Saipan

Where will these two dozen plus CV and CVL be based? You need a huge seaport in the vicinity such as Manila Bay or Hong Kong if you want to sustain a fleet that size within 200 miles of the Japanese coast.

It's hard to see how Japan could have been punished more intensely from the air. LeMay had to "reserve" Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to have targets for the A-bomb. There's room for argument about what finally precipitated the surrender. But there's little to suggest that more intense conventional air action would have been successful.

What LeMay didn't have license to bomb were the food and water resources that would have starved Japan –whether the starvation would have resulted in surrender or just mass mortality is an open question.

The following quoted discussion provides the scope of the air campaign;






"67 Japanese Cities Firebombed in World War II
While watching the movie The Fog of War [transcript], which is Robert S. McNamara's commentary about his involvement in, among other things, World War II and the Vietnamese War, I was shocked to hear him say that before the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima 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.

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." "And I think he's right," says McNamara. "He, and I'd say I, were behaving 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 U.S. 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. Below is the information.
Name of Japanese
city firebombed Percentage of the
city destroyed Equivalent in size to
the following American city
Yokohama 58 Cleveland
Tokyo 51 New York
Toyama 99 Chattanooga
Nagoya 40 Los Angeles
Osaka 35.1 Chicago
Nishinomiya 11.9 Cambridge
Siumonoseki 37.6 San Diego
Kure 41.9 Toledo
Kobe 55.7 Baltimore
Omuta 35.8 Miami
Wakayama 50 Salt Lake City
Kawasaki 36.2 Portland
Okayama 68.9 Long Beach
Yawata 21.2 San Antonio
Kagoshima 63.4 Richmond
Amagasaki 18.9 Jacksonville
Sasebo 41.4 Nashville
Moh 23.3 Spokane
Miyakonoio 26.5 Greensboro
Nobeoka 25.2 Augusta
Miyazaki 26.1 Davenport
Hbe 20.7 Utica
Saga 44.2 Waterloo
Imabari 63.9 Stockton
Matsuyama 64 Duluth
Fukui 86 Evansville"

Though it may sound funny when a Japanese says like this, thanking your humanity for sure, LeMay's strategy was perfectly correct as war must be won first. When a Monarch of the Middle Ages of Japan, Nobunaga Oda, used hundreds of matchlock rifles, instead of swords/spears/bows, for the first time in the Japanese history, he was accused of cowardice but he won civil wars to reign this country. No one blamed him anymore.

davebender said:

Where will these two dozen plus CV and CVL be based? You need a huge seaport in the vicinity such as Manila Bay or Hong Kong if you want to sustain a fleet that size within 200 miles of the Japanese coast.

Click to expand...

Read what was agreed.

1 Air bombardment and blockade of Japan from bases in OKINAWA, IWO JIMA, the MARIANAS, and the PHILIPINES.

2 Assault of Kyushu on 1 November 1945, and INTENSIFICATION of blockade and air bombardment

3 Invasion of the industrial heart of Japan through the Tokyo Plain in central Honshu, tentative target date 1 March 1946.

That's self explanatory. MacArthur was the one who raised the possibility of operations on the Chinese mainland to establish bases there.

The US Navy commanders did not want to undertake the invasion of the Japanese home islands because they feared the cost. Both King and Leahy made this clear at the time, as did several others. They essentially preferred an option of starving and bombing the Japanese people to surrender or death, which ever came first. The cost of this strategy to the Japanese may well have made the casualties of the atomic bombs pale into insignificance.
It was MacArthur who didn't think this would work, and Marshall and some others shared some of his reservations. Stimson, Forrestal and McCloy were all persuaded by Marshall's argument on the 19th of June at the White House.
That's why the invasion plan became policy and that's why Truman was "saved by the bomb" from having to order its implementation.

It may be difficult to see how the air bombardment of Japan could have been intensified, but that was the official policy. In my experience when the US military is told to do something it moves heaven and earth to achieve it. I don't see why this would be any different. The air bases would have been built and the aircraft and ordnance produced. The Navy would have got what ever it needed to tighten its strangle hold on the Japanese islands.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

Read what was agreed.

