Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded • Hacker News Board

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#151

Post by ufmace » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 7:14 PM UTC

tjradcliffe wrote: post #113

thathonkey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know, history can only be written the once. No rewrites.

We know a few other things too. For example, we know that anyone who confidently and bluntly asserts that "if X had been done Y would have happened" is not contributing to any useful discussion. People rarely know why they are doing what they are doing today, and certainly know almost nothing about why someone else did something half a century ago. We can point to things people said and did in the past and make infor…

I agree with most of your post, but I don't find the idea of Japan not attacking Pearl Harbor very plausible/useful. It had been clear for years that, given Japan's imperial ambitions and the US's desire to maintain their own influence over the region, that the two would come into conflict eventually. Japan at the time would not accept kowtowing to US power and influence without a fight. Exactly how and when that fight would start could have varied any number of ways, but I think the fight was inevitable.

Arguably, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was the best move they could have made, considering their position. They did succeed in limiting US naval power in the Pacific for the 6 months that Yamamoto estimated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto#Attack_on_Pear...

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#152

Post by samplonius » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 7:43 PM UTC

mendort wrote: post #119

hollerith wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, most smart bombs (JDAMs) are just old, dumb bombs with a new "tail kit" containing a GPS and guidance electronics.

A tail kit that costs almost 10 times as much as the bomb.

Hey, this is Hackernews, not Reddit. You can't just completely make shit up here.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#153

Post by notahacker » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #32

yitchelle wrote: post #15

It 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.

Actually, the purpose of the bomb was to save many thousands more lives than it ended. An invasion of Japan would've cost an enormous number of lives. It would've also had a catastrophic effect on the civilian population, because they were being told that the American troops were there to enslave them. It has even been said that the propaganda being told to the Japanese civilians included the idea that the troops wou…

One can entertain the idea that the eventual outcome was ultimately better for all parties than the alternatives (though it's far from clear that's the case when the alternatives included "not playing hardball over unconditional surrender" and the scientists' favoured alternative of "demonstrate the bomb in a relatively benign manner") but the minutes of the meetings that made the decision quite explicitly discuss relative merits of targets in terms of the anticipated destructive effect on civilians, speaking favourably about wiping out Kyoto because of its high concentration of intellectuals before ultimately choosing Hiroshima over more obvious military targets because it "has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focusing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed" (and not really being militarily significant, it was largely undamaged). The notion that the surviving Japanese might ultimately be better off doesn't seem to have featured so highly in the decision-making calculus.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#154

Post by samplonius » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 7:50 PM UTC

dirktheman wrote: post #31

It 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…

So if the airmen wore shirts and were less sexy, you'd feel the whole situation was more safe? Or, do you need to take a time out and have a cold shower? Because it kinda of sounds like you are one Tom of Finland book away from hyperventilating.

This sort of appeal to superficial appearances generally doesn't hunt on HackerNews.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#155

Post by fredup » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 7:56 PM UTC

the_rosentotter wrote: post #139

Tombone5 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 form…

> (which was ignored and they were incinerated along with the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians).

This is inaccurate. Much fewer than 200,000 people were killed immediately (totaled across both bombings), including both incinerated and not, civilian and not.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#156

Post by dmm » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 8:03 PM UTC

the_rosentotter wrote: post #139

Tombone5 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 form…

> They had already offered a complete surrender, conditional only on keeping the emperor, which was rejected by the U.S.

Are you saying the Japanese offered to surrender, with the only condition being maintaining the emperor, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima? My understanding is that was the terms accepted after the atomic bombings and the declaration of war by the USSR.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#157

Post by notahacker » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 8:14 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #91

sophacles wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain is an incredible pattern recognition machine. The regular form of possessive is 's. That is, when it's right to add an s to a noun indicate possession we add an apostrophe. This is more regular than a lot of english rules. So now there are pronouns. They are a bit weird, carrying some strange stuff from germanic languages about changing the word based on the case (sometimes). For the most part, it's pretty…

I know you're being snarky, but do you actually speak any other languages? Because I don't think you realize how easy you have it. He. She. It. That's all you have to deal with. You have to know whether the subject is male, female, or indeterminate in some way. There's maybe a couple of exception (like boats being refered to as She and such) but other than that, you literally go by genitalia . In most other languages…

To be considered competent in written English you also have to master a system of orthography so preposterously inconsistent and divorced from the spoken language that native-speaking kids have competitions to show off their prowess at rote-learning spellings of words; far more challenging than remembering whether the nouns are der, die oder das. In many other languages, literacy involves memorizing a few basic rules and knowing how words sound.

Given the vast amount of energy wasted on memorizing spelling quirks, compared with nearly all other languages, it's not surprising that many people, including you, frequently make other mistakes in their written English. When a language consists more of exceptions than rules one can't be too harsh on people for wrongly applying a rule.

To use the programming language you used elsewhere: English is PHP... it's easy to use as badly as everybody else uses it.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#158

Post by theoh » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 8:29 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #143

theoh wrote: post #117

Earlier 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…

Considering that the "peace" faction's strategy was to force an invasion and massive casualty's (98% wastage for the first 5 waves) to help a negotiated settlement I think Pres Eisenhower is as naive as Chamberlin was prior to ww2

You may be right, I don't know enough to say. Perhaps it was wishful thinking in retrospect. (He said it in the 1960s when the nuclear genie was definitely out of the bottle and causing major headaches for everyone.)

There is a 1950s fictional film by Akira Kurosawa called "I Live in Fear" which tells the story of a man driven mad by fear of radiation from a nuclear war. For better or worse it is easy to forget now what a catastrophic thing the introduction of the bomb was for everyone.

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#159

Post by Someone » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 8:33 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #84

nwatson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The atomic bombs were not more devastating to Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were conventional bomb campaigns to other similar cities in Japan toward the end of World War II. The damage from atomic bombs did not stand out as extraordinary to the Japanese leadership at the time. What forced Japan to surrender was Russia's declaration of war. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di... " ... But if you…

> Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer. That's like saying we'd treat a shooting incident where 500 people died the same as 500 individual murders.

Its more like saying that a single bomb that kills 500 is on par with an attack by an army in which 500 are shot dead.

I agree with that idea. Apart from the fact that they were single-plane attacks, there was little that set the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings apart from what happened to almost every city in Japan. Yes, radiation sickness is awful, but so are napalm burns on half your skin.

One thing that I wonder about whenever this subject comes up is whether it would have been cheaper to deploy use conventional bombs against those targets. It would have been fairly easy to send a thousand bombers with conventional payloads (or just 200 that made 5 sorties each)

Re: Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

#160

Post by notahacker » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 8:51 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #142

theoh wrote: post #117

Earlier 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…

Trying to win by bombing civilians was a common theme in world war two. From British Air Staff papers (1941)[1]... The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is th…

Arguably the only civilian bombing success in Europe was the August 1940s RAF air raid on Berlin... inasmuch as it angered Hitler into diverting the Luftwaffe's resources away from a relatively effective campaign of targeting airfields and ports towards a useless campaign of indiscrimate city bombing.