How to display Enola Gay and the Bomb

[gnome]

I think his use of "morale" in this context is misplaced and he is really just talking about attacks that convince an enemy's leaders to reevaluate their tactical position). I believe you misinterpret the article in respect of what it says about WWII bombing.

August, I don’t think I am misinterpreting Ash … I’m reading and taking in what he says.

about one-third of the way through the article …

In World War II, the strategy behind morale bombing involved both positive and negative morale. Bombing Germany could boost the Allies' positive morale by satisfying desires for retribution, and it could cause negative morale in Germans, who might eventually revolt against their system and cause the German war machine to implode.

This balance between positive and negative morale, however, can rebound and have the opposite effect. For example, when airmen are killed carrying out bombing campaigns, the unit's negative morale grows. In addition, as shown by Londoners during the blitz and by many Germans as well, bombing cities may not break civilian will and, on occasion, can even boost it.

and more-or-less at the end of the piece …

Damaging a populace's living conditions may not break its will to resist unless carried to the morally questionable extremes of killing most of the people or completely destroying their ability to survive. At the time of the CBO, such apparent ruthless retribution as part of a strategy was more understandable to decision makers and Allied societies than it is to students of history who have not lived through the blitz and faced such an enormous task and uncertain outcome

So we agree re. the early part ... negligible negative, indeed positive effect on the defenders. But I also interpret that last point to be relevant in the context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

regards Don

[k5083]

As he says, and most historians agree, the will of the Germans and Japanese civilians was never broken but, on the contrary, strengthened by the bombing

I guess we never should have bombed Germany or Japan and just sent them a "Sorry if we hurt your feelings" card then they would have just given up. Before you make another post let me get out my shovel and hip-boots.

In the short term attacks may energize the population (example: Pearl Harbor, Example 911, Example Battle of Britain) however long term Strategic or even out and out carpet bombing demoralizes your enemy (example: Japan surrendered after months of fire bombing and 2 nukes) You can psychoanalyze all you want but the fact remains that a few megatons of TNT dropped on Japan and a couple of well placed nukes ended the war). Your argument works well as long as you ignore the fact that we won the war. I have the feeling that you think that anything that this country does in a war is immoral and you consider every side but the USA first.

Did you read the article that I was commenting on? This was by an Air Force Lt. Colonel summarizing decades of historical research on the subject. To quote:

During World War II's Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), morale bombing was costly and its success unproven.

... as shown by Londoners during the blitz and by many Germans as well, bombing cities may not break civilian will and, on occasion, can even boost it.

From the standpoint of morale, however, the CBO's success in breaking the enemy's will to resist was questionable. Some authors have suggested that Allied and Axis aerial attacks on people showed, ironically, that civilian resolve may have been stronger than that of soldiers. Morale bombing undeniably caused significant suffering, insecurity, and lack of confidence in Nazi propaganda, but this still had no appreciable effect on behavior. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that "depressed and discouraged workers were not necessarily unproductive workers." Apparently, British strategists were incorrect in assuming that the German people would be less resilient than the British.

Likewise, aerial bombing of similarly resilient Japanese civilians and soldiers proved to be a very difficult way to break the enemy's will. Here again, suffering and dislocation did not necessarily translate into a behavioral change, as indicated in a captured diary of a Japanese soldier who wanted some Japanese air cover against constant and "especially fierce" aerial bombardment: "Oh God, please send us some planes--even if it is only one. . . . No matter what happens, I shall live through to do my best to once again renew my spirit and my pledge. I'm not afraid of their planes, their mortars, their shelling--this is the spirit of Japan--I will fight on." Against such an indomitable spirit, aerial bombing achieved only mixed success.

Thus, the morale bombing of World War II remains a contentious topic in the history of airpower. Without decisively affecting the enemy's will or morale, terror bombing produced, in the words of one author, "a torrent of destruction without precedent." It also cost the lives of thousands of airmen so that 55 years after the fact, students of history are still asking if the results were worth the price.

