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| 5/24 |
| 2007/10/27-11/1 [Reference/History/WW2/Japan, Reference/History/WW2/Germany] UID:48460 Activity:very high |
10/26 Except for Hiroshima/Nagasaki, is it actually possible to bomb
people into submission? It seemed to failed with the Londoners,
Germans, Vietnamese, Afghanistan, etc.
\_ worked all right with the Germans. bombing them from the air
isnt the only thing that let to their defeat but it helped some.
\_ Most historians don't really agree with you here. Maybe it
reduced their tank and plane production slightly, which
helped shorten the war slightly. It did not effect the
"will to fight."
\_ I don't understand this new fad of declaring unsavory tactics
like torture or civilian bombing 'ineffective.' Of course
they are effective. Have you read "why the allies won?"
There is a whole chapter on bombing. We don't live in a
convenient world where all immoral choices can be rejected
on amoral grounds. -- ilyas
on amoral grounds. Are you willing to backup your
'most historians' claim or this the old 'argument by
non-existence consensus?' -- ilyas
non-existent consensus?' -- ilyas
\- i think declaring "unsavory tactics" off
limits hugely helps the US, because the
US has a massive advantage in any battle
that involves "fighting fair" where they
define fair.
\_ I am sad when I agree with ilyas. I have to agree that
making the civilian population sad and feaful that the RAF
is going to drop a ton of explosive on their head is going
to reduce their 'will to fight' and 'will to build
tank' and 'will to put up with Hitler'
\_ The civilian population had a will to fight in Feb 1945?
How were they supposed to stop it? No, the purpose
might be to attempt to shock the leadership. But that
relies on there being a rational leadership.
\_ In Csarist Russia, the loses on the front led to the
government being overthrown. In France, the troops
mutinied late in WWI. Nothing like this happened in
Germany (or Japan) due to the allied bombing campaigns.
German workers continued to work under horrific
conditions and followed orders all the way to the
surrender. German soldiers fought to the end in Berlin.
\_ It is not possible for 'business to remain as usual'
when your life is put under daily threat.
-- ilyas
\_ If the Germans hadn't sent VI LENIN back to Russia,
the revolution wouldn't have had legs. Along
similar lines, the folks who could have led
revolutions in Germany and Japan either failed
due to bad timing and lack of assurances or didn't
ever have the forces necessary to force the issue,
respectively.
\_ See Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#Effectiveness
on wikipedia. It is certainly open for debate, but
German production of tanks, plane and guns increased
during 1944, the year of the heaviest bombing. It did
have a substantial effect on oil production.
\_ The question is whether production would have been
higher had there been no bombing. -- ilyas
\_ No the question is more subtle and harder to
answer: could the materiel and manpower deployed
to the strategic bombing campaign been more
usefully deployed elsewhere? Like for instance
tactical bombing and air control, which
undoubtedly had a huge effect, or a larger number
of tanks, which Britain was woefully short of.
\_ The only allied power with good tanks was the
USSR.
\_ I agree that it's not at all clear whether
strategic bombing was the best use of resources.
However, the part I objected to was the claim
that strategic bombing was 'ineffective.'
-- ilyas
Incidentally more tank production for non-USSR
allied countries would have been a terrible idea
-- Britain and US had terrible tanks. -- ilyas
\_ If the allies had taken a course of action
that would have made them win faster but
instead used strategic bombing as a tactic,
which wasted men, materiel and focus, thereby
making the war last longer, then I think this
means that strategic bombing was not only
ineffective, but counterproductive. But I
guess at this point we are quibbling over
definitions. The one thing that strategic
bombing might have accomplished it to force
the Luftwaffte fighter force to sally,
allowing us to shoot them down and gain air
superiority. But there were easier and less
roundabout ways to do this. Do you think that
unarmoured troops in jeeps were more effective
than tankers in Shermans? American tanks
were not as bad as their reputation, they
just weren't as good as the best German tanks.
Very few Tigers and Panthers were ever made.
Off the top of my head, I think we made 10x
Shermans for every Panz-V and Panz-VI, while
losses were something like 2x in tank battles.
\_ I bet most German tank losses were due to
aircraft (allies had exceptional planes,
and lots of them). Shermans couldn't kill
Panthers/Tigers. Shells would bounce off,
you see. -- ilyas
aircraft (the allies had lots of planes,
and they were excellent). Shermans
couldn't kill Tigers/Panthers. Shells
would bounce off, you see. A better way
for the allies to spend resources on tanks
would be to copy Russian tanks. Germans
did! -- ilyas
\_ tank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfZaySq9c8I&NR=1
\_ It depends on which Sherman and from
which angle. The US tanks got
slaughtered early on, because they were
told they could stand toe to toe with
the Panthers, which they could not.
