7 ms·

Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing

155 points by devchuk 12y ago

outworlder 12y ago
Ok, so the target area was blocked. So what? This was not a precision ammo, it was an a-bomb! Even those early designs could just be detonated in the general area and still destroy the target and everything else. Why did the bombers have to switch targets then?
- iSnow 12y ago
  I am guessing here but I believe the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also weapons tests. And you want a clear field of vision to perform a precise test.
- christudor 12y ago
  This is not quite true; the Nagasaki bomb missed its target by almost two miles because of cloud cover, and as a result only half the number of people were killed compared to Hiroshima. Even with an atomic bomb you had to be /relatively/ precise. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYphE841lfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYphE841lfY)
adventured 12y ago
It's interesting to read Wikipedia's entry on this matter (claiming it was caused by a huge firebombing raid): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an... "The delay at the rendezvous had resulted in clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on nearby Yahata the previous day covering 70% of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point."
- christudor 12y ago
  Yep, one of the reasons Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets was because they were one of the few major Japanese cities that /hadn't/ been firebombed in the preceding weeks. People forget that the deadliest 24 hours in the Second World War was not either of the atomic bombings (which killed c. 120,000 people), but the firebombing of Tokyo, which burned down 12 square miles of a city which had average population density of 100,000 people per square mile.
  - pilsetnieks 12y ago
    Also, Kyoto was one of the original targets but because of its cultural significance it was replaced with Nagasaki.
    - gwern 12y ago
      Thank goodness, though. The bombings were a bad idea, but at least they didn't bomb Kyoto!
programmer_dude 12y ago
How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.
  - marvin 12y ago
    Smokescreens were widely used as a defensive tactic during World War 2. Assuming that the bombing crews are attempting to hit a target rather than just indiscriminately bomb an area of several square kilometers, they were very effective before the advent of infrared cameras all-weather radar. Smokescreens do require relatively calm winds though. You could e.g. read "Target Tirpitz" which is a historical account documenting among other things how smokescreens were used to defend Germany's biggest battleship against a large number of bombing runs. A battleship is pretty much the biggest target you could have on a battlefield, showing that this tactic is very effective against non-indiscriminate bombing.
  - cleverjake 12y ago
    the visibility of the city isn't affected by the height of the plane. they weren't trying to smoke out the plane, just cover the place they lived.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - FatalLogic 12y ago
    They only had to obscure the target zone, which was a very small area (a single factory complex, the Kokura Arsenal), and by chance it happened to be obscured during the 30 minutes or so that the plane was overhead. This wasn't a normal bombing run. It had elements of an experiment - they wanted to understand how the bomb worked, so they wanted to control the drop precisely and be able to observe the effects. The aiming points were very precise (a bridge in the case of Hiroshima), and they were chosen well in advance, and the mission orders were quite rigid. If the crew couldn't see the target clearly after several attempts, they didn't have the authority to randomly drop the bomb somewhere else - they had to go on to the next city. Ironically, after all that, I think they eventually missed the aiming point in Nagasaki by 2 km or so, because it was also obscured. By then, the plane was low on fuel though, so I guess they were forced to do the best they could. I've read that they weren't supposed to do that, according to the mission rules. The plane came very close to running out of fuel, which I guess might have made them drop the bomb to reduce weight. edit: This is Field Order 13 - for the attack on Hiroshima. It includes Kokura and Nagasaki as secondary targets, so you can see how precise they were about the aiming points. I'm pretty sure the target details would be exactly the same for the Nagasaki attack (Field Order 17, which I can't find online). https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l edit2: Bomber crew member's diary which explains what happened over Kokura - http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG-ASPI/01/Pages/CGP-ASPI-024.htm http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG-ASPI/01/Pages/CG...
spingsprong 12y ago
A couple of photos of what a smokescreen covering a city looks like http://449th.org/ploesti.php http://449th.org/ploesti.php It's for a German city, but it is the same idea.
- tbdr 12y ago
  correction: for a Romanian city - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti
FatalLogic 12y ago
I wanted to know if this was plausible, so I located the Yawata Steel Works (the source of the smoke screen) and the Kokura Arsenal (the aiming point for the bomb) on a map. They were about 4.4km apart. http://i.imgur.com/nJaJtH7.png http://i.imgur.com/nJaJtH7.png (the site of the Steel Works is on the left) Interesting, but I still don't know if it's true. edit: Wikipedia's page on Smokescreens says "One 50 gallon drum of fog oil can obscure 60 miles (97 km) of land in 15 minutes", so I suppose it was easily possible for them to have hidden the target if the wind direction was right Google Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%96%E7%82%89%E5%B7%A5%E6%A5%AD%EF%BC%88%E6%A0%AA%EF%BC%89+%E5%B0%8F%E5%80%89%E5%B7%A5%E5%A0%B4/@33.8999819,130.8525735,13z/data=!4m7!1m4!3m3!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzPCsDU0JzEwLjAiTiAxMzDCsDQ5JzQ4LjAiRQ!3b1!3m1!1s0x0:0x6a522cb4a3d20415?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%96%E7%82%8...
- colanderman 12y ago
  97 square kilometers? 97 kilometer radius? tsk tsk Wikipedia…
  - jackweirdy 12y ago
    What's wrong with the second one?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - knowtheory 12y ago
    Yeah, i'm not even sure that specifying just one unit is even sufficient for me to understand what they mean. Presumably plume size is determined by a variety of factors, not just fuel?
  - FatalLogic 12y ago
    I assume it means 97 square kilometers, because covering a circle of 97 km radius in 15 minutes would require a 776 km/hour wind :) But it is written very unclearly, and it's not clear what is wikipedia's source, sadly. It just seemed plausible that there could be plenty of smoke coverage for the scenario under discussion
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mkmk 12y ago
Does the Trolley problem apply here? (i.e. diverting the enemy from your town, if you know it is likely they will just attack the next town over) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
- TomGullen 12y ago
  I don't think so exactly, if you prevent the bombing on your city you're increasing the chance they get shot down, they get lost, they return to base, they run out of fuel etc etc.
- phkahler 12y ago
  No. This guy was saving his own life and there was no certainty the bomb would be dropped on someone else - or whom or how many.
- FatalLogic 12y ago
  Maybe we can see it as a type of market in which participants simply tried to keep bombers away from their own city, without considering the effects on other cities? Over time, competition within this macabre market would produce increasingly efficient and effective means of repelling bombers. If the cities had cooperated, rather than competing, maybe they would have not evolved such efficient countermeasures? A competitive strategy could produce a net benefit for all the cities, because diverted bombers might be less likely to carry out an effective attack on their secondary target. In fact, that's what happened in this case (assuming the smokescreen had an effect). By the time the bomber diverted from Kokura to Nagasaki, it was so short of fuel that it could only attempt one bombing run. Visibility was poor, and the bomb detonated off target above a valley, with the result that parts of the city were shielded. The death toll of 40-80,000 was 'only' about half that of Hiroshima, despite the bomb being more powerful edit: The outcome could have been even better, because the orders for the mission stated that they had to clearly see the target. If not, they were to return with the bomb. Really, it sounds like they ignored these orders, perhaps because they didn't have enough fuel to carry the bomb back.
- autodidakto 12y ago
  You are never on the tracks. That would change the experiment, right? It would be self-defense and not much of a moral dilemma (that many people would struggle with or hold against you, I assume).