The CBO and the aerial bombing of Japanese cities were moderately successful campaigns of materiel exhaustion in which Allied operations succeeded in outlasting the enemy. In that sense, then, they were also campaigns of morale attrition. On the morale side, however, the campaigns were less successful. According to the recently declassified and published findings of the British Bombing Survey Unit, "in so far as the offensive against German towns was designed to break the morale of the German civilian population, it clearly failed."

These are not the opinons of lefty me, but the conclusions of Lt Col Eric Ash, editor of Aerospace Power Journal and chief of professional journals at the College of Aerospace Doctrine Research and Education, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and former B-52 instructor. And I have some familiarity with the historical research he is summarizing and can assure you that he summarizes it quite correctly (and, I might add, with impressive candor for an Air Force historian).

Germany and Japan surrendered because their leaders realized they were militarily beaten, not because their populations lost the will to fight. Your view of the effect of wartime bombing campaigns on enemy morale is simply wrong. However, your error is understandable because it reflects a widely held myth among people who disparage those anti-American historical scholars who have the nerve to challenge our cherished fantasies.

August

[gnome]

August, are you challenging rwdfresno or me? Not me I hope.

For the record I'm no lefty nor anti-American. I think I'm an open minded observer. Don't we all?

I agree it is only Ash's parting comment re. questionable extremes that argues/suggests the possibilty of successful strategic bombing. But I also take your point that Japan's decison to surrender was tactical.

regards Don

[k5083]

August, are you challenging rwdfresno or me? Not me I hope.

For the record I'm no lefty nor anti-American. I think I'm an open minded observer. Don't we all?

I agree it is only Ash's parting comment re. questionable extremes that argues/suggests the possibilty of successful strategic bombing. But I also take your point that Japan's decison to surrender was tactical.

I was addressing rwdfresno. I was writing my post while you posted yours. I appreciate you linking to the article; I had not seen that one.

I take your point about Ash's parting comment, but I consider it largely hypothetical. The war ended so soon after the A-bombs were dropped that there was no time to assess their impact on civilian morale. I guess you could argue that morale is diminished when there is nobody left alive to have any morale! It seems to me that is almost what Ash meant.

August

[rwdfresno]

August,

Like I said, all of that means a great deal if you remove the fact that it was soon after dropping THE bombs that they gave up. What Germany did to Britain and what Japan did to the US

I take your point about Ash's parting comment, but I consider it largely hypothetical. The war ended so soon after the A-bombs were dropped that there was no time to assess their impact on civilian morale.

Are you kidding me? Here is a summation of your thoughts: Strategic bombing does little to accelerate the end of a war however I can't prove it because the war ended so soon after the bombs were dropped that I can't measure the impact.

August, are you challenging rwdfresno or me? Not me I hope.

He was talking to me I believe although he was far from challenging me.

I think I'm an open minded observer.

[gnome]

Come on, quote me properly. "Don't we all?" LOL

[k5083]

Like I said, all of that means a great deal if you remove the fact that it was soon after dropping THE bombs that they gave up.

Do you think that the Japanese government surrendered a few days after the A-bombs were dropped as a response to civic morale? Do you believe that totalitarian regimes are really that responsive to public opinion? They were not democracies, you know. Japan gave up when its leaders (rather belatedly) assessed the tactical situation and decided they couldn't win. The A-bombs played some role in that but, as we have noted, not necessarily a decisive one.

I take your point about Ash's parting comment, but I consider it largely hypothetical. The war ended so soon after the A-bombs were dropped that there was no time to assess their impact on civilian morale.

Are you kidding me? Here is a summation of your thoughts: Strategic bombing does little to accelerate the end of a war however I can't prove it because the war ended so soon after the bombs were dropped that I can't measure the impact.

Look, obviously you have no interest even in understanding alternative points of view, let alone responding to them. We have not even discussed whether strategic bombing accelerated the end of the war. It likely did, but because of its economic effect, not because of its effect on morale, which is what we have been discussing in the last few posts. And in the middle of your misstatement above, you shift the subject from "strategic bombing" to "the bombs" (meaning the A-bombs) in what you may think is a clever attempt to make my position appear ridiculous. You cannot debate grown-ups using such tactics. Strategic bombing went on for a few years and its impact was exhaustively studied and systematically measured. It was found to have a moderate -- not decisive, mind you, but moderate -- material impact on the enemy as stated by Lt. Col. Ash, and very little morale effect. As to the effects of the A-bombing we don't know much, other than the horrific human toll. (Actually the story of historical inquiry into the impact of strategic bombing, starting with the US Strategic Bombing Survey, is quite complex and fascinating but too textured, I'm afraid, to fit into your worldview.)

