Coronet: The use of 15 tactical nuclear bombs as support

Uh... the majority actually would have been Fat Man devices. The gun-type design used by Little Boy simply doesn't work with Pu-239...

Your totally right, I got it the wrong way round. I was fairly sure I'd got it the right way round when I made the previous post, so I didn't check. Thanks for correcting me.

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The point is on radiation, we have been brought up with over 50 years of popular media worrying about radiation and nuclear war and everything. Therefore we have an inbuild predudice to expect there to be 'deadly fallout' everywhere whenever somebody mentions the word nuclear, or atomic.

In reality there is far less to fear most of the time.
 
Considering that Germany was leveled not through nuclear means, but conventional, and that did not tarnish US relations, I think the political effects are a bit less then you think.
 
In the excellent book "Racing for the Bomb" it seemed like General Leslie Groves was confident of having several more nearly complete by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki strikes (sites he picked for strategic reasons) and a total of 7 additional for 1945 sounds right, I suspect the rest would be available after the invasion had commenced.

Aerial bursts over what remained of the Japanese surface fleet and large concentrations of troops in the first few days seems logical, possibly several key major airfields or aircraft production centers (taking the lesson of what to bomb from the last air campaign against Germany) while I'd expect we'd continue to do thousand plane firebomb raids against the cities given the logistical base was already there at Okinawa and quite a bit more of the European theater's bomber fleet would have transferred over to the Pacific theater by later in 1945. Given the firebomb raids killed more people both in individual attacks like Tokyo and Dresden, and cumulatively as well, I think the advantages of single plane delivery for the atomic bombs would have steered them to more mobile targets like ships and armies than easier cities and factories. I thought I'd read we were already running out of strategic bombing targets in Japan by OTL's war's end.

It would have killed a million more people which in a war in which at least 50 million died, probably doesn't change the realpolitik afterwards much at all. One man dies it's a tragedy, a million die it's a statistic (I forgot what wise man pointed that sad fact out.)

Nuking the beaches immediately prior to the invasion seems pretty crazy, waves of B-29's dropping incendiaries and napalm would be cheaper, faster, devastating, and allow much faster exploitation of the now mostly undefended beach (also handier against bunkers, landmines, cave systems, etc.)

A friend of my dad's was an 18 year old Marine fresh out of Pendleton waiting in Okinawa as part of the first assault wave. As novices as well as initial wave, they figured to be dead by the end of the first day at best.
 
Also, a simplier, more general question, if there was a bloody conquest, instead of a surrender, how would that effect US-Japanese relations.

It would not do very much good, that's for sure. It would also have a dramatic impact on the general US view of WWII, which for obvious reasons is going to focus more on the Pacific than on Europe.
 
I don't know. You have the bloodbaths that were WWI and WWII, and they didn't change the world forever.

Look at Russia. It took losses that would have still be greater than Downfall, and it didn't change.

Actually the USSR did change in many ways for worse and in a few ways for better. It changed for worse in developing a military-industrial complex accountable unto no-one. Likewise it pretty soon adopted a habit just like the USA's of getting involved in things that were none of its business and claiming this was done with the highest of motivations, instead of Stalin's realpolitik approach that brought more enduring successes. The more positive change is that having to run an empire induced in the USSR spasms of reform that its system was inherently incapable of, reform that guaranteed it would sooner or later either alter and become USSRINO or alternately disintegrate. Thus foredooming the most successful totalitarian state of them all regardless as a totalitarian system.

I don't think relations would exist anymore after.

However gets seats in the new Japanese government are going to be puppets for the Americans and thus relations with them will be good. Relations with the Japanese people and the rest of the world will be forever scarred as a result of the mistake that was Operation Downfall.

If operation Downfall actually happened it would have changed the war and the world forever. When i read about what both the Americans and the Japanese had planned for Downfall i shudder. The Holocaust would be nothing in comparison with the aftermath of Downfall.

I made a thread about this once:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=207172

The world, no. The USA, very much so. WWII can't serve quite as the Good War here, not when its final act is the bloodiest one of the entire war, exacting the highest US death toll in US history. WWII becomes a psychological trauma and the USA develops a much earlier phobia of wars in Asia. The death toll would be far more lopsided still in terms of Japanese deaths, as was characteristic of the entire war.
 