155 points by devchuk 12y ago

Ok, so the target area was blocked. So what? This was not a precision ammo, it was an a-bomb! Even those early designs could just be detonated in the general area and still destroy the target and everything else. Why did the bombers have to switch targets then?

iSnow 12y ago
I am guessing here but I believe the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also weapons tests. And you want a clear field of vision to perform a precise test.
christudor 12y ago
This is not quite true; the Nagasaki bomb missed its target by almost two miles because of cloud cover, and as a result only half the number of people were killed compared to Hiroshima. Even with an atomic bomb you had to be /relatively/ precise. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYphE841lfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYphE841lfY)

adventured 12y ago

It's interesting to read Wikipedia's entry on this matter (claiming it was caused by a huge firebombing raid): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an... "The delay at the rendezvous had resulted in clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on nearby Yahata the previous day covering 70% of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point."

christudor 12y ago
Yep, one of the reasons Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets was because they were one of the few major Japanese cities that /hadn't/ been firebombed in the preceding weeks. People forget that the deadliest 24 hours in the Second World War was not either of the atomic bombings (which killed c. 120,000 people), but the firebombing of Tokyo, which burned down 12 square miles of a city which had average population density of 100,000 people per square mile.
- pilsetnieks 12y ago
  Also, Kyoto was one of the original targets but because of its cultural significance it was replaced with Nagasaki.
  - gwern 12y ago
    Thank goodness, though. The bombings were a bad idea, but at least they didn't bomb Kyoto!

programmer_dude 12y ago

How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?