Both you and mustangdriver also enjoy employing the rhetorical trick of saying that the dropping of the A-bombs "ended the war". That is true in the temporal sense that the A-bombs were dropped very close to the end of the war, but temporal proximity alone does not prove causation. No one knows when the war would have ended had the A-bombs not been dropped. Possibly months later, possibly weeks or days. It is even possible that the war would have ended sooner without them, i.e., the U.S. would have been more responsive to Japanese surrender initiatives on the same terms it eventually accepted if it had not been so eager to try out the bombs and show the Soviets a thing or two.

You don't have to agree with me on any of these issues but this is the last time I will respond to a post that mischaracterizes my position in such a juvenile way.

August

[mustangdriver]

K5083, I think that you have to admitt that when entire cities started going away, that they figured they should throw in the towel. Juvenile? I challenge you to a duel. Fuel strainers at 100 paces.

[marine air]

My civilian instrument instructor was a thirty year retired Army Colonel named H.H.Veteto. He was a veteran of WW II, Korea, and two tours in Vietnam.
I asked him about the A-bomb and his reply was "Your darn right it saved lives" It was used by America to save American lives. He told me when Hiroshima was bombed he was a 17 year old Army private infantryman crammed on a ship heading towards Japan for the Invasion of the Japanese mainland. He said the ship didn't stop after the first bomb was dropped either. He pointed out that everyone knew they were going to be fodder for the invasion and that the Pentagon had minted a million purple hearts in anticipation of the extremely high cost of American servicemen.
At the end of WW II the Marine Corps had swelled it's ranks to about 500,000 men. I have asked the same question to many WWII veterans especially the Marines that served in the Pacific. They all were glad and will tell you that the bloody, desperate island campaigns like Tarawa and Okinawa were just a foretelling by the Japanese military for the defense of Japan. The Japanese were already demonstrating that they were going to use suicide tactics and more.
Ultimately the Atomic bombs saved milliions of Allied, Japanese servicemen and millions of civilian casualties that would have been trapped in the fighting.
Because the Japanese race had not been defeated in like 1000 years and they thought their Emperor was a deity, it took something so immensely powerful and wrathful that it changed their mindset. Nothing on earth could top it.
You know the Atomic bomb is basically the unleashing of the power of the Sun, and thank God the Allies got it before the Nazis.

[gnome]

The thing is of course that we can't tell.

August makes a fair argument that the Japanese surrender was tactical ... ie. they (the relevant heirarchy) knew they were going to be beaten so they stopped.

Ash (the referred to USAF Lt Col) observes that strategic bombing, when targeting morale (aka terror bombing), might work if it is so extreme that defender morale is reduced, rather than being boosted as is the norm.

So what went through the mind of the Emperor? Was it the tactical situation or was it an issue of morale? If the latter it would have to have been assumed by him, rather than actual. He was quite possibly personally demoralised. But the situation was definitely not Ash's postulation that in extreme circumstances the people might overthrow the incumbent power structure. I wonder if that could ever have happened in 1940's Japan?

So on reflection I'm inclined to go along with August on this one. I think we're on a similar page, same chapter anyway. The way I'd put is, the A-bombs ended the war, because it appeared impractical that the war could be continued in the face of such a weapon. That's tactical, but expressly driven by the use of this weapon.

Don

[Bill Greenwood]

Your pasion is shared by many, but there are a couple of problems with the logic, as I see it. First the pro side always talks about the casualites when we invaded. Morally, it could be stated as how many kids do we have to kill to save how many Allied troops? And that may well be the essence. But it's an old trick, that is if you let one side define the question it can frame the answer; like "Would you rather fight them in Iraq or over here?" What about other choices? Japan had almost no navy or air force left and had lost many soldiers; it really had no Offensive ability. So what if we neither drop the Bomb nor invade?Who knows, K5083 says we didn't even try that. 2nd. As a 17 year old private, your friend knows his feelings, but he probably did not know about the whole political, tatical, sociological side of it any more than a 17 hamburger clerk knows about the cattle or farming business.

