dcunning30 wrote on Mar 15^th, 2007 at 12:15pm:


There's a difference between bombing a scelected target precisely and arriving with hundreds of aircraft to carpet bomb everything that somehow *had* to do with the target.

And if a B-17 bomb operator states that the bomb sight was so accurate that it could put the bombs into "a glass of picles", I'm pretty  sure there wasn't made any effort to actually *try* to use it to its full potential.


Quote:


Don't involve civilians in your military actions. Period.

It is realistic and can be put into action quite easily.

Quote:


Even if, it proves that the allied strikes against protuction facilities were virtually useless.

Quote:


Your "specific" article was about japanese suicide submarines and how they would have been used in case of an allied invasion. So far, so harmless.
But your "the bombs were mercyful" comment was unnecessary and - as I already pointed out - disgusting.

How were the two A-bombs "merciful"?
Good question.... if I may:

Most of the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki never knew what hit them (although yes, many suffered terribly). The same cannot be said for the much greater number of innocents who died in incendiary bombings of places like Tokyo, which was burned to the ground and rebuilt something like 5 times during the course of the war... (and yes, by 1945, LeMay was targeting civilian centers to break Japanese morale... we were taking a savage beating, with troops fighting and dying all over the world)... war is a stupid  act of savagery, and the world probably could have done without the decades of nuclear blackmail that followed (and all the "little" proxy  wars, like Korea and Vietnam, that resulted from that)... but compared to the attack plan shown in dcunning's post, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were like a peck on the cheek. I know it sounds crazy, but...

And had we squared off with the Japanese (whose fighting spirit and ingenuity are legendary to this day) on their home turf, we might have lost... it was by no means a done deal by that point. Fighting spirit wins wars, not  technology or even superior numbers (except, perhaps when it comes to nukes). I have met vets who were standing by to invade Japan in early 1945, and they were scared to death, and not very confident they could prevail.
They also weren't looking forward to squaring off against old folks  and children armed with kitchen knives and pitchforks.

Imagine you are Harry Truman in July 1945. In one hand, you have certain- and I mean certain- victory in the form of the A-bombs, with peace and stability closer at hand, less civilian casualties, and a strong warning to the burgeoning USSR... and in the other hand you have a desperate assault on the last country anyone in their right mind would want to back into a corner, after years of bloody, costly, horrible fighting.

What would you do? I think Truman was a compassionate man, and no mere politician... and I think he did the right thing. I also think it haunted him for the rest of his life.

Also: a more likely scenario than a rout would have been the above-described division of Japan (US/Soviet), a la Korea... or even direct conflict between the US and Russia...by destroying Japan's resolve utterly before the Russians could mount an attack, the US, in a way, secured an independent future for Japan, where after a long period of humiliation, it would regain its sovereignty and eventually nearly bankrupt the US in the realm of world trade.

Heretic,

since you appear to admit you didn't read the article, then why on earth are you calling me disgusting due to my comment which was based on the contents of the article.

It's like arguing that 1 + 1 doesn't equal 2, and you've never had a math class in your life!

This is moronic to the nth degree!

Please, just leave me alone.  This is stupid!

dcunning30 wrote on Mar 16^th, 2007 at 10:50am:


The nature of the comment was disgusting.

It would be like saying that Hitlers Holocaust was a good thing.

It's just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong...!


Quote:


The internet is not the place to be alone.

Quote:



Is that what this is all about?  You're offended by my choice of words?  

Dang dude, don't be such a wuss!

And since you appear to not have read the article about which I was commenting, you don't even know the context of my comment, yet you've gotten all worked up over the comment.  That's just plain stupid.   

Quote:


War - Total War - is not a fair fight.

I believe that the nuclear bomb(s) would have been used even if the invasion had taken place.  The Allies in the PAcific placed a higher value of life that the Japanese.  Once the invasion had started, and taking into consideration the serious casualties - first from the suicide attacks in the run up to the invasion and then once the battle was joined on the ground, by the remaining forces fighting to the death (think Tarawa, IWo Jima, Okinawa multiplied many times) AND civilians either coerced by the military, or by their own fatalistic sense of duty to their Emperoir and State, then the decision to use the nuclear weapons would have been even easier to make - and then the repercussions would have started in the US - if you had the weapon to stop the war, why wasn't it used?  Yes, Truman would have been haunted one way or another - On the one hand, tomrented by unleashing the bomb when he did, and had he waited, by NOT having unleashed it earlier.

I agree that ideally, wars should be fought by certain rules of engagement.  COnsider Agincourt, with the English and French agreeing to certain conduct   Even there, the English, by massacring the captured French nobles as a second attack was coming in, "broke" the accepted conduct.  In the end, though, the umpires conceded victory to the English.

But history has a long list of battles, wars, campaigns, where civilians suffered unjustly - and no one had pity for the Japanese who showed a blatant disregard for the lives of the captured peoples - military and civilian

well, um, yeah, anyways thats a lot of boats....