ekianjo 12y ago
Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.
- marvin 12y ago
  Smokescreens were widely used as a defensive tactic during World War 2. Assuming that the bombing crews are attempting to hit a target rather than just indiscriminately bomb an area of several square kilometers, they were very effective before the advent of infrared cameras all-weather radar. Smokescreens do require relatively calm winds though. You could e.g. read "Target Tirpitz" which is a historical account documenting among other things how smokescreens were used to defend Germany's biggest battleship against a large number of bombing runs. A battleship is pretty much the biggest target you could have on a battlefield, showing that this tactic is very effective against non-indiscriminate bombing.
- cleverjake 12y ago
  the visibility of the city isn't affected by the height of the plane. they weren't trying to smoke out the plane, just cover the place they lived.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- FatalLogic 12y ago
  They only had to obscure the target zone, which was a very small area (a single factory complex, the Kokura Arsenal), and by chance it happened to be obscured during the 30 minutes or so that the plane was overhead. This wasn't a normal bombing run. It had elements of an experiment - they wanted to understand how the bomb worked, so they wanted to control the drop precisely and be able to observe the effects. The aiming points were very precise (a bridge in the case of Hiroshima), and they were chosen well in advance, and the mission orders were quite rigid. If the crew couldn't see the target clearly after several attempts, they didn't have the authority to randomly drop the bomb somewhere else - they had to go on to the next city. Ironically, after all that, I think they eventually missed the aiming point in Nagasaki by 2 km or so, because it was also obscured. By then, the plane was low on fuel though, so I guess they were forced to do the best they could. I've read that they weren't supposed to do that, according to the mission rules. The plane came very close to running out of fuel, which I guess might have made them drop the bomb to reduce weight. edit: This is Field Order 13 - for the attack on Hiroshima. It includes Kokura and Nagasaki as secondary targets, so you can see how precise they were about the aiming points. I'm pretty sure the target details would be exactly the same for the Nagasaki attack (Field Order 17, which I can't find online). https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l edit2: Bomber crew member's diary which explains what happened over Kokura - http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG-ASPI/01/Pages/CGP-ASPI-024.htm http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG-ASPI/01/Pages/CG...

spingsprong 12y ago

A couple of photos of what a smokescreen covering a city looks like http://449th.org/ploesti.php http://449th.org/ploesti.php It's for a German city, but it is the same idea.

tbdr 12y ago
correction: for a Romanian city - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti

FatalLogic 12y ago

I wanted to know if this was plausible, so I located the Yawata Steel Works (the source of the smoke screen) and the Kokura Arsenal (the aiming point for the bomb) on a map. They were about 4.4km apart. http://i.imgur.com/nJaJtH7.png http://i.imgur.com/nJaJtH7.png (the site of the Steel Works is on the left) Interesting, but I still don't know if it's true. edit: Wikipedia's page on Smokescreens says "One 50 gallon drum of fog oil can obscure 60 miles (97 km) of land in 15 minutes", so I suppose it was easily possible for them to have hidden the target if the wind direction was right Google Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%96%E7%82%89%E5%B7%A5%E6%A5%AD%EF%BC%88%E6%A0%AA%EF%BC%89+%E5%B0%8F%E5%80%89%E5%B7%A5%E5%A0%B4/@33.8999819,130.8525735,13z/data=!4m7!1m4!3m3!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzPCsDU0JzEwLjAiTiAxMzDCsDQ5JzQ4LjAiRQ!3b1!3m1!1s0x0:0x6a522cb4a3d20415?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%96%E7%82%8...

colanderman 12y ago
97 square kilometers? 97 kilometer radius? tsk tsk Wikipedia…
- jackweirdy 12y ago
  What's wrong with the second one?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- knowtheory 12y ago
  Yeah, i'm not even sure that specifying just one unit is even sufficient for me to understand what they mean. Presumably plume size is determined by a variety of factors, not just fuel?
- FatalLogic 12y ago
  I assume it means 97 square kilometers, because covering a circle of 97 km radius in 15 minutes would require a 776 km/hour wind :) But it is written very unclearly, and it's not clear what is wikipedia's source, sadly. It just seemed plausible that there could be plenty of smoke coverage for the scenario under discussion

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mkmk 12y ago

Does the Trolley problem apply here? (i.e. diverting the enemy from your town, if you know it is likely they will just attack the next town over) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

TomGullen 12y ago
I don't think so exactly, if you prevent the bombing on your city you're increasing the chance they get shot down, they get lost, they return to base, they run out of fuel etc etc.
phkahler 12y ago
No. This guy was saving his own life and there was no certainty the bomb would be dropped on someone else - or whom or how many.
FatalLogic 12y ago
Maybe we can see it as a type of market in which participants simply tried to keep bombers away from their own city, without considering the effects on other cities? Over time, competition within this macabre market would produce increasingly efficient and effective means of repelling bombers. If the cities had cooperated, rather than competing, maybe they would have not evolved such efficient countermeasures? A competitive strategy could produce a net benefit for all the cities, because diverted bombers might be less likely to carry out an effective attack on their secondary target. In fact, that's what happened in this case (assuming the smokescreen had an effect). By the time the bomber diverted from Kokura to Nagasaki, it was so short of fuel that it could only attempt one bombing run. Visibility was poor, and the bomb detonated off target above a valley, with the result that parts of the city were shielded. The death toll of 40-80,000 was 'only' about half that of Hiroshima, despite the bomb being more powerful edit: The outcome could have been even better, because the orders for the mission stated that they had to clearly see the target. If not, they were to return with the bomb. Really, it sounds like they ignored these orders, perhaps because they didn't have enough fuel to carry the bomb back.
autodidakto 12y ago
You are never on the tracks. That would change the experiment, right? It would be self-defense and not much of a moral dilemma (that many people would struggle with or hold against you, I assume).