AlexTNo…..not really……pride has nothing to do with it, I suppose my only connection with this topic was serving in an underground bunker in the RAF, during the ‘cold war’.
I would say delete ‘proud of’ and insert ‘interested in’.
I’m sure this is true in your case, and I appreciate your need to clarify your position, but I wish I could say the same for all of the people who posted in this thread.
It’s something we cannot change, if we could rewind the clock, stop the bombs, then fast-forward to today, would we (the world) be any better off?
I doubt it.
All the same countries would have developed the same weapons anyway, we would still have had the cold war, yet, this time round no fear.
No yardstick.
No horror.
No shock and awe.AlexT, I can see were you are coming from but, we have had nuclear peace now for over 60 years and a big part of that comes down to those 2 bombs.
The fear generated by the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki touched all mankind, from that day to this.In hindsight it’s just another reason why I think it was right to drop them.
Yeah I know what you mean, but still, the price to pay for that technological achievement was very high.
Sometimes one wonders how human kind can cope with the atrocities that have been made (or that are currently being committed) and not do anything to stop the insanity of it.
AlexTIt would have had less of an effect than bombing Hiroshima – but after that the Japanese Government voted to fight on.
No, the only fight they were doing was the peace negotiations. The second bomb drop was conditioned by the weather forecasts, and pressure was made by Col Tibbets to do the drop before the 10th of august, for the forecasted worsening weather conditions.
A sad fact that is almost unknown is that several POWs died in the Nagasaki bombing as well.
AlexTWell, we know it was (almost) finished now but it didn’t have to finish in 1945 did it?
that is a fair point, I have been put before in front of this question, but the truth is that the Russian Manchuria attack and the continuos hammering from American bombers was the last big hit to a country that finished its resources.
Japan was surrounded and the Allies were aware of the desperate conditions of their armed forces. The advanced airbases in the Pacific would have allowed to keep on hammering the military targets down steadily. It would have been taken longer probably, but the war could have been pushed on in a conventional way.
But let’s not even consider this, let’s just think about the fact that a demonstration of the atomic bomb could have been done on an island or on the ocean, sending both a message to the URSS and the Japanese that the war was over and the Americans were in control of the most powerful weapon ever produced. Don’t you really think that such a demonstration wouldn’t have been effective at all?
And what is wrong with that? Russia clearly wanted to use its military power in 1945 to exercise influence over formerly independent countries in Europe. What would you have done if the Red Army had kept advancing West in 1945?
I’m not questioning the reasons, I am questioning the methods.
Also the US had to finally defeat Japan, if the fire raids and the atom bombs are not permitted as being ‘immoral’ how would this be brought about? Any invasion of Japan itself would lead to an enormous loss of Allied, but mainly Japanese (civilian), lives; far more than were lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Wouldn’t that be immoral too?
please read what the Franck Report suggested, that should answer your question regarding a valid alternative.
What’s the difference?
That one is an instrument of the other.
Any better than what exactly?
well, we passed from a conventional world war to 40 years of cold war, go figure!
AlexTagain from the Franck report
From this point of view, a demonstration of the new weapon might best be made, before the eyes of representatives of all the United Nations, on the desert or a barren island. The best possible atmosphere for the achievement of an international agreement could be achieved if America could say to the world, “You see what sort of a weapon we had but did not use. We are ready to renounce its use in the future if other nations join us in this renunciation and agree to the establishment of an efficient control.”
After such a demonstration the weapon might perhaps be used against Japan if the sanction of the United Nations (and if public opinion at home) were obtained, perhaps after a preliminary ultimatum to Japan to surrender or at least to evacuate certain regions as an alternative to their total destruction. This may sound fantastic, but in nuclear weapons we have something entirely new in order of magnitude of destructive power, and if we want to capitalize fully on the advantage their possession gives us, we must use new and imaginative methods.
It must be stressed that if one takes the pessimistic point of view and discounts the possibility of an effective international control over nuclear weapons at the present time, then the advisability of an early use of nuclear bombs against Japan becomes even more doubtful — quite independently of any humanitarian considerations. If an international agreement is not concluded immediately after the first demonstration, this will mean a flying start toward an unlimited armaments race. If this race is inevitable, we have every reason to delay its beginning as long as possible in order to increase our head start still further.
if that is not concern for the use of it i don’t know how else to call it.
I invite all the readers of this topic to read the full Franck Report as kindly posted by Poundskater and tell us what you think about it.
AlexTAll you seem to have done is to find some people who thought that the atomic bombs should have been used in a demonstration in the hope that they wouldn’t have to be used against a largely civilian target.
So what does that prove? To be honest, it would be incredible if you hadn’t managed to find such a group of people, and the fact that those people came from within the bomb project itself is not particularly relevant since they had to be part of the project to know about the bomb in the first place.
well according to some there was nobody of the Manhattan project who didn’t approve the use of the atomic bomb, hence my quote of the Franck Report.
Once again, what was stated in the report was that the strength and devastation of the atomic bomb would have been too big to be used as a conventional weapon, so they pressed that it would have been demonstrated instead. What the US government did instead was to authorise the drop of the two bombs dead in the middle of two big cities.