Hyperion

Banned
In the excellent book "Racing for the Bomb" it seemed like General Leslie Groves was confident of having several more nearly complete by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki strikes (sites he picked for strategic reasons) and a total of 7 additional for 1945 sounds right, I suspect the rest would be available after the invasion had commenced.

Aerial bursts over what remained of the Japanese surface fleet and large concentrations of troops in the first few days seems logical, possibly several key major airfields or aircraft production centers (taking the lesson of what to bomb from the last air campaign against Germany) while I'd expect we'd continue to do thousand plane firebomb raids against the cities given the logistical base was already there at Okinawa and quite a bit more of the European theater's bomber fleet would have transferred over to the Pacific theater by later in 1945. Given the firebomb raids killed more people both in individual attacks like Tokyo and Dresden, and cumulatively as well, I think the advantages of single plane delivery for the atomic bombs would have steered them to more mobile targets like ships and armies than easier cities and factories. I thought I'd read we were already running out of strategic bombing targets in Japan by OTL's war's end.

It would have killed a million more people which in a war in which at least 50 million died, probably doesn't change the realpolitik afterwards much at all. One man dies it's a tragedy, a million die it's a statistic (I forgot what wise man pointed that sad fact out.)

Nuking the beaches immediately prior to the invasion seems pretty crazy, waves of B-29's dropping incendiaries and napalm would be cheaper, faster, devastating, and allow much faster exploitation of the now mostly undefended beach (also handier against bunkers, landmines, cave systems, etc.)

A friend of my dad's was an 18 year old Marine fresh out of Pendleton waiting in Okinawa as part of the first assault wave. As novices as well as initial wave, they figured to be dead by the end of the first day at best.

From what I've read over the years, a third bomb might have been available around the end of August.

One debate that I've read about was that there was some debate as to whether to go at it dropping one bomb at a time as they became available, or saving them all up to use within a short period of time.

If bomb #3 is used in August, the Kokura Arsenal, if I recall correctly, had been the initial target for the bomb used on Nagasaki. Unless Truman or someone orders Tokyo or some other target struck, perhaps Kokura Arsenal gets bomb #3 sometime before the end of August.

That or they might decide to start dropping bombs on invasion beach areas days or weeks before the actual invasion. It isn't going to matter of the Japanse figure out why areas are being targeted of most all of the military forces and equipment are destroyed, and this could give some US forces a larger window than 48 hours before going into an area hit by a bomb.
 
The world, no. The USA, very much so. WWII can't serve quite as the Good War here, not when its final act is the bloodiest one of the entire war, exacting the highest US death toll in US history. WWII becomes a psychological trauma and the USA develops a much earlier phobia of wars in Asia. The death toll would be far more lopsided still in terms of Japanese deaths, as was characteristic of the entire war.

What affects the most powerfull nation in the world eventually affects the world as well.

If ithe USA would already feel the psychological shock like they did with Vietnam, the habit of getting involved in things that where none of their business might not even happen. No korean war, no Vietnam war. The USSR and PRC will still get involved in those conflicts though.

Voila, different world.

I wonder though how the USSR, seeing what happened in Japan, would look at nukes once they get them. I wonder if they might see them more as tactical weapons too, and actually use them in places like Afghanistan or on their home turf.

In general i believe, the whole idea of the usefullness of tactical nukes so early would significantly change the cold war.
 
What affects the most powerfull nation in the world eventually affects the world as well.

If ithe USA would already feel the psychological shock like they did with Vietnam, the habit of getting involved in things that where none of their business might not even happen. No korean war, no Vietnam war. The USSR and PRC will still get involved in those conflicts though.

Voila, different world.

I wonder though how the USSR, seeing what happened in Japan, would look at nukes once they get them. I wonder if they might see them more as tactical weapons too, and actually use them in places like Afghanistan or on their home turf.

In general i believe, the whole idea of the usefullness of tactical nukes so early would significantly change the cold war.

Korea *was* the USA's business because the USA had a strategically significant ally about to be smashed to bits by a transparent act of naked aggression.
 
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