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Disinterested posted:Although I believe the primary objectives were testing it and impressing Stalin. The actual primary objective of using the atomic bomb was using the atomic bomb. After all that expense it would be rather odd to not use it. There was no real consensus on if the bomb would knock Japan out of the war and the invasion plans were still underway.
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Jun 27, 2015 17:40
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Cythereal posted:The primary objective, though, was ending the war. As I understand it, there were three options on the table for ending the Pacific War: atom bomb, Operation Olympic, or blockade. Atom bomb was the least costly in lives on both sides. If you equate using the Bomb with Japanese unconditional surrender, and all the other options as Japan fighting to the last bamboo spear. A blockade following August Storm could have been less costly in lives if it resulted in a surrender, but we can't know. OTOH using the Bomb wasn't supposed to be an "Instand V-J" button, and the targets were chosen to support Olympic. Allies being forced to carry on with Olympic regardless of the Bomb was a possibility until Japan surrendered. wdarkk posted:After all that expense it would be rather odd to not use it. That's a good point. Within a couple of years whole buzzling towns were built in the middle of nowhere just to produce enough uranium and plutonium for the bombs. There's some dark irony in that the construction of those new cities resulted in the erasure of two cities in Japan. Can anyone shed some light on how the Manhattan Project compares to other WW2 military expenses? Nenonen fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 17:41
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Did the nuke have some kind of contingency built in? It'd be embarrassing to have the Japanese get their hands on a near-functional nuclear bomb even if they'd basically lost the ability to repair or deliver one by that point. Doesn't this assume that the Japanese would've known how destructive it could've been in the first place? Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt that they retrieve it mostly intact, what's to say they don't try to dispose of it somewhere out of town or simply document the bomb and put it in storage? Edit: I should point out that bombs, according to the manuals I have, could have multiple fuzes to set them off in case the first didn't work. The Fat Man had 4 impact fuzes. The Little Boy had several redundant systems to ensure detonation as well. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 17:50
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Nenonen posted:If you equate using the Bomb with Japanese unconditional surrender, and all the other options as Japan fighting to the last bamboo spear. A blockade following August Storm could have been less costly in lives if it resulted in a surrender, but we can't know. OTOH using the Bomb wasn't supposed to be an "Instand V-J" button, and the targets were chosen to support Olympic. Allies being forced to carry on with Olympic regardless of the Bomb was a possibility until Japan surrendered. From what I understand the V2 was more expensive, as were the radar proximity fuses in terms of development. The proximity fuses probably had as much impact on the war as the atomic bomb, all things considered. Huge game changer.
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Jun 27, 2015 18:48
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ArchangeI posted:From what I understand the V2 was more expensive, as were the radar proximity fuses in terms of development. The proximity fuses probably had as much impact on the war as the atomic bomb, all things considered. Huge game changer. To be fair, World War 2 propelled a lot of research for a lot of game changers. Proximity fuzes for AA guns was a major reason explaining why US Naval AA was as effective as it was. I wonder how "effective" kamikaze attacks would have been without that.
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Jun 27, 2015 18:57
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I learned only recently that the B-29 was the most expensive single program of the era, it really dwarfs both the V-2 and the Manhattan Project (depending on how you assess costs, it can be as much as both of them put together). We're often fond of making fun of how the Germans allocated their strategic assets but the B-29 is right up there for worst investment of the war. In related news there's a handful of sources out there that say there was an early decision (spring 1943) that atom bombs wouldn't be used, at least initially, against Germany for fear that a dud might give Hitler an almost-working bomb. I haven't been able to track down the primary source for this, does anyone know what I'm talking about? bewbies fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 19:26
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Are those bombs really so durable that you're going to get much use out of whatever parts they splat into if they drop 30,000ft without a detonation? Edit: I suppose unexploded bomb removal being a thing kinda proves me silly, so.
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Jun 27, 2015 19:34
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LimburgLimbo posted:Yep! I do. Jesus you're dumb.
