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Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
131–140 of 204 posts
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there's any chance of the war lasting more than a year or so longer than it did absent nuclear bombing. The US was preparing for a full-scale invasion. That invasion would have succeeded, albeit at great cost. No matter how stubborn the Japanese were about not surrendering, there was simply no way they could mount an effective long-term defense. Your counterfactual about North Korea seems rather weak. Y…
Instead of going for the quick win, you'd rather we had risked an invasion with five- to seven-figure casualties to each side, followed by years of necessarily yet insufficiently brutal occupation, followed in its turn by another war against a nation we'd just finished giving every reason in the world to want to wipe us off the face of the earth?
What? Where do you get the idea that I prefer that?
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#133It always amazes me how seemingly careless they were with these nuclear devices back then. To know that such a devestating bomb was handled by a sultry, shirtless youngster, in a shed on a small island in the Pacific... It reminds me of the Slotin Incident ( http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/ ) where dr. Louis Slotin accidently slipped the screwdriver he used to separate two plutonium/uraniu…
It is not clear that dropping the bomb was necessary to end the war. Was it even necessary to develop it? Eisenhower said "it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." At the time Truman said Japan had been "repaid many fold" for Pearl Harbor. In these new images there is a bit of graffiti on the bomb allegedly written by a Rear Admiral: "a second kiss for Hirohito". It seems to me like the mood in the US…
Personally I think that dropping the bomb was much less about winning the war and far more about winning the post-war.
They already knew that they could take Japan, it would be nasty, but they could do it. So from that point of view, the bomb was unnecessary. But from a post-war perspective, the West was facing the prospect of a strong aggressive Soviet front. The A-bomb put an instant chill on all post-war aggression and helped encourage the worlds armies to stand down just a little bit.
I think in hindsight it's also worth pointing out that people in general are pretty terrible at judging the consequences of things of that scale. ie. You can describe just how big an explosion a nuclear bomb is going to make, but until one is actually dropped and the casualties start coming in, you don't really comprehend it fully. If those bombs hadn't been dropped, the aversion to destruction might not have been fully ingrained in the minds of every commander and it could well have meant that the Cold War would have turned "Hot".
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It strikes me as pure evil that the very first use of nuclear energy was to drop a massive bomb over a bunch of fellow humans. Atomic weapons are a natural evolutionary step up from conventional explosives, which are a natural evolutionary step up from clubs and rocks. All this talk about atomic weapons being qualitatively different (as opposed to quantitatively different) is mostly hyperbole, with one exception --…
>The people in charge decided that a demonstration wouldn't stop the war or the need to use the new weapons, and later events proved them right. Contrary to what many Americans believe, the Japanese didn't surrender because of the atomic bombings, but because Russia invaded Manchuria, a development the Japanese saw as much more dangerous than atomic bombs. If that is the case, then that proves they were dead wrong ab…
> Why tell everyone "we need to bomb" in order for Japan to surrender when you knew it wouldn't stop the war?
For various political reasons (I'm not justifying this, only explaining it). The Manhattan Project began in response to the perceived threat that Germany might create an atomic weapon. In 1945, with Germany out of the picture, and with no alternative, people began to talk about using it against Japan. It was realized that, if we didn't force Japan to surrender to us, they would surrender to the Russians, with unimaginable postwar consequences.
Again, I'm only explaining the thinking of the time, not justifying it.
After the war, it was discovered that Germany was nowhere near creating an atomic bomb, but it came out that Japan was actively pursuing this class of weapon and was technically farther ahead, lacking only the raw materials. In the closing days of the war, a German submarine was intercepted trying to deliver uranium to Japan for use in a nuclear weapon they planned to build and use against the U.S. :
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Argh... now I really got it backwards. What I meant to say was that one does not write "shes", one writes "her", and not "wes" but "our". And that does not apply to "it". To summarize, comparison to other personal pronouns is irrelevant since "it" has a special combination of rules.
I'm not sure how "it" is special". Because its possessive ends in an s? So do "theirs", "hers", and "ours" (which I think are the ones you meant). I think you're having a hard time because you're overcomplicating the matter. "its" is the possessive of "it". "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Possessives adjectives: My, Your, His, Her, Their, Its. Possessive pronouns: Mine, Yours, His, Her, Theirs, Its. You have four…
I'm not sure why you need to tell me I'm having a hard time. I don't feel like having a hard time with this issue. Also I'm not overcomplicating anything.
You said it yourself: you're not sure how "it" is special. I'm sorry, I cannot help you any further. Maybe others in this thread can.