1 Air bombardment and blockade of Japan from bases in OKINAWA, IWO JIMA, the MARIANAS, and the PHILIPINES.

2 Assault of Kyushu on 1 November 1945, and INTENSIFICATION of blockade and air bombardment

3 Invasion of the industrial heart of Japan through the Tokyo Plain in central Honshu, tentative target date 1 March 1946.

That's self explanatory. MacArthur was the one who raised the possibility of operations on the Chinese mainland to establish bases there.

The US Navy commanders did not want to undertake the invasion of the Japanese home islands because they feared the cost. Both King and Leahy made this clear at the time, as did several others. They essentially preferred an option of starving and bombing the Japanese people to surrender or death, which ever came first. The cost of this strategy to the Japanese may well have made the casualties of the atomic bombs pale into insignificance.
It was MacArthur who didn't think this would work, and Marshall and some others shared some of his reservations. Stimson, Forrestal and McCloy were all persuaded by Marshall's argument on the 19th of June at the White House.
That's why the invasion plan became policy and that's why Truman was "saved by the bomb" from having to order its implementation.

It may be difficult to see how the air bombardment of Japan could have been intensified, but that was the official policy. In my experience when the US military is told to do something it moves heaven and earth to achieve it. I don't see why this would be any different. The air bases would have been built and the aircraft and ordnance produced. The Navy would have got what ever it needed to tighten its strangle hold on the Japanese islands.

Cheers

Steve

Click to expand...

Another factor was the Russians getting involved.
The Allies certainly did not want them in Japan like they were in Europe.

bob44 said:

Another factor was the Russians getting involved.
The Allies certainly did not want them in Japan like they were in Europe.

Click to expand...

Absolutely correct. As late as June 1945 the Americans were not entirely sure what Soviet intentions were and were having serious second thoughts about their involvement at all.

Initially the US was very keen to get the Soviets involved. Political and military authorities were convinced from the start that Soviet assistance would shorten the war and lessen the cost. In October 1943, Marshal Stalin had told Cordell Hull, then in Moscow for a conference, that the Soviet Union would eventually declare war on Japan. At the Tehran Conference in November of that year, Stalin had given the Allies formal notice of this intention and reaffirmed it in October 1944. In February 1945, at the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed on the terms of Soviet participation in the Far Eastern war. Thus by June 1945, the Americans could look forward to Soviet intervention at a date estimated as three months after the defeat of Germany.

But by the summer of 1945 the Americans had undergone a change of heart. Though the official position of the War Department still held that "Russian entry will have a profound military effect in that almost certainly it will materially shorten the war and thus save American lives," few responsible American officials were eager for Soviet intervention or as willing to make concessions as they had been at an earlier period. President Truman, one official recalled, stated during a meeting devoted to the question of Soviet policy that agreements with Stalin had up to that time been "a one-way street" and that "he intended thereafter to be firm in his dealings with the Russians." At the 18th June meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the President, Admiral King had declared that "regardless of the desirability of the Russians entering the war, they were not indispensable and he did not think we should go as far as to beg them to come in." Though the cost would be greater, he had no doubt "we could handle it alone."

The failure of the Soviets to abide by agreements made at Yalta had also done much to discourage the American desire for further cooperation with them. After urging Stalin for three years to declare war on Japan, the United States Government could hardly ask him now to remain neutral. Moreover, there was no way of keeping the Russians out even if there had been a will to do so. In Harriman's view, "Russia would come into the war regardless of what we might do."

Once again Truman and the US administration was "saved by the bomb". What was now perceived as almost the threat of Soviet intervention was one of the important factors in the decision to use the atomic bomb as soon as possible. I don't attach much importance to the idea of this being a demonstration to the USSR, they knew all about the bomb in any case. It was certainly a means of keeping post war Japan and S.E. Asia within the US sphere of influence. It's hard to imagine the Japanese home islands divided like Germany/Berlin, but it could have happened.

Cheers

Steve

bob44 said:

Another factor was the Russians getting involved.
The Allies certainly did not want them in Japan like they were in Europe.

Click to expand...

The Japanese weren't too crazy about giving them a say in the terms of surrender, either.