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The Japanese could certainly have delivered the bomb to US targets. They had aircraft carrying submarines. Near the end of the war an operation to attack on t

by tsotha 11y ago

The Japanese could certainly have delivered the bomb to US targets. They had aircraft carrying submarines. Near the end of the war an operation to attack on the Panama Canal was in the works before the subs were recalled to the home islands in order to make kamikaze attacks on American warships.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> The Japanese could certainly have delivered the bomb to US targets. They had aircraft carrying submarines. Which carried small planes; the largest of which had a loaded weight smaller than any of the early nuclear weapons. The only way those were going to deliver nuclear bombs anywhere was to use the submarine itself as a suicide delivery system, rather than carrying them on the planes.
- tsotha 11y ago
  How long do you think it would have taken them to develop an sub-born aircraft powerful enough for a one-way trip with a bomb? More than a few months?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > How long do you think it would have taken them to develop an sub-born aircraft powerful enough for a one-way trip with a bomb? The time consuming and expensive part of that would be developing and building the sub that could carry an aircraft capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, not developing the aircraft. (OTOH, its all kind of a silly discussion; Japan certainly would have used the bomb if it had it, but in its late-war strategic position, it would have likely used it, at least first, on military targets closer to the immediate theater of war. The US dropped the bomb on Japan because at that point in the war, bombing Japan was the key focus of US military efforts anyway, and the US was in a position from which it could regularly and effectively bomb Japan.)
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Much more. A first-generation bomb would have been huge. The B-29 was barely adequate for the American bombs, and it was a gigantic plane for its time. Building something capable of both carrying an early atomic bomb and fitting in a submarine was probably entirely beyond the technology of the day.
- protomyth 11y ago
  How about they sail their sub to LA, Perl Harbor, SF, or San Diego and commit and detonate the bomb in a kamikaze attack?

by tsotha 11y ago

dragonwriter 11y ago

> The Japanese could certainly have delivered the bomb to US targets. They had aircraft carrying submarines. Which carried small planes; the largest of which had a loaded weight smaller than any of the early nuclear weapons. The only way those were going to deliver nuclear bombs anywhere was to use the submarine itself as a suicide delivery system, rather than carrying them on the planes.

tsotha 11y ago
How long do you think it would have taken them to develop an sub-born aircraft powerful enough for a one-way trip with a bomb? More than a few months?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > How long do you think it would have taken them to develop an sub-born aircraft powerful enough for a one-way trip with a bomb? The time consuming and expensive part of that would be developing and building the sub that could carry an aircraft capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, not developing the aircraft. (OTOH, its all kind of a silly discussion; Japan certainly would have used the bomb if it had it, but in its late-war strategic position, it would have likely used it, at least first, on military targets closer to the immediate theater of war. The US dropped the bomb on Japan because at that point in the war, bombing Japan was the key focus of US military efforts anyway, and the US was in a position from which it could regularly and effectively bomb Japan.)
- mikeash 11y ago
  Much more. A first-generation bomb would have been huge. The B-29 was barely adequate for the American bombs, and it was a gigantic plane for its time. Building something capable of both carrying an early atomic bomb and fitting in a submarine was probably entirely beyond the technology of the day.
protomyth 11y ago
How about they sail their sub to LA, Perl Harbor, SF, or San Diego and commit and detonate the bomb in a kamikaze attack?