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is amazing . I have had a lot of oh shit moments in my days, but none gets close to dropping the plutonium onto the uranium and nearly detonating a nuclear payload.
It wouldn't have detonated. The worst that would have happened... is exactly what did happen. Lots of radiation release and the death of one nuclear scientist that should have been more careful (he died of radiation sickness a few days later).
Yea, after reading the article fully I wish I could edit my comment a bit. It isn't really amazing when 3 people died because of it (2 other scientists apparently later died as well).
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#137Wikipedia has Fat Man over Nagasaki and Little boy over Hiroshima. This archive has it the other way. Which is correct?
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#138It strikes fear into me that these folks are loading a device that is design to kill thousands of lives, the madness in this thing call war.
It strikes me as pure evil that the very first use of nuclear energy was to drop a massive bomb over a bunch of fellow humans. Surely the force of nuclear weapons could have been demonstrated without actually dropping it on a concentration of living, healthy people.
You have to look at these things in the context of the war that had been going on for years at the time. Imperial Japan had attacked, invaded, and occupied any neighbors who had resources they might need or who otherwise might oppose them. That occupation often came with brutality and oppression at a scale that would make the Nazis blush.
When the US entered the war, one of their first moves was unrestricted submarine warfare, meaning any Japanese ship is sunk on sight, regardless of who or what is onboard or where it is heading. It continued with sinking many naval fleets, re-invading many islands, generally resulting in the death of basically everyone in the Japanese garrison, as it was part of their code to kill themselves or carry out suicide attacks rather than surrender.
Continuing on, we have the unrestricted aerial bombing of basically every city in Japan. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively untouched so late in the war was that they were exempted from conventional bombing for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the atomic bombs when they were ready. Many of the conventional bombing raids caused greater death and destruction than the atomic bombings.
In light of all of this, suggesting a demonstration of the bomb seems kinda pointless. The Imperial Japanese administration would probably interpret such an act as saying that America didn't have the courage to carry out major attacks, thus encouraging them to hold out longer and requiring more destruction in the end to force a surrender. The bombings were terrible, but the real suffering was the war itself, and the only way to stop it was to force the surrender of Imperial Japan as quickly as possible. Against such an enemy, the best way to end the war with as much of Japanese society as possible still intact was to demonstrate total ruthlessness in doing anything in our power to destroy Japanese infrastructure and kill Japanese citizens as quickly as possible.
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not clear that dropping the bomb was necessary to end the war. Was it even necessary to develop it? Eisenhower said "it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." At the time Truman said Japan had been "repaid many fold" for Pearl Harbor. In these new images there is a bit of graffiti on the bomb allegedly written by a Rear Admiral: "a second kiss for Hirohito". It seems to me like the mood in the US…
"The use of the atomic bomb would have to be done with visual targeting, not by use of radar. [...] The targets should be 'large urban areas of not less than 3 miles in diameter existing in the larger populated areas… between the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagasaki… [and] should have high strategic value.' A list of possible targets that met this criteria was given [...] Of these, Hiroshima was noted as 'the larges…
He was clearly writing this for posterity.
Japan was beaten. They had already offered a complete surrender, conditional only on keeping the emperor, which was rejected by the U.S. Their utter defeat and the hopeless state of their armed forces was well-known by the allies, since their communication encryption had been cracked months earlier.
The real issue was likely that the Soviet Union, positioned to become a formidable power in the post-war theater, had promised to enter the war against Japan on August 6. The Americans needed to make sure that Japan had been defeated by that point and that the U.S. would occupy Japan, not Soviet Russia. Hence the rush to drop the bombs before that.
Also, there was no uncertainty about the lack of military significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the contemporary reports state this clearly, they even warn about the presence of American POWs in the area (which was ignored and they were incinerated along with the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians).
Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded
#140It always amazes me how seemingly careless they were with these nuclear devices back then. To know that such a devestating bomb was handled by a sultry, shirtless youngster, in a shed on a small island in the Pacific... It reminds me of the Slotin Incident ( http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/ ) where dr. Louis Slotin accidently slipped the screwdriver he used to separate two plutonium/uraniu…
To know that such a devestating bomb was handled by a sultry, shirtless youngster, in a shed on a small island in the Pacific...
Consider this: even if that "youngster" wasn't filtered out from his contemporaries due to his skills or character, he still came from a generation that was engaged in a war that had taken the lives of friends, family and neighbors. It was also probably also obvious by then that you don't mess around with bombs, regardless of how they worked.
I'd wager that the average "youngster" during WW2 was a great deal more responsible than their modern-day counterparts of similar age.