Since you seem to be placing yourself on an intellectual level equal to the entire United States government and scientific communities of 1945 (but with a greater moral integrity) perhaps you would enlighten us as to how you would have concluded the war with Japan?
Intellectual level as the US Government? Not a chance! They ordered a mass execution, I wouldn’t have.
The most common mistake made is considering the drop of the two atomic bombs as a part of the war, a war that was already finished. It was a mere demonstration of strength to Russia, which became an uncomfortable ally to deal with, and when you are gambling with a country like the Russia of 1945, you’d better go for a proper message, not a soft version of it.
Dropping two bombs over two crowded cities, showing the real power of the atomic bomb, was more than a clear message for the Russians.
Dropping them in the ocean would have surely ended the war as well, but it wouldn’t have worked on a political level.
The atomic bomb use as “necessary” was intended on a political scale, not a military one.
Criticism is not enough, you must have an alternative…..and an alternative using hindsight doesn’t make you intellectually superior. :rolleyes:
I have no aspiration of being intellectually superior! You are making this assumption by yourself.
There were valid alternatives to end the war, but they weren’t selected because they would have brought political complications to the end of it.
So yes, the atomic bombs put the word end to the war, but they were used in a criminal way (killing thousands of civilians, just like the criminal raids of 1940 on London and the subsequent V1/V2 attacks) and actually started a new political and military era which was not any better.
AlexTCan you add arrogant, condescending, patronising and insulting to the list?
Regards,
kev35
it wasnt me who got started with it, I invite you as well to have a careful look at the posts progress.
AlexTNo, but it did come up in conversation from time to time (normally towards the end) usually when they showed relief of not going to the FE. I never recalled on any occasion however, criticism of the bombing (of Japan).
Sadly some people on this forum will no longer engage you in conversation due to your aggressive and sarcastic responses.
No-one is knocking your belief son, its the continual bombardment of the defence of your belief, which makes it tiresome.If you are just trying to ruin this thread on the grounds you don’t like or believe it, go to the Mods and complain.
We all now get that there is another side to the Atomic bombs, you have got that across, well.
Please can we get back to the original thread as that was quite interesting too.
I’m sorry to create so much fuss, I just can’t believe that nowadays, with all the knowledge and that we have and the things that have emerged after the WW2, there are still people that believe the use of atomic bombs was right and appropriate.
What was the original post about? Ah yes, posting picture of mushroom clouds as something to be proud of, right?
uh and btw it wasn’t me who started being aggressive, insolent or whatever you want to call me, have a careful look at the post progression please.
AlexTAlex T
Read the CoC and heed what it says about personal insults please
Moggy
AlexTThe thing that really doesn’t convince me is the orientation of the swastika itself in relation to the panels.
I had a quick look at the fins of the allied planes that were captured during the war, and although similar, they don’t seem to match anyone in particular, especially because of the panel orientation.
The construction technique also seems of american or british manifacture to me.. there’s no major evidence of it actually, but it’s a feeling I get by looking at the flushed rivets, the panel overlapping and the internal structure..
My “guts” opinion is that someone got a bit of a panel from an US plane, painted it green and stenciled the swastika over it.
AlexTHow pompous of you!
My dad ‘did D-Day and marched his way to Germany’ and his views were nothing like yours.
Over the last thirty years I’ve spoken to hundreds of WW2 vets RAF, Army and Navy ( including Jap POWs ) and funnily enough, their views were nothing like yours either.
So u managed to ask to hundreds of vets what they thought of the atomic bomb? Interesting.
My point was meant to let u understand that the atomic solution was not seen in a positive way even back then, and by many people from all the countries and fields. The massive excitement for the end of the war put the concerns of the use of atomic weapons on a secondary level, but the message had been delivered and the experiments had been done, that is what really mattered to the Americans.
AlexTFranck took the report to Washington June 12, and a separate committee, appointed by the President, met on June 21 to reexamine the use of the atomic bomb. However this committee reaffirmed that there was no alternative to the use of the bomb and on August 6 and 9, the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Precisely
IMO.
War is aggression between two or more parties; the outcome is, that there is a victor and a loser. The victor only wins if he uses every available resources to get rid of his enemies. And have the will to win.
Do it to them before they do it to you.Think you learn more in the uni of Life.
cor, you sound like a broken record… the valid alternative would have been what was proposed by the Franck committee: dropping the bomb in the open sea as a demonstration.
Now, this option would have made sense if the sake of the drop was to use the bomb to stop the war and demonstrate the destructive potential of the A-Bomb, but if the intent is to send a message to the URSS and experiment on the enemy’s skin the effects of two different atomic bombs, of course there was no alternative.
Come on, this is so obvious! I can’t believe you don’t see it!
AlexTRotax = buzz box
I have often wondered what engine you could replace a Gipsy in a Tiger with. Eventually the existing engines will wear out and a replacement will be necessary.
