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August 6, 1945 - The B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay deployed the first atomic bomb, code-named Little Boy, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Recently, Dutch Van Kirk, the last-living crew member of the Enola Gay passed away in Stone Mountain Ga. severing out last-living link to this historic event.
The nearly 70-years since this mission ushered in the nuclear age have had no shortage of debate. What are your views? And what are your thoughts on how the Atomic Bomb impacted the end of the war and, more specifically, the lives of family members you had in service at the time?
The nearly 70-years since this mission ushered in the nuclear age have had no shortage of debate. What are your views? And what are your thoughts on how the Atomic Bomb impacted the end of the war and, more specifically, the lives of family members you had in service at the time?
WWII World War Two
Military History
World History
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 4
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The three atomic bombs ( Alamogordo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki) detonated during WWII cost about $5 Billion each. Most of the expense was incurred in construction of facilities for separating fissile from fissionable Special Nuclear Materials ( Uranium / Plutonium isotopes required to sustain nuclear chain reaction ) in gas diffusion and electomagnetic separation plants. Only a fraction of cost was expended on research and development in Los Alamos.
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/manhattan
Atomic bombing saved substantial money and lives that would have been wasted in WWII.
Relative to $3.3 Trillion WWII total expense, highly cost effective in any sense of the word.
The subsequent $5.5 Trillion invested in massive proliferation during our nuclear weapons program diverted desperately needed federal resources from many other worthy programs . . . solely in the name of deterring theoretical Soviet nuclear attack . . . where the Soviet nuclear capabilities were massively overestimated by airborne and space reconnaissance combined with grossly inaqeduate human intelligence assets on the ground. Subsequent accounts by Soviet scientific and political leadership disclosed two thirds of the Soviet missile boosters would self destruct on ignition or first few seconds after launch. Minimum launch capability.
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/silverberg
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_detail.html
Deeper investment in human intelligence may well have avoided massive wasted expense.
In my naive opinion, we may have avoided much of nuclear escalation and the cold war if we were not poorly counseled to invest heavily in preparation for overblown nuclear adversary.
Perhaps a military historian can help us understand why we chose path of nuclear escalation?
President Eisenhower warned us about this risk . . . why did we ignore his very wise counsel?
Just speculating out loud about alternative paths . . . and wondering what others may think.
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/manhattan
Atomic bombing saved substantial money and lives that would have been wasted in WWII.
Relative to $3.3 Trillion WWII total expense, highly cost effective in any sense of the word.
The subsequent $5.5 Trillion invested in massive proliferation during our nuclear weapons program diverted desperately needed federal resources from many other worthy programs . . . solely in the name of deterring theoretical Soviet nuclear attack . . . where the Soviet nuclear capabilities were massively overestimated by airborne and space reconnaissance combined with grossly inaqeduate human intelligence assets on the ground. Subsequent accounts by Soviet scientific and political leadership disclosed two thirds of the Soviet missile boosters would self destruct on ignition or first few seconds after launch. Minimum launch capability.
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/silverberg
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_detail.html
Deeper investment in human intelligence may well have avoided massive wasted expense.
In my naive opinion, we may have avoided much of nuclear escalation and the cold war if we were not poorly counseled to invest heavily in preparation for overblown nuclear adversary.
Perhaps a military historian can help us understand why we chose path of nuclear escalation?
President Eisenhower warned us about this risk . . . why did we ignore his very wise counsel?
Just speculating out loud about alternative paths . . . and wondering what others may think.
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I agree that it should have been used. Because it saved a lot of American lives and it show us as a superpower to the world. It also had other effects for us like The Cold War but I know it was a hard decision for President Truman to make but it was the right call.
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Some of the more conservative estimates had the KIA count for Americans taking the main island of Japan at 1 million. The weapon absolutely saved lives on both sides.
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A lot of people disagree because it killed a lot of people and affected the region with radiation for over a decade after they were detonated. A lot of people think nukes in general are just bad.
I think we did the right thing not necessarily for Japan, but for the United States and her allies. Had we never designed those bombs, the Allies would have launched a massive invasion of the Japanese homeland, in which it was calculated that over a million casualties would be sustained, almost half of them dead. The United States used those bombs to prevent further loss to us from the war, because a land, sea and air invasion of Japan would have been a bloody and brutal catastrophe. As the other post above did say, the Japanese would have fought to a man. Every citizen in that country would have taken up arms. It would have been like the battles of Fallujah, but on a much grander scale. Everyone was an enemy.
Japan's pride and rich warrior culture made it impossible for them to accept that they could not win. Those bombs showed them that we had the technology to end it for them. Certainly though, the burden borne by the men who ultimately made the decision to bomb Japan was greater than any other burden. Truman probably lived with the deaths of over 80,000 Japanese civilians on his conscience as long as he lived. But keep in mind that the fire bombings of Japan killed well over 120,000 people combined, whereas the A-bombs only killed 80,000. The bombing campaign over Japan will most certainly be debated for a long time on whether or not it was bad, but the facts show that using two atomic bombs was what ended the war and kept our casualties to a minimum.