[mustangdriver]

They should just print out this thread, and make this the display.

[rwdfresno]

August,

I realize that you think that I am a Neanderthal incapable of "understanding alternative points of view, let alone responding to them." "Understanding alternative points of view," is code agreeing with your point of view. The fact that I don't agree with your point of view doesn't mean that I don't understand your point of view. I understand it, and I think it is wrong.

It likely did, but because of its economic effect, not because of its effect on morale, which is what we have been discussing in the last few posts.

Yes it has several advantages.
I thought this discussion of Strategic bombing and moral as the "theories" apply the Enola Gay since the post is about the Enola Gay. Atomic weapons are part of a Strategic bombing campaign.

Do you think that the Japanese government surrendered a few days after the A-bombs were dropped as a response to civic morale? Do you believe that totalitarian regimes are really that responsive to public opinion?

So conversely, do you think that civic moral was the driving force behind the earlier decisions to continue the war? If you feel that their moral has no bearing on the war and the only moral that counts was the Imperial government well then do you suppose the fact that cities were disappearing on a daily basis might have had some affect on their moral? Also, I realize that I am hard headed but I would think that moral would also have an affect on the economics of warfare? How many times do you think worker bee can rebuild a bridge, or a railroad, or an aircraft factory, an entire town before you decide to just give up emotionally. I wonder how much longer the average Japanese soldier wanted to fight knowing that his family could be in the next town that was leveled.

Also, how about the positive moral benefits that it has on to believe that we are "winning" the war as they see pictures of destroyed Japanese cites?

Have you also taken into consideration this merit of this study. Anyone can do a study and conclude all sorts of things. On a regular basis we see conflicting studies of this or that with people that appear to be well qualified on both ends of the opinion

And in the middle of your misstatement above, you shift the subject from "strategic bombing" to "the bombs" (meaning the A-bombs) in what you may think is a clever attempt to make my position appear ridiculous.

In the middle of this misstatement you failed to realize that use of atomic weapons is part of a strategic bombing campaign as illustrated by this excerpt from the “U.S. Strategic
Bombing Survey - THE EFFECTS OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI”

“* A U.S.S.B.S. Morale division team interviewed a scientifically
selected sample of almost 250 persons: 128 from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
cities, and 120 from the immediately surrounding areas. The same
standard questions were put to these people and similar groups in
representative Japanese cities.
- 27 -
there, many Japanese-Americans came from Hiroshima, the city was a
famous beauty spot --these and other even more fantastic reasons
encouraged hopes. Other people felt vaguely that their city was being
saved for "something big", however.
Such a shattering event could not fail to have its impact on people’s
ways of thinking. Study of the patterns of relief about the war, before
and after the bombing, show this change clearly. Prior to the dropping
of the atomic bombs, the people of the two target cities appear to have
had fewer misgivings about the war than people in other cities.
Responses to set questions indicate that among Japanese civilians prior
to 1 July 1945:
59% in the Hiroshima-Nagasaki areas
but
74% in the other urban areas
entertained doubts about a Japanese Victory;
31% in Hiroshima-Nagasaki
but
47% in other urban areas
felt certain that victory for Japan was impossible;
12% in Hiroshima-Nagasaki
but
34% in other urban areas
had reached a point werer they felt unable to continue the war.
Further,
28% of the people of Japan as a whole said they had never reached
a point where they felt they could not go on with the war
whereas
39% of the people in the Hiroshima-Nagasaki areas said they had
never reached such a point.
These figures clearly suggest that the will to resist had indeed been
higher in the "atomic bomb cities" than in Japan as a whole.
There is no doubt that the bomb was the most important influence among
the people of these areas in making them think that defeat was
inevitable. An additional twenty-eight percent stated that after the
atomic bomb was dropped they became convinced that victory for Japan was
impossible. Almost one-fourth admitted that because of the bombing they
felt personally unable to carry on. Forty percent testified to various
degrees of defeatism induced by the atomic bomb. Significantly,
certainty of defeat was much more prevalent at Hiroshima, where the area
of devastation and the casualties were greater, than at Nagasaki.”