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Jun 27, 2015 19:36
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Devlan Mud posted:Are those bombs really so durable that you're going to get much use out of whatever parts they splat into if they drop 30,000ft without a detonation? Depends on what the bomb hits. As far as I know, most of the unexploded bombs are there because they dropped in soft mud, etc and the fuze was a dud. There should be damage to the casing, but they end up being relatively intact.
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Jun 27, 2015 19:40
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I don't think Japan would ever be at risk of getting a nuke in World War II even if you literally had Little Boy fail to detonate on impact. Assuming they could actually recover enough of the damaged bomb to reverse-engineer, do they have the scientific infrastructure and knowledge in late 1945 to reverse-engineer what they found? Do they have the resources to build a copy if they do? Do they have any of the resources to build test devices and make sure that their planned copy actually works and won't just thud into the ground harmlessly on the Los Angeles shore? At this point in the war Japan can't even consistently make quality bolt-action rifles and is making plans for the citizenry to use themselves in suicide attacks in case of an invasion of the mainland. They're not exactly an industrial power ready to copy the world's first nuclear weapon used on the battlefield (which was kept a tight secret all the way up until the US actually bombed Japan with them).
chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 19:40
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bewbies posted:I learned only recently that the B-29 was the most expensive single program of the era, it really dwarfs both the V-2 and the Manhattan Project (depending on how you assess costs, it can be as much as both of them put together). We're often fond of making fun of how the Germans allocated their strategic assets but the B-29 is right up there for worst investment of the war. Didn't they need the B-29 if only to drop atom bombs? No point doing one without the other. Or was the B-29 project just terribly managed or something?
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Jun 27, 2015 19:58
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Could've gone with the comedy option and made the B-36 the main effort.
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Jun 27, 2015 20:05
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Devlan Mud posted:Are those bombs really so durable that you're going to get much use out of whatever parts they splat into if they drop 30,000ft without a detonation? I don't know. The question isn't bad. Conventional bombs penetrate deep into the ground when it is soft, sometimes they even bounce back when they hit a rock layer below. The fuze can break when the bomb hits at a certain angle. I don't recall where, but a certain area in Germany was like this with rock bottom 5 or 10m below, so bomb removal was relatively easy. The process of removal is actually quite interesting and relevant for any construction project in a German or Austrian city. Usually the experts examine old aerial photos for a certain characteristic kind of crater that an unexploded bomb leaves. There's not a single year, where they don't accidentally dig up some sort of bomb with a hoe. Really scary stuff. Posted it before, but a few years back, I heard a loud and dull boom at night and in the morning you could read in the news that a bomb went off and tore a huge crater in a park.
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Jun 27, 2015 20:19
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Did the nuke have some kind of contingency built in? It'd be embarrassing to have the Japanese get their hands on a near-functional nuclear bomb even if they'd basically lost the ability to repair or deliver one by that point. The design had an altitude trigger, and a ground impact trigger, and the bomb was put together in such a way that the impact from hitting the ground would set off a nuclear initiation. They were more concerned about the bomb going off due to Enola Gay crashing than about the design proving to be a dud. They were extremely confident because the laws of physics describing Little Boy's detonation were so well understood, unlike the more complicated mechanical physics required for Fat Man.
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Jun 27, 2015 20:26
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PittTheElder posted:Didn't they need the B-29 if only to drop atom bombs? No point doing one without the other. Well, yes and no. They decided very early on that the B-29 was going to be the platform so that was the threshold for the bomb design from the early stages of the program. They probably could have designed something that'd fit in a B-24 if that was their target. Alternatively the Lancaster could have carried the bombs as they were without too much trouble. As for the program, I don't know how well run or whatever it was by the standards of the day, but I do think that only the US had the resources to make such a program come anywhere close to working.
