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Post by quincannon on May 21, 2012 10:20:05 GMT -6
Richard:
Brick and mortar -------- High explosive
Paper and stick ---------- Fire bomb
Different type of target constuction. Different solutions.
Why: Because when you set out to make war - make war. War is not a contest to try and find Mister Nice Guy. It is a brutal undertaking. Now consider this. If one of those 15 thousand had been the very one to kill you after the invasion, would the continuation of bombing been worth it? No one knew until the Japanese threw in the towel that they would not fight on despite the atomic bomb. They are was still being preped for an invasion and that would continue until the announced that they would surrender.
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 21, 2012 10:23:46 GMT -6
No wild, we dropped incendiaries in Europe too. 'Order of the day' is just a phrase, not a reality, and not true in this case. Japan burned no matter what was dropped in large measure. We evaporated in flame 65 cities there. There was no different policy except as demanded by the needs of the ground war, of which there was none in Japan at the time.
Europe's cities were not made out of wood and paper, and although obviously burned, it's just skeletal stone left. There was no difference except efforts were made not to destroy some cultural gems in Germany, but as with else they surrendered any claim on that given Louvain and all after. There was no way to prevent fire's spreading in Japan, so screw it.
You can't hide behind quincannon or anyone. Remember: all your posts are still up, where you called us genocidal murderers and all and wanted us to nuke our recent allies.
We continued the war till the enemy surrendered. That's why. And they nearly did not. Just like the idiots, including Michael Collins, kept fighting in the center of Dublin with no chance and the British kept shelling them. Why? They had betrayed western civilization to side with the Kaiser and take advantage of the war for personal, street gang elevation to power over the people for their own fame (don't deny it: they betrayed and killed each other over credit and power in the years to come, up to and including the official mourning for Hitler). But.....the cruel, harsh Brits kept firing at them until.....they surrendered. Isn't that amazingly close to what we did with Japan? Why yes, I think so.
If the Brits hadn't knocked them down, they'd have run off and stolen money at gunpoint to raise more havoc, as would the Japanese, already in negotiations with Peron for the emperor's safety and maybe some funding and material.
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Post by Gatewood on May 21, 2012 10:47:37 GMT -6
Wild,
The short answer to your question is different leaders, different conditions, and evolved practices. Initially the same bombing practices were utilized with Japan as with Germany. However, When Curtis LeMay took over responsibility for the bombing of Japan, he concluded that high level precision bombing was ineffective and adopted low level incendiary bombing. There were several reasons for this, including the facts that Japan generally had significantly more cloud cover and stronger prevailing winds than did Germany, both of which made precision targeting even more difficult. Also, as someone previously mentioned, Japanese cities were to a large extent literally constructed of paper and much more highly susceptible to fire than had been the cities in Germany. Another factor was that, due to the clouds and winds that necessitated lower level bombing, the bombers were vulnerable to damage caused by the blast of their own bombs, when dropping high explosives. Incendiaries produced a much smaller blast and were not as great a threat to the bombers themselves.
All of these were factors, but the primary one was the first listed - that Curtis LeMay mandated it.
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Post by wild on May 21, 2012 11:03:43 GMT -6
DARK CLOUD So, yes: only dive bombing could be termed accurate, Your method of debate is to take an issue to the Nth degree cue "last Indian standing","De rudio's sword".So you must stand or fall by your own rules. You claim that only dive bombers achieved precision bombing.You are wrong.British heavy bombers achieved precision bombing. If I post indisputable evidence will you acknowledge your error?
But keep jumping up and down and shrieking that the term 'doctrine' is all important, and that if there was an announced doctrine that made it a fact. You can do little else, so do All books dealing with the subject refer to the USAAF bombing campaign as precision bombing. I'v just noticed that Gatewood has used the term with reference to the early bombing of Japan.
Gatewood A precision post.Very nice. Regards
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 21, 2012 12:06:45 GMT -6
I had to feel sorry for the guys who landed on Omaha beach, first the tide caused there DD Tanks to capsize, then they landed on the most well defended beach out of the main five, only to find out that the Ariel bombing had over shot leaving the German defences virtually intact, another factor overlooked is that the Americans turned down the offer of Hobart’s Funnies, if they could have landed these AFVs safely, they could have knocked out the main WNs and breached the sea wall and Anti-tank ditches that prevented the GIs from leaving the beach.
Ian.
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Post by benteen on May 21, 2012 12:18:13 GMT -6
Ian,
You are correct. I just watched a History Chanel show on that. They wanted to see why these DD Tanks sank, what they came up with is that these tanks were basicaly in rafts and the waves filled the rafts up and they sank. Good post on that.
Be Well Dan
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Post by Gatewood on May 21, 2012 12:34:26 GMT -6
I should have mentioned that another factor mitigating the effectiveness of precision bombing against Japan was the fact that there was little to precisely bomb. Much of the Japanese war production was almost of a "cottage industry" in nature, being performed in multitudes of small workshops rather than large factories. These were extremely difficult if not impossible to target on an individual basis, if we even knew where they were, so we were almost forced into area bombing by default.
As an interesting side note, one tactic the U.S. developed was to attach small, delayed action incendiaries to bats and drop them out of bombers above Japanese cities. The bats would search for a suitable place to roost, usually under the eaves of the paper and wood Japanese houses, the incendiaries would go off, and presto, you had a building on fire. As far fetched as this may seem (sounds like one of Churchill's schemes), it actually worked quite well in trials, but I'm not sure how extensively it was ever actually utilized.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 21, 2012 12:35:17 GMT -6
Hello Dan and Thank you, I remember seeing a similar show, the DD Tanks had to turn and swim against the tide, and this was not a problem on the other beaches apart from Gold:
Sword: a very successful landing due to calm sea.
