DanNC
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The decision makers did not consider the use of an atomic bomb an escalation. The use of the atomic bomb was implicit in the decision to MAKE the atomic bomb in the first place. The bomb was not needed to destroy Japanese cities, the US had more than enough air power, with more arriving each month, to wipe out Japanese cities. From the US Strategic Bombing Survey:
quote:
On 9 March 1945, a basic revision in the method of B-29 attack was instituted. It was decided to bomb the four principal Japanese cities at night from altitudes averaging 7,000 feet. Japanese weakness in night fighters and antiaircraft made this program feasible. Incendiaries were used instead of high-explosive bombs and the lower altitude permitted a substantial increase in bomb load per plane. One thousand six hundred and sixty-seven tons of bombs were dropped on Tokyo in the first attack. The chosen areas were saturated. Fifteen square miles of Tokyo's most densely populated area were burned to the ground. The weight and intensity of this attack caught the Japanese by surprise. No subsequent urban area attack was equally destructive. Two days later, an attack of similar magnitude on Nagoya destroyed 2 square miles. In a period of 10 days starting 9 March, a total of 1,595 sorties delivered 9,373 tons of bombs against Tokyo, Nagoya, Osake, and Kobe destroying 31 square miles of those cities at a cost of 22 airplanes. The generally destructive effect of incendiary attacks against Japanese cities had been demonstrated.
There would have been 3-4 months of bombing, August to November, before the invasion of Kyushu which meant quite a few Japanese cities were going to be destroyed. From the survey,quote:
Monthly tonnage dropped increased from 13,800 tons in March to 42,700 tons in July, and, with the activation of the Eighth Air Force on Okinawa, would have continued to increase thereafter to a planned figure of 115,000 tons per month, had the war not come to an end. The plan was to drop 10 times as many bombs used during the month of the Tokyo raid leading up to the invasion and there after.
To put this in perspective, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could easily have been done with a few hundred bombers:
quote:
The Survey has estimated that the damage and casualties caused at Hiroshima by the one atomic bomb dropped from a single plane would have required 220 B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs, if conventional weapons, rather than an atomic bomb, had been used. One hundred and twenty-five B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of bombs would have been required to approximate the damage and casualties at Nagasaki. This estimate pre-supposed bombing under conditions similar to those existing when the atomic bombs were dropped and bombing accuracy equal to the average attained by the Twentieth Air Force during the last 3 months of the war.
If Truman had not used the atomic bombs, and the invasion had taken place, he would have been impeached at best. Too much money had been spent on the bomb and to not use a weapon that would save hundreds of thousands of allied casualties would have been treasonous. The atomic bomb was viewed as just another weapon. Marshal wanted to use a number of atomic bombs to isolate Kyushu by bombing other cities but there were not enough bombs in the inventory, nor could enough be built, in time for the Kyushu invasion. The Japanese expected to loose 20% of the their population during the invasion. It is not clear if that 20% was all civilians and soldiers, or just civilians, but that is still 20 million Japanese. Japanese starvation was starting when the atomic bombs ended the war and, ironically, the supplies allocated for the invasion kept the Japanese from starvation.
quote:
The growing food shortage was the principal factor affecting the health and vigor of the Japanese people. Prior to Pearl Harbor the average per capita caloric intake of the Japanese people was about 2,000 calories as against 3,400 in the United States. The acreage of arable land in Japan is only 3 percent of that of the United States to support a population over half as large. In order to provide the prewar diet, this arable acreage was more intensively cultivated, using more manpower and larger quantities of fertilizer than in any other country in the world; fishing was developed into a major industry; and rice, soybeans and other foodstuffs amounting to 19 percent of the caloric intake were imported. Despite the rationing of food beginning in April 1941 the food situation became critical. As the war progressed, imports became more and more difficult, the waters available to the fishing fleet and the ships and fuel oil for its use became increasingly restricted. Domestic food production itself was affected by the drafting of the younger males and by an increasing shortage of fertilizers.
By 1944, the average per capita caloric intake had declined to approximately 1,900 calories. By the summer of 1945 it was about 1,680 calories per capita. Coal miners and heavy industrial workers received higher-than-average rations, the remaining populace, less. The average diet suffered even more drastically from reductions in fats, vitamins and minerals required for balance and adversely affected rates of recovery and mortality from disease and bomb injuries.
The invasion of Kyushu was going to be a major escalation of the war. Millions of Japanese would be casualties along with hundreds of thousands of allied casualties. The use of the atomic bombs was a DEESCALATION since it ENDED the war.
Later,
Dan
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