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Jun 27, 2015 20:27
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JaucheCharly posted:The process of removal is actually quite interesting and relevant for any construction project in a German or Austrian city. Usually the experts examine old aerial photos for a certain characteristic kind of crater that an unexploded bomb leaves. There's not a single year, where they don't accidentally dig up some sort of bomb with a hoe. Really scary stuff. Posted it before, but a few years back, I heard a loud and dull boom at night and in the morning you could read in the news that a bomb went off and tore a huge crater in a park. Lots of places actually. I think I mentioned it before but when they pumped out the Flevopolder here in the NL a lot of WWII poo poo was uncovered. Up to and including aircraft wrecks whose memorial plaques are now part of a crashroute.
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Jun 27, 2015 20:29
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From the reading I've been doing, the expense with the B-29's development and production stem from being a highly advanced, very complex aircraft that used a number of revolutionary systems like a fully pressurized cabin (a first in a bomber), remotely operated machine gun turrets, and being used for a number of experimental versions, in addition to being a just plain big aircraft designed for use in the Pacific War.
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Jun 27, 2015 20:40
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Chamale posted:The design had an altitude trigger, and a ground impact trigger, and the bomb was put together in such a way that the impact from hitting the ground would set off a nuclear initiation. They were more concerned about the bomb going off due to Enola Gay crashing than about the design proving to be a dud. They were extremely confident because the laws of physics describing Little Boy's detonation were so well understood, unlike the more complicated mechanical physics required for Fat Man. Even if the bombs fuses all failed for some reason, and the bomb just plowed into the ground at terminal velocity, wouldn't the damage have been so severe that it would have blown apart into something super hard to reverse engineer anyway? I mean particularly so for the Japanese, but even for Germany.
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Jun 27, 2015 21:08
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PittTheElder posted:Even if the bombs fuses all failed for some reason, and the bomb just plowed into the ground at terminal velocity, wouldn't the damage have been so severe that it would have blown apart into something super hard to reverse engineer anyway? I mean particularly so for the Japanese, but even for Germany. Like I said, even if they were able to recover a mostly intact bomb (say it dropped into soft ground and was barely damaged) neither Japan nor Germany in 1945 would have had the ability to reverse-engineer it due to a lack of existing scientific infrastructure and resources. And even if they somehow figured out exactly how the bomb worked and how to build one before the Allied invasion destroyed them, they'd almost certainly (100% certainly in the case of Japan) lack the resources to build their own. The only scenario where a 1945 Germany or Japan could potentially get an atomic bomb from reverse-engineering is if they miraculously happened upon a virtually intact bomb that they just had to replace the detonators for after figuring out how the drat thing worked.
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Jun 27, 2015 21:56
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So I found the thing about targeting and dud bombs. "The point of use of the first bomb was discussed and the general view appeared to be that its best point of use would be on a Japanese fleet concentration in the Harbor of Truk. General Styer suggested Tokio but it was pointed out that the bomb should be used where, if it failed to go off, it would land in water of sufficient depth to prevent easy salvage. The Japanese were selected as they would not be so apt to secure knowledge from it as would the Germans." It doesn't say why they reached the conclusion that Germany > Japan in terms of tech extraction so I'm loaded and ready to speculate hard. Most interesting to me is that the initial target was the Japanese fleet. I'm really curious how this targeting decision evolved from clear military target in 1943 to discussion of which cities would blow up best by early 1945.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:01
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The Japanese fleet disappeared as a coherent force?
