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And I'm not the only one that thinks you could have achieved the same results by publicly dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on something besides civilian targets.
by boomboomsubban 5y ago
And I'm not the only one that thinks you could have achieved the same results by publicly dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on something besides civilian targets.
- nradov 5y agoPerhaps, but at the time the supply of nuclear weapons was very small. US leaders weren't sure how many they would need to use in order to compel an unconditional surrender so they couldn't afford to waste one on a demonstration and then potentially be caught short.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoWe already "wasted" one on a demonstration, and what was the great risk of being caught short? Japan potentially faces another round of conventional bombing?
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThe trinity test was a proof of concept. It was not anything close to a production ready bomb.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoFrom Wikipedia: > The Trinity Gadget was officially a Y-1561 device, as was the Fat Man used a few weeks later in the bombing of Nagasaki. The two were very similar, with only minor differences, the most obvious being the absence of fuzing and the external ballistic casing. The bombs were still under development, and small changes continued to be made to the Fat Man design. So, not identical. But "not anything close" seems wrong.
- InTheArena 5y agoThis was debated at the time. It was ultimately rejected: 1) What if the bomb didn't work? 2) What if the bomb was recovered by the Japanese? 3) What if they ignored the demonstration? 4) What if a single Allied soldier died who would not have died if they had dropped it on a military target? I suggest the first two books of Richard Rhode's book "Making of the Atomic Bomb", which goes into this.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThe first two risks are unchanged, a failed and recovered Little Boy always carried the same risk. Three, what if they ignored the bombings? And four I think you misstated, but how do we know a single more allied soldier didn't die because we dropped it on a civilian target? I've read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb."
- rrss 5y agoThe first two risks are only unchanged for a demonstration that was not announced to japan, and IMO a demonstration of a nuclear bomb without telling Japan to observe it would not have been effective. After the bombing of Hiroshima, Suzuki stated to the press that Japan would not surrender, which suggests to me that bombing the middle of nowhere as a demonstration would probably not have persuaded the Japanese government to surrender. Why would a non military demonstration have been more impactful than bombing a city?
- gus_massa 5y agoPoliticians tell bullshit all the time. If they say they will surrender in a week, it's very hard to convince the cannon folder to continue fighting while they negotiate some kind of amnesty for the top level generals.
- mcguire 5y agoThose politicians were telling that to each other---the Supreme Council was deadlocked after Nagasaki and the Soviets had entered the war.
- csee 5y ago(1) and (2) make no sense. The bomb is more likely to be recovered by the Japanese if it is dropped on a city. (3) then you drop one demo and have two real ones if they don't surrender to the demo within a few days. (4) that sucks but that's how it goes, you can't seriously be saying it's justified to kill 200k Japanese civilians to save a small handful of allied lives in the intervening days while we wait for their response to the demo bomb.
- panick21_ 5y agoThere were not military targets worth targeting.
- maxk42 5y agoNeither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were civilian targets. Hiroshima was the headquarters for the Japanese 2nd Army, which defended half of Japan and Nagasaki was the production center for 90% of the Japanese fleet. Both were critical military targets.