Best strategy to avoid nuking Japan

[GregP]

I'm not counting on anything.

I was speculating about the options and pretty much decided I'd have dropped the bomb, too, at the time since I probably would not have realized the real consequences any more than the people who made the decision at the time did. No one should have to endure the attention of a nuclear weapon in hindsight ... but we didn't have hindsight when the Enola Gay took off and probably only had an idea of the size of the kill zone when the second bomb was dropped. We had aerial photos of Hiroshima but no ground intelligence inside Japan itself, and still had not heard from the Japanese.

However, the JB-2 could very easily have been aimed via radio control from aircraft and would have been much more accurate for it.

Unless the information available to the President at the time is accurately laid out, we'll probably never know, but the correct decisions were probably limited to invasion, drop the new bombs, drop conventional weapons until the Japanese surrender at additional cost in men and material to the USA, or use a combination of JB-2's, bombs, and Naval artillery. I really don't see any other options that would have acceptable to the USA after Pearl Harbor. There is no way we would have driven them back to Japan and then simply let the matter drop.

No, it was going to be fought to a conclusion using some option and they were trying to find a way to minimize Allied losses until the surrender happened. Casulaties in the event of invasion were predicted to be VERY heavy. I'm sure that moved the decision toward trying options other than invasion first. So it was going to be bombing by either conventional or nuclear weapons or trying the JB-2 option combined with bombing. What else was there to try at the time?

 

[Gixxerman]

I hate to say, literally, but I am going to side with history as it was on this one.

As pointed out nobody really understood how horrific nuclear weapons would be and everyone had every reason to expect Japan would fight to inflict the maximum casualties on the allied forces attacking Japan.
Particularly as the allies would have been aware from defeated Germany that it was likely that several of the new technologies (from jets to rocket planes to perhaps even nuclear tech nerve gas tech) had gotten through from German to Japan before the defeat.

(I understand that Japan had her own advanced tech in certain areas that this maybe harks back to a racist view of the Japanese not being able to make their own high-tech without European aid but nevertheless Germany's most advanced tech had just frightened the pants of allied commanders, allowing Japan the time to make her own versions of it or simply add that know-how to her own must have been a huge inducement to get the war over asap.)

Then there's the whole issue about keeping the Russians out as much as possible....and like it or not I do not think that was necessarily a bad thing either, eastern Europe suffered almost 60yrs.
As it is we still have Northern Korea to handle (and as much as I don't think Russia helped much there I actually think that one is largely down to a national memory of how Korea was treated by Japan from 1910, that paranoia regarding the early 50's Korean war; this being one where 2 nationalist nutters faced each other in north south..... the south really were planning a preemptive strike, as far as I know it is a documented fact that they argued long hard to be given the backing go-ahead in the USA).

 

[stona]

As pointed out nobody really understood how horrific nuclear weapons would be

Of course they did. The sums had been done and were largely correct. Whilst the numbers might be difficult for the layman, including the soldiers, sailors and airmen, to understand, the Trinity test can have left no one in any doubt about what they were about to unleash.

Even Oppenheimer, who most certainly did understand the figures was impressed. Awesome is a word much overused in the English language today, but the Trinity explosion left most who saw it awe struck.

There was plenty of data about the likely effects of the temperatures achieved on human beings. There was even more on the effects of the blast on human beings and structures. There was a lack of information regarding the effects of the ionising radiation and little understanding of fall out.

After the test Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita but he also said, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent."

They knew exactly what they were doing

Cheers

Steve

 

[tyrodtom]

0 to 60 in 3 seconds on paper is just data until you experience it for real yourself.

 

[stona]

0 to 60 in 3 seconds on paper is just data until you experience it for real yourself.

But the Trinity test wasn't on paper. Many senior military figures as well as the scientists saw, first hand, what such devices could do. There was some uncertainty as to the yield. The scientists set up a sweep stake (won by a physicist named Rabi) to bet on the yield. Some estimated more than double the actual yield. Nonetheless Oppenheimer, who understood the maths as well as any other person alive, was awed by the actual explosion.

General Groves was also impressed. You can read his report on the test here.

Report on the Trinity Test by General Groves - 1945 | The Trinity Test | Historical Documents | atomicarchive.com

As I said, they knew exactly what they were doing.

Cheers

Steve

 

[VBF-13]

Let's understand one thing. We didn't have an alternative as we didn't know how far along everybody else was. Even if there was a half of a half of a half of a half of a half-percent chance Japan would have got one and dropped it on us, that's hardly a chance we or anybody similarly-situated would take. That alone means the bombs were the right move.

 

[GregP]

The report is just as I thought.