Gold: the Sherwood Rangers lost eight lost due to rough sea, the second wave 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards landed there DD Tanks closer to the shore.
Juno: the Canadian 1st Hussars launched 29 with 22 DD Tanks reaching the beach.
Utah: the 70th Tank Battalion, 27 out of 28 DD Tanks reached the beach.
Omaha: the 743rd Tank Battalion lost 27 out the 29 DD Tanks launched.
Ian.
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 21, 2012 12:38:29 GMT -6
Incendiary bombs of the time were very light and often bounced off tile, stone, and heavy duty roofs and into the streets where they might be controlled. They didn't work as well in Europe absent bouncing into a holed building. Didn't bounce as much in Japan, where entire urban centers were wood and paper. That's not hyperbole. Statistical zero for more solid structures in many of these places.
Again: whether the fires started more slowly with high explosive bombs or faster with incendiaries, there was very little difference on the ground when all you had was man-pulled pumping carts and canvas hoses. That being the case, there would be the same burn damage either way, so save bombers, keep them high and safer and use more of the lighter and cheaper incendiaries. Once the conflagration begins, doesn't matter what started it.
You can call it whatever you want, but it became wide area carpet bombing. There was no ability to be more precise absent dive bombing, or torpedo bombing variant like the dam busters, bouncing them into the dams. If 'precision' bombing had anything to it but the term, they wouldn't have needed to do that, the Tirpitz wouldn't have lasted, unmoving, for as long as it did, and just railroad lines would need to be destroyed, easily, all of which was impossible for anyone to do intentionally when desired during those years.
It can and has been argued that the avalanche of military terminology through the years was designed to conceal failure, imply technicalities that uneducated civvies wouldn't understand, and keep budgets flowing in certain directions. Certainly true in Custerland, where people dress up in costume and discuss non existent Indian military doctrine as promoted by a non-existent command structure to warriors who didn't have to obey anybody, and fixate on the ballistics of weapons that may or may not have been in the battle and tactics nobody since Carthage ever used or might have used. None of them, to my knowledge, were ever in combat themselves and very few served at all.
Here we have wild trying to argue a doctrine of precision vs. a doctrine of else when the people who devised, pursued and analyzed it concluded early on precision was ether and of dubious value, and discovered to be much worse than that after the war. People want to blame Harris and LeMay for pursuing these goals to remove guilt from us all for the failure. But they did nothing the civilian sector didn't promote and encourage at home, and it's grotesquely hypocritical to pretend otherwise.
There was no reality to precision bombing, so make life miserable for the civilians and the war would stop. Not when a God and a madman ran their nations, it wouldn't. Lesson. There was no substance to the alleged doctrine, the air force admitted it, the people who initially claimed it mostly admitted it, but wild cannot because it's yet another fiction he's promoted. It was bollocks.
yantaylor is the intended audience, for he believes everything.
The swimming tanks failed everywhere. There were 32 in total. 27 sank immediately upon launch with their complete crews, one right after the other as the ships watched. Yet the myth of these duds persists. "If only....' something had been done different. They played no role.
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Post by wild on May 21, 2012 13:57:02 GMT -6
Excellent work DARK CLOUD.A little research will save blushes and embarrassment .Now off with the dive bombers thingy alls forgotten.It could happen to a Bishop. ;D
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 21, 2012 14:17:24 GMT -6
Still correct. The only precision bombing in WWII was done by dive bombers. Period. The very idea of precision bombing by level bombers at altitude was nonsense. They admitted it. You should as well.
Pretending I'm saying something different would be like you trying to pretend nobody recalls the false and demeaning things still up.
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Post by quincannon on May 21, 2012 15:11:26 GMT -6
DC: If your definition of precision bombing is to be precise there was no such thing as precision bombing in World War II. For every bomb launched from a dive bomber what percentage achieved the desired resut - a hit. It was very low. To the larger question of what form of bombing was most precise then you would have to say dive bombing was the most precise. Daylight, high altitude, precision bombing practiced in the European Theater and elswhere is a myth pure and simple.
The most precise hits that I know of during WWII was the German guided bomb hit on Roma which sank her and on Savannah which put her in the yards and did such considerable damage that she was no longer fit for wartime operations thereafter. Hell we could not even sell her to any one of the various South American navies that were bying up the rest of the Brooklyns after the war. But even those guided bombs could be defeated by violent maneuver, or destruction of the launch aircraft. Smart bombs are far from smart, but dumb bombs are just that dumb.
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Post by wild on May 21, 2012 16:49:46 GMT -6
Interesting to note that the technology needed by the Japs to build a carrier fleet was supplied by paid British agents and the first carrier pilots were trained by the Brits. Maybe Gatewood or the Colonel might have something on this?
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Post by quincannon on May 21, 2012 18:20:27 GMT -6
Who were allies of whom when this all took place during and immediately after World War I?
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 21, 2012 19:46:15 GMT -6
The only bombers that hit their intended target with regularity were dive bombers. The ones at Midway, for example. That it wasn't 100% doesn't affect the point. They hit the precise target they aimed at with intent and reason to think they did well. Even near hits at sea count by splinters. At least within five miles......
Counting those that lasted long enough to make a bomb run, with only one, compared with level bombers, the only precision bombing was by dive bomber.
I grasp the concept that there was a doctrine of precision bombing by Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force, but there could just as well have been a doctrine of invisibility. It did not exist, it was an intent and became a cover story they couldn't abandon and they kept at it. For people like wild to believe and insist upon it, and this so he can equate 'precision' with dead civilians, as it were intended and lusted for and preferred over military targets, is rather disgusting.
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