Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
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Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#2How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#3How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?
Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#4How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?
Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.
the visibility of the city isn't affected by the height of the plane. they weren't trying to smoke out the plane, just cover the place they lived.
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#5Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#6How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?
[deleted]
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#7How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?
Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.
They only had to obscure the target zone, which was a very small area (a single factory complex, the Kokura Arsenal), and by chance it happened to be obscured during the 30 minutes or so that the plane was overhead.
This wasn't a normal bombing run. It had elements of an experiment - they wanted to understand how the bomb worked, so they wanted to control the drop precisely and be able to observe the effects.
The aiming points were very precise (a bridge in the case of Hiroshima), and they were chosen well in advance, and the mission orders were quite rigid. If the crew couldn't see the target clearly after several attempts, they didn't have the authority to randomly drop the bomb somewhere else - they had to go on to the next city.
Ironically, after all that, I think they eventually missed the aiming point in Nagasaki by 2 km or so, because it was also obscured. By then, the plane was low on fuel though, so I guess they were forced to do the best they could. I've read that they weren't supposed to do that, according to the mission rules. The plane came very close to running out of fuel, which I guess might have made them drop the bomb to reduce weight.
edit: This is Field Order 13 - for the attack on Hiroshima. It includes Kokura and Nagasaki as secondary targets, so you can see how precise they were about the aiming points. I'm pretty sure the target details would be exactly the same for the Nagasaki attack (Field Order 17, which I can't find online).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l
edit2: Bomber crew member's diary which explains what happened over Kokura - http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG-ASPI/01/Pages/CG...
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#8A couple of photos of what a smokescreen covering a city looks like http://449th.org/ploesti.php
It's for a German city, but it is the same idea.
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#9A couple of photos of what a smokescreen covering a city looks like http://449th.org/ploesti.php It's for a German city, but it is the same idea.
correction: for a Romanian city - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti
Re: Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.
They only had to obscure the target zone, which was a very small area (a single factory complex, the Kokura Arsenal), and by chance it happened to be obscured during the 30 minutes or so that the plane was overhead. This wasn't a normal bombing run. It had elements of an experiment - they wanted to understand how the bomb worked, so they wanted to control the drop precisely and be able to observe the effects. The aim…
That diary is a fantastic read. The language, the drama, the bird's eye view of one of the most pivotal moments in world history. Beats fiction any day.