One of my Austers has no engine (the one I gave to my son) and I told him to start looking at fitting a lycoming – about 150 hp say a O-320. I wonder what a J-5 would go like with a smaller engine say a O-200 they are about 100 hp or so. From memory don’t they use about 18 litres an hour?
Wonder what HP a half life Gipsy is putting out?
cheers
Those are two questions I always wondered about myself! Because of the unique design (inline with inverted heads), there aren’t many alternatives around. The Caproni Ca.100, which was designed after the Tiger Moth and on which it was inspired, had a Colombo engine which was 4 inline, but with conventional heads.
Apart for the Gipsy family, I always wondered if the 175 hp Ranger L-440-1 engine (the one used on the PT-19) would have been too big for the Tiggie, or maybe the spanish Tigre 150hp engine, the one used on spanish produced Jungmanns (love the Jungmann!!)
Wikipedia also has a list of comparable engines for it
Alfa Romeo 110
Cirrus Major
Elizalde Tigre IV
Hirth HM 504
Menasco C4
It would be interesting to measure the HP output on a midlife Gipsy Major, I am sure there is some literature about it.
AlexTI finally found the document I wanted to show you people and that most don’t know of, called the Franck Report. It’s late and I don’t feel like writing the whole thing down, so please allow me to do some copy and paste from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franck_Report
The Franck Report of June 1945 was a document signed by several prominent nuclear physicists recommending that the United States not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan in World War II.
‘By an accident of history, we were among a very few who were aware of a new, world-threatening peril, and we felt obligated to express our views.
—Glenn T. Seaborg
The report was named for James Franck, the head of the committee that produced it. The committee was appointed by Arthur Compton and met in secret, in all-night sessions in a highly secure environment.
Largely written by Eugene Rabinowitch, the report spoke about the impossibility to keep the United States atomic discoveries secret indefinitely. It predicted a nuclear arms race, forcing the United States to develop nuclear armaments at such a pace that no other nation would think of attacking first from fear of overwhelming retaliation.
This did, in fact occur. The report recommended that the nuclear bomb not be used, and proposed that either a demonstration of the “new weapon” be made before the eyes of representatives of all of the United Nations, on a barren island or desert, or to try to keep the existence of the nuclear bomb secret for as long as possible.
In the first case, the international community would be warned of the dangers and encouraged to develop an effective international control on such weapons. In the later case, the United States would gain several years time to further develop their nuclear armament, before other countries would start their own production. The Franck Report was signed by James Franck (Chairman), Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns, and Leo Szilard.
Franck took the report to Washington June 12, and a separate committee, appointed by the President, met on June 21 to reexamine the use of the atomic bomb. However this committee reaffirmed that there was no alternative to the use of the bomb and on August 6 and 9, the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
AlexTNo, we did NOT agree to leave their government and military intact… which is what they were demanding when we turned them down. Nor did we agree to no occupation forces… we had them in Japan until after the end of the Korean war.
Nor did we agree to let the Japanese conduct all “war crimes” trials… we did those.
The only one of their major demands we agreed to was the preservation of the office and person of the Emperor.
So a major part of your statement is false… go figure.
read my statement once again please, I didn’t say we accepted ALL of their conditions. After such a demonstration of force why bothering accepting any condition anyway?
AlexTUmmm.. I never mentioned allied casualties… pay attention.
I was not referring just to what you said, but to the official figures given during and after the war.
I DID speak of civilian casualties! Which you deliberately ignored!
I am not just talking about you, but the other people who posted comments, you are probably the only one other than me who motivates his posts here!
And for your information, the Allies had been deliberately targeting civilian populations since 1943… note the fire-bombing of the German city of Dresden in Feb 1945… ~800 RAF and USAAF bombers dropped some 650,000 incendiaries, on a city with a total population of ~1.2 million… most of them civilians.
Add the USAAF’s repeated fire-bombing of Japanese cities in 1945… starting with Tokyo on March 9. 334 B-29s attacked, and the Japanese later listed over 83,000 dead in the attack; over 40,000 wounded and a total of 15.8 square miles of the city were burned to ashes with the destruction of 265,171 buildings.
From May to August , U.S. planes firebombed fifty-eight Japanese cities. Official estimates from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey put the figures at 330,000 people killed, 476,000 injured, 8.5 million people made homeless and 2.5 million buildings destroyed.
Japanese estimates of deaths run above 1 million.
Gen LeMay was frustrated at the low hit percentage of normal munitions, and Firebombing promised the ability to destroy targets more efficiently. A “benefit” was that most of the Japanese people lived in wooden houses, and burning them out would cause more disruption and loss of morale than just destroying factories, etc.
The A-bombs were considered “more of the same, just faster”.
Yes, the firebombing was also a nasty, de-humanizing business, but this shows that using the A-bombs was NOT an aberration or deviation from the established pattern of the war.
Yes, I know that, and to me it’s on the same level as the use of atomic weapons to wipe out thousands of civilians.
We condemned the 1940 raids and the holocausts, but then the slaughter of hundred of thousands of civilians done by the Allies becomes tolerable “because it helped ending the war”.. don’t you see the big contradiction there?
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