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Jun 27, 2015 22:04
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Alchenar posted:The Japanese fleet disappeared as a coherent force? This. By the time the atom bomb was ready for use the IJN was already functionally destroyed.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:07
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Cythereal posted:This. By the time the atom bomb was ready for use the IJN was already functionally destroyed. Likewise, Germany had surrendered. The Japanese mainland was basically the only viable target left.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:08
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bewbies posted:Most interesting to me is that the initial target was the Japanese fleet. I'm really curious how this targeting decision evolved from clear military target in 1943 to discussion of which cities would blow up best by early 1945. I believe it was because by 1945 the fleet was pretty much fated to sit in harbour for the rest of the war anyways. Breaking the people's spirit to fight was more efficient.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:14
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bewbies posted:It doesn't say why they reached the conclusion that Germany > Japan in terms of tech extraction so I'm loaded and ready to speculate hard. Germany had many skilled nuclear physicists and the Allies had thought for a time that they were close to building their own atomic bomb, while Japan was never close.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:14
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bewbies posted:Most interesting to me is that the initial target was the Japanese fleet. I'm really curious how this targeting decision evolved from clear military target in 1943 to discussion of which cities would blow up best by early 1945.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:14
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Comstar posted:Please tell me that story. I've heard the Maori went up 5 tech levels, but it didn't actually change anything in the end. What's the boat story? So it's 1835 in New Zealand, and the Musket Wars are starting to wind down. Basically, a massive flood of post-Napoleonic guns into the country, coupled with the arrival of European foodstuffs, have taken the old inter-tribal conflicts and turned them all up to eleven. That will have all sorts of downstream consequences - from some fairly awkward conversations with Europeans about exactly whose land is being stolen to extremely awkward conversations with colonial and Imperial soldiers about why supposedly primitive natives seem to have fairly effective trench works around all their pa (fortified village, sort of). But by 1835 all the surviving players are well-enough equipped that there's no easy glory and plunder any more. However, about 600 kilometres to the east are is the little island of Rekohu (now the Chathams). It is inhabited by a people who call themselves the Moriori and who have signed up to a peace covenant of non-violence. The old view was that the Moriori were pre-Maori inhabitants of New Zealand who had been conquered by the Maori (which was very convenient because it meant that confiscating Maori land was really just what goes around coming around), but it's now generally thought that the Moriori arrived in the Chathams via New Zealand and developed a distinct culture in isolation - something of a microcosm of the relationship between New Zealand Maori and the broader Polynesian Pacific. Anyway - easy targets, but a bit far away. Particularly appealing if you are, say, Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga living in or near the European settlement Wellington, watching those big, seaworthy European ships sail in and out. So: 'hire' a boat - quite easy if you kidnap the first mate - sail to Rekohu, brutally conquer the island, live happily ever after. There's not much to tell about the conquest itself - the Moriori didn't fight back and Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga basically wiped them out. It was this sort of thing that lead the British government to conclude that it might be time to annex New Zealand so at least they could do this sort of thing themselves.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:55
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Cythereal posted:This. By the time the atom bomb was ready for use the IJN was already functionally destroyed. Also it was only as the A-Bomb neared readiness in 1945 that the committee that drew up the target list was formed. Everything that happened before then was just random people musing. By that point the US was committed to large scale strategic bombardment of cities and that was the obvious usage.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:36
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Chamale posted:Germany had many skilled nuclear physicists and the Allies had thought for a time that they were close to building their own atomic bomb, while Japan was never close. I'll just latch on to your statement, reiterate that 'even' Germany was nowhere near a functioning nuclear program, and point towards a contemporary outsider's feelings about the topic: quote:Upon learning about the scale of the project in 1944, Niels Bohr told Edward Teller: “I told you it couldn’t be done without turning the whole country into a factory. You have done just that." which might have led sober heads to believe that doing any kind of nuclear industry-related work, let alone a full-on weapons development program, was so massive an undertaking for a second world war belligerent that only the US' surplus economic capacity had any chance of pulling it off, and they barely did. Another thing: parallel to how much of the conservative vs. revisionist debate on ending the war in the Pacific with nukes lacks consideration for Japanese agency, there's also been a tendency to overlook US internal(ized) justifications for thinking up, building, and dropping the fucker. Billions of dollars and thousands of mid- to (very) high level careers were riding on getting a deliverable weapon into the war, and tying the condemnation of its use to potentially anachronistic conceptions of race or power always seems like such a waste of an argument to me. You can point out the hubris in its development way more easily: "It'll end all war! We'll ride this program out and then provide free energy for the world! Whatever the hell this uranium thing is, American industry must be a leader in its exploitation!" Etc. Those are my scattershot 2 cents anyway.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:52
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bewbies posted:but the B-29 is right up there for worst investment of the war. Yeah, I'm gonna heavily disagree with that. It was an expensive program, to be sure, but the end result was a groundbreaking aircraft with capabilities that far surpassed those of any other existing aircraft, and would go on to serve for nearly two decades, with dozens of different variations and direct descendants. Even during the War itself the B-29 was an extremely important weapon for the US, since it meant that we could start hitting Japan directly from the Marianas as opposed to waiting for the closer bases that would have been required for the Forts' and Libs'. Hell, it was such an important project that there was an entire back-up plane designed and put into production in case it failed. If you want to call out expensive boondoggles, there are plenty of options from both the Axis and the Allies, but it's extremely disingenuous to call out something that actually worked.