The knew the extent of the blast, but no mention of nuclear effects. It looks clearly to me as if they thought it was just another big bomb and weren't even worried about fallout or ratiation. It confirms that they were thinking in terms of blast damage, which also comes with conventional explosives.

 

[stona]

A man like Groves was likely to have been thinking of the blast damage. People invariably try to understand something new by relating it to previous experience or something that they know about. I think it is a reasonable assumption that Groves was familiar with conventional explosives.
It is an interesting aside that Admiral Leahy confidently predicted, and I quote him, "The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives." He was not of course an expert nuclear physicist and such a remark makes him appear a little foolish which he certainly was not.

There were a multitude of measurement made of the Trinity test. The exact properties of the explosion, including all radiations and blast were known.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Gixxerman]

...The knew the extent of the blast, but no mention of nuclear effects.

This is what I'm referring to when I said the effects were largely unknown.
Other than that it's a big bomb creating a lot of heat blast, which in themselves were hardly unknown in your usual massed bomber attack on a city.

The exact properties of the explosion, including all radiations and blast were known.

Cheers

Steve

I doubt there was a full understanding of the effects of radiation, especially over time, on human beings.

 

[VBF-13]

I doubt there was a full understanding of the effects of radiation, especially over time, on human beings.

My aunt was a biologist at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project. She worked for the AEC since its inception and finished up at Argonne. They didn't know anything about those long-term effects of exposure. They didn't understand the shorty-term effects all that well, either. Hence, the decades of experiments that ensued.

 

[stona]

I posted some time ago that the effects of exposure to the ionising radiations were not properly understood. It is correct that much research was done on the Japanese victims of the two bombs in an attempt to better understand this. These radiations however were not the most lethal property of the bombs, heat was, by a large margin.

Anyone who had seen pictures of the Trinity crater, before it was filled in, or witnessed the fireball could tell that an awful lot of heat was generated in the explosion. They didn't have to be a scientist. Its effects were well known.

The military men were obsessed by the blast because that was something which they understood.

Cheers

Steve

 

[tyrodtom]

I think that even if we somehow could have got some respected Japanese scientist to New Mexico, and they witnessed the Trinity blast first hand, they never would have been able to adquately describe the blast and destruction that would result from a nuclear explosion to the military clique that still made most of the decisions.
IMO even if that clique knew as much as we know today, they still would have wanted to fight to the death, it took Hirohito stepping away from his usual silent overseer role and saying , in effect, enough is enough, to end the war.

 

[vinnye]

I do not think after Okinawa, that the US had any choice in the dropping of the bomb(s).
However, I do not think that there was any chance of Japan developing any such device, and if they did - they did not have any means of delivering it to the USA.

 

[VBF-13]

I posted some time ago that the effects of exposure to the ionising radiations were not properly understood. It is correct that much research was done on the Japanese victims of the two bombs in an attempt to better understand this. These radiations however were not the most lethal property of the bombs, heat was, by a large margin.

That's true. They understood the blast. They poorly understood the fallout, the aftermath. Thirty years of animal and human experiments later, many of which are still quite highly controversial, they got a better grip on that, those longer-term effects of exposure.

 

[GrauGeist]

I do not think after Okinawa, that the US had any choice in the dropping of the bomb(s).
However, I do not think that there was any chance of Japan developing any such device, and if they did - they did not have any means of delivering it to the USA.

The Japanese were working on such a project and they certainly did have a delivery vehicle, the I-400 class subs.

Time and events prevented any real development, however.

 

[Gixxerman]

I don't think the prospect of German tech transfer to Japan gets enough consideration.
The war dragging on to a conventional invasion but faced with God only knows what ranged against it would have been a huge motivation to get it over with asap.

 

[zjtins]

The Japs were working on bio warfare in China.

 

[nuuumannn]

The military men seem to have gone over the head of the President on this.

This is why Truman came up with his plan that the United Nations take responsibility of the use of atomic weapons - didn't happen, but he decided that responsibility for their use should not be with some trigger happy GI with a grudge, lest something nasty happened - Like MacArthur during Korea, for example, and that the President should be the one to make that decision.

The US invades Iwo Jima. The Japanese still hold the Philippines.

I can vaguely remember reading that this was discussed, but MacArthur (again) scuppered the idea - I think I read it was Hastings in Nemesis who talks about it.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

The Japs were working on bio warfare in China.

PLEASE DO NOT USE THE TERM "JAP" ON THIS FORUM!

 

[tyrodtom]

What good would bio agents do a densely populated country being invaded ? You couldn't use it on the invaders without killing even more of your own population.
And means of delivering those bio agents to the mainland of the USA are in the realm of fantasy.