It is even possible that the war would have ended sooner without them, i.e., the U.S. would have been more responsive to Japanese surrender initiatives on the same terms it eventually accepted if it had not been so eager to try out the bombs and show the Soviets a thing or two.

Speculation is all fine and dandy and you are entitled to whatever what ifs that you want but even if the Emperor was dieing to surrender long before the A-bomb how would this be proof that strategic bombing had nothing to do with his decision. You do realize that we were pummeling Japan with bombs long before Hiroshima.

You cannot debate grown-ups using such tactics.

You don't have to agree with me on any of these issues but this is the last time I will respond to a post that mischaracterizes my position in such a juvenile way.

August, my funny faces were to sort of demonstrate that we are having a good spirited debate here. Try not to take things so seriously man. What fun is a good natured debate if you can’t get some good jabs in here and there? You do realize neither of us are going to convince each other of anything, the whole idea of a debate like this is THE DEBATE.

[JDK]

They should just print out this thread, and make this the display.

...and that the Pentagon had minted a million purple hearts in anticipation of the extremely high cost of American servicemen.

That's a good story. Any evidence? I may be wrong, but 90 gets 10 that's just a story. Sounds good, but...

rwdfresno, Good last point, but you've several times put words into peoples mouths 'Neanderthal', and set up opposing 'straw men' to knock over to support your view and not (until your last excellent post) actually addressed what people have said, rather than what you don't like.

I dunno about anybody else, but I've learnt some stuff here, and the more I learn the more interesting it is.

For the record I don't think anyone suggesting the Allied (or Americans if you prefer) shouldn't have developed or used the bomb, and we (probably) agree that the use of the bombs (probably) saved a significant number of lives - particularly Allied ones, which were then, much more important to us. Today, I don't care where someone's from - a life's a life, and should be treated with respect - the modern Japanese have no responsibility for W.W.II any more than the modern Australian, Kiwi American or Briton can take credit for the acts of their ancestors, in that same war. Pride, for the Allies, sure, respect, but not credit.

Keep it rolling, chaps, but attack the argument not the **** person. and let's steer clear of political name calling and so forth.

Regards

[k5083]

Much better, rwd, that is a post worth responding to.

I thought this discussion of Strategic bombing and moral as the "theories" apply the Enola Gay since the post is about the Enola Gay. Atomic weapons are part of a Strategic bombing campaign.

Now this is an interesting point. Most people separate the nuclear bombing of Japan from the strategic bombing campaign. But what if we simply consider the A-bombs part and parcel of strategic bombing? Are they then any big deal at all? Good question.

We know that the atomic raids, especially Nagasaki, were not the most destructive of raids on Japan. The US by that stage pretty much had the ability to incinerate any Japanese city on any given night, and was doing so at will. Why then would we assume that it made any difference to Japanese thinking whether the US sent one plane with one bomb or 500 planes with incendiaries to destroy Hiroshima on August 6? Maybe it didn't. That would be the "just another raid" theory.

Then again, maybe it did. The psychological and tactical impact of one airplane destroying a city rather than 500 may have impressed itself upon the Japanese leadership (not so much the Emperor, by the way; he was pretty much out of it). And the fact that we didn't have enough enriched uranium to build even one more A-bomb within the next several months was our little secret. That would be a reason to consider the nuclear bombings separately from the general bombing campaign as a factor in the Japanese surrender, as we have been doing up to now.

Of course, I did not at any time suggest that strategic bombing generally was not a factor in general timing of the the Japanese surrender or in winning the war. Because of the nature of Japanese cities, their inadequate air defenses, and the disruption of their supply chain, bombing had a greater economic/military impact on Japan's ability to wage war than in Germany.

