In a message dated 8/6/05 10:31:24 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: <I don't think that you are looking at the picture in the same light as the
<planners were. Actually greg, we haven't been talking about what was in the minds of the planners. The subject has been the wholly abitrary statements which were made, post-war, to justify the bombs. (snip) <Yes, Omaha beach was bad. But lets look at more realistic numbers that <planners from the invasion were looking at: (snip) (snip) <Over 26,000 Allied causalities and over 21,800 Japanese causalities for an <island less than 8 sq miles in size, in little over 1 month. The name of <that island - Iwo Jima. (snip) No, not more realistic. Iwo Jima saw a very high fatality rate for american forces of 10%. However, in reality, this battle was highly anomalous for a whole number of reasons. No reasonalbe strategist would factor this event into his/her force requirement or casualty estimates in planning for another campaign. <In 2 months 38,000 Americans wounded, 12,000 killed or missing, more than <107,000 enemy killed, and perhaps 100,000 civilians perished, in the <invasion of a tiny little island called Okinawa. ( That is more <causalities than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined - an estimated 103,000 ) You forgot to mention that some 300000+ american fighting forces were involved. In other words, the rate of fatalities was some 4%. In absolute terms, only slightly higher than omaha beach, despite the kamakazi tactics employed by the japanese. It should be noted that Okinawa had very important elements in common with Iwo Jima. Yet, the fatality rate was significantly lower. A clear indicator both of the exceptional nature of the battle at Iwo Jima, and of the fact that the american forces had adapted well to the new tactical situation. So, basically, there is nothing 'more realistic' about these numbers. And even if you were to assume that there were, you'd still be talking about a combat force of some 25000000 personnel. <It was with these casualty numbers, that the planners were figuring <1,000,000 from the off shore bombardment to the final surrender. Again, NOT! We've been talking about post-war assertions made to justify the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of the earliest and most famous of which is now known to have been an entirely arbitrary figure. I also must stress, that these 'sound bite' type of comments are heavily loaded. The public does not tend to think of military actions in terms of wounded or missing (wounded normally account for around 80% or more of casualties). Casualty figures morph into body counts, so that the common perception is that a million american lives were at stake. As far as what was actually anticipated, the top planners' casualty estimates (i.e. total wounded, dead and missing) varied widely, ranging anywhere from around 100,000 on the low end to a million on the high end (this was the single highest estimate, almost twice as high as all others). -chris b. _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
