well, there is one thing they say that is true: the Japanese were looking for a way to end the war. But on their terms - their govt remains in place, they keep their military, they conduct any war trials, among their big conditions - and those terms were politically unacceptable to the U.S.

The biggest thing the "the bomb was really aimed at influencing Russia" types miss is that the Japanese knew we were coming. Having watched us come all the way across the Pacific, plus the landings in Europe, they knew where, and roughly when, we would be landing - Kyushu in the fall. And they were prepared.

They had moved enough troops to Kyushu that the invasion would be going it at roughly even odds, numbers wise. We would have had massive firepower; the Japanese, prepared positions (see Iwo Jima and Okinawa) and kamikazes.

And not long before the bombs were dropped, our intel had figured this out, and the powers that be were frantically recalculating, trying to figure out somewhere else to land that wouldn't replay Okinawa on a much grander scale.

See Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire for more.

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:46 pm
by Jericho941
Termite wrote: Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:02 am Today there are a lot of "Monday morning quarterbacks" who say we should have invaded Japan, instead of dropping the atomic bomb. The difference would have been a million or more deaths, on both sides. And if Truman had done so, when he could have dropped the bomb instead, the American public and Congress would have been enraged, and history books would tell of his impeachment and removal from office.
It could've been worse than that: Land invasion plans called for using the nukes anyway, eventually dropping at least five to seven. On top of that, since the effects of fallout weren't known very well, they planned for only a 48-hour delay before sending troops into fallout zones. Operation Coronet would've been an atrocity on a truly staggering scale.

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 1:04 am
by Windy Wilson
Jericho941 wrote: Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:18 pm
But now, I knew, the Japanese would have to lay down their arms. The war was over. I had survived. Like a man wielding a submachine gun to defend himself against an unarmed boy, I had survived.
So I rejoiced.
— Helmet For My Pillow, by Robert Leckie
Lucky Leckie, I read your book!

You have to agree, though, for an unarmed boy, the Japanese Army, Navy, and Naval infantry put up one hell of a fight and killed a metric fuckton of the men wielding the submachine guns.

It is surprising to me how soon after the atomic bombs were used that the guilt over using them spread through America. At least until August 29, 1949 when the Soviets had parity.

In The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliadis, there is a description of the Soviet Union's atomic bomb program and how the uranium refining process required a fresh crew of workers every month, because no precautions were taken for radiation exposure and poisoning.

Re: Raise a cold one to the crew of the Enola Gay...

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 1:35 am
by Catbird
Consider crown cracked...
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