We learned to attack in swarms and take
some losses in order to get a side or
rear shot. Also, we got uparmored pretty
quickly with some better guns and AP
rounds (HEAT, I think) that gave us
a fighting chance. I wonder what
percentage of tanks kills were from the
air? Quite a few, no dobut. Even more
important was the fact that the Panzers
were always short of ammo and fuel, due
to supply line inderdiction.
\_ Works for the type of people who are very submissive (e.g. those
who are willing to do silly things like suicide for their
Emperor, perform Bukake, and draw porn manga). The British,
Germans, Vietnamese and Afghans on the other hand are in
general very proud of themselves and/or are very defiant
thus they'd never surrender.
\_ E_TOOSHORT
\_ yes because Japan is not proud of itself. Just ask anyone
in East Asia.
\_ We bombed the greater Tokyo area too.
\_ We firebombed 67 cities in Japan:
http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html
See also McNamara in Fog of War. It's arguable that Nagasaki
and Hiroshima were more for demonstrating US possession of
atomic bombs to the Soviets. -!pp
\_ McNamura? BTW this name sounds almost Japanese.
\_ Nuke and Pave!
\_ We bombed the Serbs, and they gave up their campaign of genocide
in Kosovo.
\_ So that Albanians could continue their campaign of genocide in
Kosovo.
\_ *shrug* op asked for examples of bombing ppl into submission.
Mission Accomplished.
\_ Libya. Kadaffi.
\_ ...what did we convince Colonel K to do via bombing?
\_ Arguably the Japanese are better off for having submitted. The
destruction of their country stopped, they didn't have a violent
continuing occupation which threw their country back into a
dark age, etc.
\_ In addition their submission allowed them to concentrate their
resources on the development of kick ass products like Wii,
Prius, and Bukake/Urabon/Hentai
\_ Ask the residents of Dresden.
\_ We'll need to live in mobile floating fortresses for all
to live in to deal with extreme weather and flooding due
to global warming. We'll also need to cut about 1/2 the
surplus population due to reduced fishery output and
farm production.
\_ Are you volunteering to be excess population?
\_ I guess dead is a form of submission, but it didn't really
slow down the Germans much, if any at all.
\_ dont give motd armchair historian any ideas. Islam
means 'submission to god'
\_ They stopped producing weapons in Dresden.
\_ Dresden did not have any munitions factories.
\_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
\_ Did you even read this? It says that there were
no munition factories in Dresden. I guess there were
a couple of glass factories.
\_ Because it wasn't militarily relevant. But the Germans were
already slowed down. Dresden was February 1945. VE day is
May 8. "Bomb people into submission"... the people can't
submit even if they want to. The military forces have to
submit.
\_ hindsight is laser like in its precision. we probably
thought some industrial capacity in Dresden helped Germany
with their war effort. without Dresden you woulndt
get great american literature like Cat's Cradle
\_ we bombed the americans and now they are cowardly talking of retreat
from Iraq. -AQ
\_ "Somalia" is the word you're looking for.
\_ somalia wasn't a bombing so much as shooting a few soldiers.
Westerners have no stomach for war. It shall be their undoing!
\_ same basic concept, no? kill a few folks so the rest stop
fighting.
\_ lets not forget Lebanon.
\_ Too bad Bush doesn't have the sense of Reagan.
\_ Because that worked out really well in Lebanon and had the
effect of discouraging our enemies around the world while
strengthening our allies' spines. Or not. Don't they
teach history anymore?
\_ Of possible interest: Richard Marcinko reported in
Rogue Warrior that he suggested instituting a radio
pulse on the frequency the suicide bombers liked to use
to blow up their bombers prematurely, but this was
rejected as being likely to result in civilian
casualties.
\_ Ah yes, it is much better for America to waste $2T
and get beaten anyway, like Our Heroic Leader Bush
has done. Too bad they don't teach Conservatives
the principle of limited government anymore.
\_ I don't understand why anyone listens or respects Bush in any
way. he's poured a couple of trillion down a fucking rathole.
He should be Shunned in DC. Entire blocks of people too disgusted
to look at his face.
