AmmoSgt
Posts: 1002
Joined: 10/21/2000 From: Redstone Arsenal Al Status: offline
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I think several factors came into play over both the long term and the short term that resulted in the Japanese Surrender. The long term issues , while not disregarding the homeland supply and famine issues , were the fact that Japan knew the US was damn good at amphibious assault ..and that the tactics of last resort, Kamakazie and last ditch civilain participation in defense had been inadequate in all past attempts .. this was balanced by the Japanese in the faith of the level of ferocity they had every right to assume would occur in defense on the Main Home Islands ... the ability to mount the scale of a key portion of that defense that was anticipated as being needed .. the kamakazie, both by air and sea was no doubt in question amongst some elements of the Japanese High Command .. but on balance both the US and the Japanese had every reason to expect it to be costly for the US ( bear in mind the US suffered "only" 300,000 dead for the entire war , about half what the US Civil War cost) so projected casulities for the Invasion are in fact best expressed in mulitples of the current losses to date for the US for all of WW2. Russia had a treaty of Neutrality with Japan and the Japanese were using the Russians as the diplomatic conduit for negotiated peace feelers. The Japanese had every reason to expect the Russian to stay neutral .. and we were not at all sure that the russian would abrogate that treaty in any militarily significant way, to keep their promise to the western Allies , to start Hostilities against Japan 3 months after the end of Hoslitlies in Europe .. The Russians had suffered 25 million dead .. The US was seriously concerned about maintaining Home Front support for "merely" Half a Million additional Dead . We had stalled, for very real reasons, the opening of a significant Second Front in the ETO despite promises to Stalin .. and we knew how real and Genuine our reasons were .. and had no real expectations the the Russians could mount the promised 2nd PTO front as promised, knowing full well their real and Genuine reasons for postponing, which made ours look petty, if you want my opinion. We didn't know if the A-bombs would actually work .. the Trinity test was a test of the Fat Man design ...Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima untested .. for all intents and purposes it was almost as big of a surprise to the US as it was to the Japanese, and we had no better idea of how it would effect the Japanese , than the Japanese did .. we had our hopes of course ... but we also had real experience in seeing Hitlers Wonder Weapons fail to turn the Tide of Battle, and the A-Bombs were expected to be and turned out to be the equivalent of a handfull of thousand plane raids , an imaginable number, the use of special weapons or weapons of mass destruction such as poison gas was already being contemplated as an offset to the japanese kamakazie and fantical defense tactics , and results were expected to be equivalent , no more no less, to what we had already done to Berlin and Tokyo .. Yes, assuredly, with only one plane and one bomb, and that was mind boggling , but the horrors of the Cold War, and massive over kill, and Mutally Assured Destruction were not clearly anticipated by very many World Leaders at that time .. they were "merely" super weapons.. yet another super weapon ,after so many super weapons from radar to V-2s, sometimes they change the course of war sometimes they didn't .. but everything had to be tried to reduce the enemy's ability to resist and to reduce friendly casualities ... The results were shocking and astounding for both sides, .. the results looked different on actual targets than on bare desert , but by then .. the descion had been made . Then, on top of those mind boggling Bombs, the Russians kept their Promise to the West .. Probably all things considered a greater amazing accomplishment than the Bombs themselves, and a much greater surprise to the Japanese, They had seen Cities desroyed before , from Nanking to Tokyo , especialy the magnitude of the Russian Attack .. the combined effect on the Japanese was overwhelming .. I don't know if one or the other would have been sufficent in and of itself .. but the combination and the srenidpity of the Two Bombs and the Russians happening in the same week tipped the scales , along with the descion to allow the Japanese Emperor to retain His Throne, and the existing famine, and logistical impossibility to effectively carrying out key elements of the Japanese homeland Defense. It always amazes me how we think of those bombs today .. they were nominally 10 to 20 kiloton devices, while a 1000 plane raid was 4 to 6 kiloton. 2 to 5 times a 1000 plane raid .. Compare a modern Boomer to the only real meaningful reference point we have, the WW2 bombs ... a single warhead on a Boomer is 10 to 20 times a WW2 nuke , a missle on a Boomer carries 5 to 12 warheads and a Boomer crries 24 missles .. We are Shocked that Truman coud so easily utilize something 2 to 5 times larger than a conventional Bombing Raid, we question the morality of it , and yet we have no problem thinking in terms of dozens of Boomers EACH ONE carrying approximately 2400 times the hiroshima Bomb.
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"For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary periods, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which
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