Re: Midway

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:00:37 -0400, Brad Meyer <bradm110@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Actually, probably not delayed it at all. Little Boy and Fat Man were
going to be deployed in August 1945 no matter what.

How? If via B-29, from where? If from the China bases, they are not
going to make that timeline -- its going to take longer then that to
get them there.

Not really. You've answered your own objection below: they'd be
delivered from Tinian.

IMO, in the end the Marianas are a prereqresite for use of the bomb.
The question really ought to be "How long can the Japanese hold the
Marianas?" I can't conceive any scenario that allows them to hold any
longer then the end of '44, so the war is going to end within a month
or two of the actual date anyway.

If US forces take the Marianas by the end of 1944, what prevents the
29s from delivering Little Boy on the earliest feasible date, some
time in the first fortnight of August 1945?

If the US hadn't taken the Marianas, then the effort that went into
bombing from there would have gone instead to bombing from China. It
wouldn't have been as effective, but the problems would have been
ironed out eventually--indeed, one of the big problems in China was
the propensity for the 29's engines to burst into flame, a problem
only coincidentally solved with the shift to the Marianas--it was
going to be solved (to the extent it was solved) in either event.

A bombing campaign from Chengdu instead of the Marianas would have
left Japan in better shape physically by August 1945, but the atomic
bombs would have arrived on schedule, and done the physical and moral
damage that they did.


Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
forthcoming from HarperCollins www.flyingtigersbook.com

.

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