samboct
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"Poppycrap! The fire bombing of Dresden occurred in Feb 13, 1945. The German army was routed by then. According to the Wiki article 40% of the munitions were incendiaries. You need incendiaries to destroy a rail center? You believe that shit? The Germans also used incendiaries on London and Coventry. Additionally, bombing of that era was highly inaccurate and known to be so. Furthermore, Hitler had neither the means nor desire to send troops onto British soil. I refer you to the recent publication Fateful Choices by the authoritative historian Ian Kershaw as support for that statement and for Hitler's purpose in attacking Russia to isolate Britain before the U.S. entered the war. As to your point that the attrocities were largely Nazi propaganda: was that the well-oiled propaganda machine of 1945? "
Well, then Wiki has mislead you. On the fire bombing of Dresden, my source is Dresden, by Frederick Taylor who dismisses the claims of the Nazis in terms of casualties and points out that they were much lower, probably on the order of 20,000 individuals. And yes, the Nazis had a wonderful propaganda machine- even in Feb. 1945.
In terms of the ratio of incendiaries to high explosive...The US raids on Schweinfurt, the ball bearing factories, as well as aircraft production, showed that although buildings could be destroyed by blast, the production machinery they housed was quite resilient. Buildings were cheap- precision machinery is not. However, what was also learned was that precision machinery withstood fire poorly, even if it didn't melt, the heat would warp critical components and it became useless. Thus, most attacks incorporated a mixture of incendiaries and high explosive.
In terms of the accuracy of the bombing...over the years, there had been great stride in improving bombing accuracy at night through the use of electronic devices such as oboe, gee and H2S. The Germans had an early lead- witness the accurate bombing of Coventry in 1940 (41?) using Knickebein IIRC.
"The most destructive raid on Tokyo occurred on the night of 9th March 1945. Japan was practically defenseless by then. Several months before the surrender. War production in apartment flats! Really? You believe anything then."
I'll cite Martin Caiden in the "The Night Tokyo Died". Feel free to read up about how Japan had dispersed its weapons production because their factories were turned to rubble. Engine manufacture suffered catastrophically, both in numbers and quality. Also feel free to read about how kamikaze craft were designed to be simple so that components could be manufactured in small shops. See R.J. Francillon, Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War.
"You made my point exactly. We firebombed civilian populations in order to demoralise them. There were other options than Nuclear devastation, such as a sea blockade. Japan was and is notoriously dependent upon foreign oil. We are burdened by the shame of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Hiroshima was the city which housed Etajima, the Japanese equivalent of Annapolis. Seems to me that a training school for the military counts as a reasonable target. Also, see my comments on dispersed production above- essentially any city becomes a target due to weapons manufacture. We were finally able to apply the theories of Douhet espoused in the 30s. His theories where wars would be won by attacking population centers till they cried uncle were the justification of building up the bomber fleets in the 30s and 40s in Germany, the UK, the USSR, and the US. So the populations of these countries supported this buildup with their tax dollars. Seems to me that the idea of bombing cities was tacitly accepted. It got a lot more acceptable after the phony war ended, and Germany began bombing London- although the English had also launched some desultory attacks on Germany -often with leaflets- very deadly- you could die laughing reading them- there was a reason they were classified.
In terms of your proposed sea blockade of Japan. We had done so and quite successfully. Most of Japan's shipping had been sunk- 2/3rds by US submarines, both merchant ships and navy. What the U-boats tried to do to England, our sub fleet succeeded with Japan. The country was starving and supine, however, some of their leaders, such as Admiral Ohnishi, who took over the air fleets of Japan in the final months, thought that surrender was unthinkable and begged the Prince of Japan to continue fighting, even though the military situation was utterly hopeless. Japan had no navy, no fuel, few trained pilots, and even fewer aircraft while the Sea of Japan was an American lake. What the hell do you do with people like this? And he was a revered guy in Japan...
I'm sorry, I don't think the US takes any of the blame for using nuclear weapons to end that war. The Japanese had no military options nearly a year before- they should have surrendered. We didn't stop them from doing so- that was their own hubris. Nor were the nuclear weapons really all that different than conventional weapons in terms of effects- most people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki died from fire, not from fall out. What nuclear weapons showed was that it was now easy to put Douhet's theories into practice- that cities could be readily destroyed from the air with no practical defense. Conventional bombing was supposed to do that, but it largely failed. The technology caught up in a decade. Oh yeah, you can also read H.G. Wells- the Shape of Things to Come or sit through the not very good movie.
Sam
< Message edited by samboct -- 9/14/2011 10:25:58 AM >
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RE: 9/11: 10 years on ..... - 
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