\- in an odd coincidence:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=an09LjQPgiVY |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfZaySq9c8I&NR=1 Show Border Include related videos Don't include related videos After making your selection, copy and paste the embed code above. |
| www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html see video and Nagasaki in 1945, under the command of General Curtis LeMay, United States B-29 planes firebombed (using napalm -- a jellied gasoline) 67 Japanese cities. US B-29s fly over Tokyo Tokyo in ruins after the March 10, 1945 firebombing Tokyo after the firebombing McNamara's comment on the bombing was this: LeMay said that "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." "LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" While McNamara talks about the firebombing in the movie, there is a very fast sequence of frames in which the bombed Japanese cities are named, with a comparison of the size of the Japanese city to a US equivalent, plus a percentage of the Japanese city destroyed. To get all this information, I had to advance the DVD frame-by-frame -- otherwise the whole thing shoots by you in a blur. |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II However, he mentioned that aircraft diverted to such raids should not be taken away from the current primary tasks of destroying oil production facilities, jet aircraft factories, and submarine yards. Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had come to the conclusion that the Germans could reinforce their eastern front with up to 42 divisions (half a million men) from other fronts and that, if the Soviet advance could be helped by hindering that movement, it could shorten the war. They thought that the Germans could complete the reinforcement by March 1945. Ultra Enigma-code intercepts, which confirmed that the Germans had such plans. Their recommendation was: " We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end. " The Soviets had several discussions with the Allies on how the strategic bomber force could help their ground offensives once the eastern front line approached Germany. Arthur W Tedder in January 1945, when he explained how the strategic bomber could support the Soviet attack as Germany began to shuffle forces between the fronts. January 31 after studying the JIC recommendation which was contained in a document entitled "Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive" and consulting with the Soviets, Tedder and his air staff concurred and issued a recommendation that Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and associated cities should be attacked. Aleksei Antonov raised two issues at the conference relating to the Western Allied strategic bomber force. The first was the demarcation of a bomb-line running north to south to avoid accidentally bombing Soviet forces; Western Allied aircraft would not bomb east of the line without specific Soviet permission. The second was to hamper the movement of troops from the western front, Norway and Italy, in particular by paralysing the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig with aerial bombardment. In response to the Soviet requests, Portal (who was in Yalta) sent a request to Bottomley to send him a list of objectives which could be discussed with the Soviets. The list sent back to him included oil plants, tank and aircraft factories and the cities of Berlin and Dresden. In the discussions which followed, the Western Allies pointed out that unless Dresden was bombed as well, the Germans could route rail traffic through Dresden to compensate for any damage caused to Berlin and Leipzig. Antonov agreed and requested that Dresden be added to his list of requests. Once the targets had been agreed at Yalta, the Combined Strategic Targets Committee, SHAEF (Air), informed the USAAF and the RAF Bomber commands that Dresden was among the targets selected to degrade German lines of communication. RAF Air Staff documents state that it was their intention to use RAF bomber command to "destroy communications" to hinder the eastward deployment of German troops, and to hamper evacuation, not to kill the evacuees. The priority list drafted by Bottomley for Portal, so that he could discuss targets with the Soviets at Yalta, included only two eastern cities with a high enough priority to fit into the RAF targeting list as both transportation and industrial areas. RAF briefing notes mentioned a desire to show "the Russians, when they arrive, what Bomber Command can do." The specific intent of this statement is now unclear, and there are different possible interpretations: a statement of pride in the RAF's abilities; or to show the Soviets that the Western Allies were doing all they could to aid the Soviet advance; Ostragehege stadium as the initial aiming point and each bomber fanned out from that point releasing their bombs at slightly different preassigned times on slightly different preassigned trajectories. of dropping large amounts of high-explosive to blow off the roofs to expose the timbers within buildings, followed by incendiary devices (fire-sticks) to ignite them and then more high-explosives to hamper the efforts of the fire services. After a wide area caught fire, the air above the bombed area became extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from outside, and people were sucked into the fire. After the main firebombing campaign between the 13th and 15th, there were two further raids on the Dresden railway yards by the USAAF. The former city plan of Dresden with the amount of destruction rendered Black, total destruction; The former city plan of Dresden with the amount of destruction rendered Black, total destruction; A Dresden police report written shortly after the attacks stated that the old town and the inner eastern suburbs had been engulfed in a single fire which had destroyed almost 12,000 dwellings including residential barracks. The report also said that the raid had destroyed "24 banks; concluded that 23 percent of the city's industrial buildings were seriously damaged and that 56 percent of the non-industrial buildings (exclusive of dwellings) had been heavily damaged. Of the total number of dwelling units in the city proper, 78,000 were regarded as demolished, 27,700 temporarily uninhabitable but ultimately repairable, and 