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Jun 28, 2015 00:30
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I apologize for being rash( and half a day late). Thanks to y'all yet again for stomping the dick off history as usual.
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Jun 28, 2015 00:58
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Cythereal posted:Yeah, I know, I was just clarifying that Cyrano sounds like an old professor of mine and I was curious, not prying or anything. Nope, I've never taught in Florida. That said, a very good friend of mine moved to Florida a few years back and he and I have some very similar views on the Holocaust - mostly because the person on my committee who shaped my interpretations of it was his adviser. There's a chance you could have had a class with him depending on where you went to school. He's adjuncted a fuckload down there so it's possible. edit: for content, I wonder if gay black Hitler and gay black Jeff Davis will get hitched now?
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Jun 28, 2015 01:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:Nope, I've never taught in Florida. That said, a very good friend of mine moved to Florida a few years back and he and I have some very similar views on the Holocaust - mostly because the person on my committee who shaped my interpretations of it was his adviser. There's a chance you could have had a class with him depending on where you went to school. He's adjuncted a fuckload down there so it's possible. Nah, he left for one of the Carolinas, I forget which, in 2011. I had him for pro seminar in history, basically a semester-long final exam required for a history BA at that college that's all about writing one grad-level 20-30 page paper, and I remember him saying that was the last class he'd ever teach before moving north. Did my paper on the destabilization of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s.
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Jun 28, 2015 01:49
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Alchenar posted:Also it was only as the A-Bomb neared readiness in 1945 that the committee that drew up the target list was formed. Everything that happened before then was just random people musing. By that point the US was committed to large scale strategic bombardment of cities and that was the obvious usage. I'm in DC visiting family and I wandered over to a Hiroshima/Nagasaki themed exhibit. It was political as all gently caress, which rather annoyed me, though it was pretty up front about it. It also, obviously, didn't have nearly the impact that the Hiroshima museum in actual Hiroshima did, which pretty well hosed me up for a day. Anyway, one of the thing it mentioned was that, among other targets explored, Tokyo Bay was considered, but not Tokyo itself. Presumably, having someone around to actually surrender was a desirable outcome. A nearby sort of partner exhibit of art went ahead and addressed poo poo like Korean victims of the bomb being left to die and still not being compensated by the major charities for survivors and the retaliatory murders of American POWs in the area. Had a chat with my Obaachan as well. Her take on the whole deal: 1. "They didn't have to drop a second bomb. They were too quick to do that. " 2. "I hate him, the Emperor. He knew we were suffering. He should have surrendered sooner." So, you know, stuff.
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Jun 28, 2015 01:53
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Also RE: The idea that the Japanese giving a salvaged A-Bomb to the USSR would be sort of amusing. Stalin already had spies in the Manhattan Project, so such a salvaged device would mean nothing to them. Considering the way the USSR acted towards Japan at the end, they probably would have just laughed at the offer and proceeded to continue crushing the IJA in Manchuria.
