4 ms·
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 bo
by 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 ago97 square kilometers? 97 kilometer radius? tsk tsk Wikipedia…
- jackweirdy 12y agoWhat's wrong with the second one?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- knowtheory 12y agoYeah, 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 agoI 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
- cdwhite 12y agoSo I read this as "within 15 minutes, land up to 60 miles downwind of the generator is obscured."
- endianswap 12y agoWouldn't that require 240mph winds, though?
- cdwhite 12y ago... yeah. Oops. Guess that reading's out.
- HNJohnC 12y agoAre you really 'tsk'-ing at wikipedia? You know it's not guaranteed to be accurate on any topic at all don't you?
- nkozyra 12y agoIs anything guaranteed to be accurate on any topic?
- sitkack 12y agohit the edit button
- colanderman 12y agoHard to edit when I don't know what it's supposed to say.
- mikeash 12y agoSeems to me that the official report would have mentioned "a giant smoke plume clearly originating from this one site was obscuring the target area" rather than reports of smoke and clouds covering the whole city. It seems reasonable to me that the attempt may have been made, but I doubt it was responsible for actually averting the attack.