64,500 readily repairable from minor damage. This later assessment indicated that 80 percent of the city's housing units had undergone some degree of damage and that 50 percent of the dwellings had been demolished or seriously damaged." The fate of some of the refugees is not known as they may have been killed and incinerated beyond recognition in the fire-storm, or they may have left Dresden for other places without informing the authorities. War-related dead found in later years, from October 1945 to September 1957, are given as 1,557; None was found during the period 1990-1994, even though there was a lot of construction and excavation during that period. The number of people registered with the authorities as missing was 35,000; In recent years, the estimates have become a little higher in Germany and lower in Britain; There have been higher estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as 300,000. Encarta Encyclopedia list the number as "from 35,000 to more than 135,000 dead", the higher figure of which is in line with Irving's incorrect retracted estimates. In late 2004, an RAF man involved in the raid said in an interview on the BBC's Radio 4 that another factor was the lower-than-expected level of anti-aircraft fire, which allowed a high degree of accuracy on the part of the bombers. " Another survivor, Lothar Metzger, provides an equally vivid account: " We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm. My mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub. Goebbels inflated the numbers of the dead by a factor of ten, and German diplomats circulated the figures, along with photographs of the destruction, the dead, and badly burned children, in neutral countries. February 25, a new leaflet with photographs of two burned children was released under the title "Dresden -- Massacre of Refugees" and stating that not 100,000 but 200,000 had died. They are centres of communications through which traffic is moving across to the Russian Front, and from the Western Front to the East, and they are sufficiently close to the Russian Front for the Russians to continue the successful prosecution of their battle. One of the journalists asked whether the principal aim of bombing of Dresden would be to cause confusion among the refugees or to blast communications carrying military supplies. Grierson answered that the primary aim was communications to prevent them moving military supplies, and to stop movement in all directions if possible. General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff he wrote: " It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of ... |
| www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=an09LjQPgiVY Tibbets suffered small strokes and heart failure in recent years and had been in hospice care, the Columbus Dispatch reported. The Air Corps colonel in the cockpit of Enola Gay'' -- named after his mother -- led the mission on Aug. The uranium-laden device was the culmination of more than $2 billion of research in the race to beat Nazi Germany to develop atomic weapons. Japan surrendered a day after a plutonium bomb destroyed Nagasaki on Aug. The four aircrew members, who included bombardier Tom Ferebee, navigator Theodore Dutch'' van Kirk and flight engineer Wyatt Duzenbury, became part of the top-secret Manhattan Project, the team led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to develop the atom bomb. Only Tibbets, 29 at the time, was informed of the bomb type before the mission. Under the codename Silverplate,'' referring to the modification of the B-29 Superfortress aircraft chosen to carry the 10,000-pound (4,536-kilogram) weapon, the plane took off from the Pacific island of Tinian, near Guam, and unloaded its deadly cargo at 8:15 am local time. Oppenheimer's Advice At the advice of Oppenheimer, Tibbets was required to steer the plane at an angle of 159 degrees in either direction as fast as possible after bomb release to have the best chance of survival and avoid the shockwaves from the explosion 10 miles away. After observing the destruction and taking photographs for several minutes, they escaped to safety over the Sea of Japan. The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge,'' the Columbus Dispatch quoted Tibbets as saying. Tibbets also revealed the unit's initial plan to drop an atom bomb in Europe. My edict was as clear as could be,'' he said in the interview. Drop simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific because of the secrecy problem. His father moved the family in the mid-1920s to Miami, where he worked in the real-estate industry. Tibbets had his first ride in an airplane at age 12, when he accompanied a pilot during a promotion flight to throw Baby Ruth candy bars to the crowd below at the Hialeah race horse track near Miami. He attended Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois, as a teenager before studying medicine at universities in Florida and Cincinnati, mostly to satisfy his father's wishes. Tibbets then chose aviation as a career by becoming a cadet in the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, in 1937. During World War II, he commanded the 340th Bomb Squadron and flew 25 missions in B-17 aircraft over Europe and later served in air raids on North Africa. He then arranged for the modification of some B-29s to hold a nuclear weapon by removing the turrets and armor plating and reconfiguring the bomb bay. Postwar Career After the war, Tibbets was a technical adviser on nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll and oversaw the purchase of the B- 47 six-engine bomber for the Air Force. He also set up the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. Tibbets rose to the rank of brigadier general and served almost 30 years in the US Air Force before retiring in 1966. He moved to Geneva to operate Lear jets in Europe and consulted for government ministries in the region. He joined Executive Jet Aviation in Columbus, Ohio, in 1970, becoming chairman in 1982. Enola Gay'' was fully restored and is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum near Washington Dulles International Airport. Tibbets is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons -- Paul III, of North Carolina; He requested that there be no funeral to avoid attracting protesters, the Associated Press reported. |