Your citation of the USSBS poll raises interesting questions about what "morale" is and how it is to be measured. I happen to be a trained social science survey researcher and I have some doubts about the USSBS's methodology and findings. How were they able to assess Japanese attitudes as of July 1, 1945? Did they have a time machine? Did the wartime Japanese government let them in to do their polling? Asking people what their attitudes were at some point in the past is not very reliable. (Note also that the survey concluded that the A-bomb had much less attitudinal impact outside of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were not exactly power centers in Japan, so this suggests that any morale impact was not widespread.)

But suppose we take the survey results at face value. So what? Are people's estimated probabilities of winning the best way to define "morale"? It's not bad, but you are getting closer to the point when you say:

Also, I realize that I am hard headed but I would think that moral would also have an affect on the economics of warfare? How many times do you think worker bee can rebuild a bridge, or a railroad, or an aircraft factory, an entire town before you decide to just give up emotionally. I wonder how much longer the average Japanese soldier wanted to fight knowing that his family could be in the next town that was leveled.

Very true. Making the enemy feel depressed is useless in warfare unless that emotion manifests itself in behavior. And by behavioral measures, as Lt. Col. Ash and many others have noted, the Japanese, like the Germans, never gave up. In fact, never in human history has any level of destruction wrought upon civilians caused them to stop rebuilidng the bridges and factories. Lt. Col. Ash and Gnome think maybe it could happen with a sufficiently high level of destruction, but nobody knows. I have my doubts. I hope we never find out who's right.

Also, how about the positive moral benefits that it has on to believe that we are "winning" the war as they see pictures of destroyed Japanese cites?

Also a good point and one made in the Ash article. The positive moral effect of strategic bombing for the attackers is much more important than any negative morale effect on the defenders. Think of the campaign in Europe pre-D-Day, when the Allies had no foothold in Western Europe and all we could do on the ground was carry on a sideshow in Africa while the Soviets did all the heavy lifting against Germany itself. Being able to take the war to Germany through heavy bombers, whether or not it had any real impact, did a lot to remove feelings of impotence. Indeed, that is probably why the mythos of the B-17 and B-24 and their raids, all the way through to the present day, are celebrated far out of proportion to their actual impact on the war.

It is even possible that the war would have ended sooner without them, i.e., the U.S. would have been more responsive to Japanese surrender initiatives on the same terms it eventually accepted if it had not been so eager to try out the bombs and show the Soviets a thing or two.

Speculation is all fine and dandy and you are entitled to whatever what ifs that you want but even if the Emperor was dieing to surrender long before the A-bomb how would this be proof that strategic bombing had nothing to do with his decision. You do realize that we were pummeling Japan with bombs long before Hiroshima.

We've covered some of this before. The A-bomb-delayed-the-end-of-the-war theory is not entirely speculation; it is a thesis that has been advanced by credible historians, with evidence. Personally, I am not convinced by the thesis. There were undoubtedly those within both the Manhattan Project and the government who were afraid that the war might end before they got to find out how many people they could kill with this thing, but the evidence does not support this as a major factor in Truman's decision-making.

On the other hand, you have to realize that a lot of fertilizer was hitting the ventilator for Japan at about the same time. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8. We tend to ignore the USSR's contributions in this country, but that event was HUGE. Japan knew very well that the USSR had done more than all other Allies combined to defeat Germany and that they weren't very nice about the way they did it. There had been hatred between Russia and Japan for centuries. The Japanese high command knew that it would take a little while for the Sovs to shift assets eastward to Japan, but that when it did, what happened would make Okinawa and Iwo Jima look like tea parties. If there is any truth to the "just another raid" theory of the A-bombs, than the Soviet declaration was the real watershed event of early August.

How to apportion credit for the exact timing of the Japanese surrender between strategic bombing, the A-bombs, the Soviet declaration, and just the general course of the war? Beats heck out of me. What I object to is the confident assumption that this or that factor was decisive, or even necessary. We just don't know. And my own interest, anyway, is not so much in the events themselves but in how they are interpreted, changed, and passed down through the culture. In other words, I'm more interested in history than in the past.

August

Last edited by k5083 on Fri Feb 16, 2007 10:29 am, edited 3 times in total.