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Jun 28, 2015 03:58
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the JJ posted:
There were plans to produce and drop up to 8 bombs at one point, with a third shot being prepared immediately after Nagasaki. Its a shame that all of the testimony we have about the atomic bombs from the Axis comes from mostly civilians and low-level soldiers. Perhaps in future wars we can stop killing all the top generals, and instead put them in jail and let the press visit them over the course of their natural lifetimes.  The plutonium core that was prepared for the third bomb was complete at the time, and when it became clear it was not needed, was used in testing instead. It took 2 lives in the process of said testing (mostly due to incredible disregard for safety in the tests) by way of radiation poisoning, and was, by some accounts, used in ABLE, the first postwar nuclear test. Fascinating stuff, in an era of mass-produced nukes. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jun 28, 2015 |
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Jun 28, 2015 06:13
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Xerxes17 posted:Also RE: The idea that the Japanese giving a salvaged A-Bomb to the USSR would be sort of amusing. Stalin already had spies in the Manhattan Project, so such a salvaged device would mean nothing to them. Considering the way the USSR acted towards Japan at the end, they probably would have just laughed at the offer and proceeded to continue crushing the IJA in Manchuria. The best part of that story is that apparently Truman and Stalin were at a conference when Truman got word that the final nuclear test succeeded and they were ready to deploy nukes in war. Truman went right up to Stalin and said "We've got a secret superweapon" without telling him any details.
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Jun 28, 2015 06:42
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chitoryu12 posted:The best part of that story is that apparently Truman and Stalin were at a conference when Truman got word that the final nuclear test succeeded and they were ready to deploy nukes in war. Truman went right up to Stalin and said "We've got a secret superweapon" without telling him any details. And IIRC, Stalin also kinda just went "eh, whatever bro."
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Jun 28, 2015 06:45
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Keldoclock posted:There were plans to produce and drop up to 8 bombs at one point, with a third shot being prepared immediately after Nagasaki. To be clear, those weren't due to an accident while testing a nuclear bomb, although disregard safety with that kind of test has killed thousands of people through history. Two people died of acute radiation poisoning in two accidents with that radioactive core, less than a year apart. The first was Harry Daghlian, Jr., a physicist experimenting with neutron-reflecting tungsten carbide bricks to bring the core closer to criticality. He dropped a brick on the core, which caused it to go critical and release radiation while he quickly pulled the brick off. He saved the other man in the room, Robert Hemmerly, and died of radiation poisoning 25 days later. Hemmerly died of leukemia 33 years later, and it can't be determined whether it was caused by this radiation accident or not. The second fatal accident with the Demon Core was another criticality test, this time with Louis Slotin experimenting with semi-spheres of neutron-reflecting beryllium. Instead of using the proper apparatus to keep the spheres apart, he was balancing the upper sphere on the tip of a screwdriver, knowing that if the two spheres made a seal around the plutonium it would cause it to go supercritical. Enrico Fermi had once told Slotin that if he kept doing it that way, he was going to die, but Slotin kept doing it the unsafe way anyway. On that fateful day the screwdriver slipped and the plutonium went supercritical for half a second before Slotin flipped away the top sphere. In that half second, ionizing radiation made the nitrogen in the air glow blue and overwhelmed the scientists' taste buds with strong flavours. Slotin died nine days later of acute radiation poisoning; his coworker Alvin Graves suffered vision and neurological problems for the rest of his life; the other six men in the room received smaller doses, and didn't suffer any major health effects. I'm sick and I need to sleep. I'll make an effortpost tomorrow on the thousands of people killed by nuclear bombs outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. chitoryu12 posted:The best part of that story is that apparently Truman and Stalin were at a conference when Truman got word that the final nuclear test succeeded and they were ready to deploy nukes in war. Truman went right up to Stalin and said "We've got a secret superweapon" without telling him any details. Stalin knew that he had a spy deep inside the Manhattan project, but obviously couldn't let Truman know that.
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Jun 28, 2015 06:53
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chitoryu12 posted:The best part of that story is that apparently Truman and Stalin were at a conference when Truman got word that the final nuclear test succeeded and they were ready to deploy nukes in war. Truman went right up to Stalin and said "We've got a secret superweapon" without telling him any details. Wasn't the other part of the story that Truman had no idea that there was this project until they were ready to go? I can't imagine that he was too well informed about the precise nature of the superweapon.
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Jun 28, 2015 08:48
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