> (In World War II, the US used flights of 500 to 1000 manned
> bombers to destroy 62 cities [in Japan] and two [more] flights of
> one bomber each to destroy two more cities, using nuclear
> weapons.)
Russell Chapman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responded:
I had no idea that the US used those sorts of numbers in their raids -
was this only after Okinawa was taken?
No, the big raids started earlier, from one or more islands, further
away; I cannot remember which ones (it has been 30 or more years since
I read these histories).
... Most of the other airfields used in the island hopping
campaign were barely able to support a squadron of B-17s or B-29s.
Yes. That is why people started to say `The difficult we do
immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.'
... The supply of bombs and fuel to the airfield(s) for
each raid must have been an enormous undertaking.
Yes, it was. The war, against both Germany and Japan, ended up taking
about a half of US gross domestic product in 1944.
It is thought that from an organizational point of view, one reason
the generals wanted `1000 bomber' raids is because they knew the
complexity of the organization would show how good they were for the
US military. It is also why Yamomato was opposed to the war before it
started; he knew how many resources the US could put into it, if the
US decided not to accept a negotiated peace after a few months.
Funny how one stray bomb making an Iraqi orphan is a huge drama
throughout the Western world, and yet less than 60 years ago we were
carpet bombing entire cities into the ground with unguided iron bombs.
This is an example of new technology enabling people to be more
concerned about killing civilians. But this new technology is much
more recent than 60 years. Remember, people feared bomber and
missle-carried nuclear weapons through much of the Cold war.
Indeed, it is often said that one of the various reasons that
motivated so many in the US to move to suburbs after WWII is that they
understood that atomic weapons would destroy cities even more
completely than conventional bombs.
But by the mid or latter 1950s, possible military use of hydrogen
bombs meant that even those who had moved to suburbs could expect to
burn or be killed by a `hard rain' (i.e., radioactively hard fallout).
So people just worried.
Joan Baez composed the song, `A hard rain is gonna fall'.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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