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 Frazzled wrote:
They had fifteen planned for Operation Downfall. This was before fallout was understood though, so Allied troops would have been walking through fallout 24 hours after each blast. Not bueno.

Yeah. That would of been very much a life shortening campaign.

Granted 15 nuclear strikes would have cracked a fair hole in a Japanese defences. They really where not going any degree of subtle against the home islands.

Nuclear strike plans. Battleships working in formations to bombard the coastal sites. My grandfather's was meant yo join least two other BB for a strike mission but thry had a jammed turret.

One alone can be a monster. But a team of battleships laying into you.

Thousands of aircraft using Okinawa and then Kyoshu as air bases vs. two thousand Kamikazes, and divisions of dug in troops. What a blood bath.

 Frazzled wrote:
Thousands of aircraft using Okinawa and then Kyoshu as air bases vs. two thousand Kamikazes, and divisions of dug in troops. What a blood bath.

And that's just military casualties in the million allied lists.

Japans home islands even the. Where fairly densely populated with civilians, pows and more. The Japanese casualties would be in thr multiple millions to more like maybe 5 million woth the shear level of firepower the allies where planning to bring into the campaign.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
It wasn't that Japan couldn't afford high-grade steel, they physically couldn't produce it in the quantity needed.

All that steel would have been far better served building carriers or destroyers.

Wouldn't have helped them anyway. At the risk of preaching to the choir, between the failure of Pearl Harbor to sink the US carriers and the fethup in delivering the declaration of war after the attack rather than before the Japanese were never going to get the US to agree to an armistice, which means the US wins through sheer industrial output. You guys built 24 Essex-class carriers (and a bunch of others) throughout the war, IIRC Japan built less than five carriers in total (including Shinano).

Or did you mean the steel in the Iowas would've been better spent on CVs and DDs?

er...yes to that too?

yes the only way Japan could win the war was to not fight the war.

Except even then they lose. America had cut off their oil. I'll let you imagine the effects upon the nation without any oil. They HAD TO HAVE the oil in Indonesia, or they suffer complete economic collapse.

In the end, while Japan made the decision to start shooting, their only other option was to basically surrender their autonomy completely back in 1941. America had cut off all other options. The ultranationalist government of the time just wasn't going to submit without a fight.

One could argue in light of that, what happened to Japan WAS a victory in the end. Yes, we smashed them flat... but then we helped them back up to vastly greater heights. Had the capitulated in 1941... would we have helped them back up that far afterwards? Somehow, I think not.

No. The point of the oil embargo was for them to quit their depredations in China and Indochina. They could have quit their depredations in China and indochina. After all, they did just fine after the war.

The odds of that happening are at around the same level as the U.S. letting Japan get away with Pearl Harbor.

 Frazzled wrote:
They had fifteen planned for Operation Downfall. This was before fallout was understood though, so Allied troops would have been walking through fallout 24 hours after each blast. Not bueno.

A huge amount of our understanding of the effects of radiation exposure over the long term was from treatment of the survivors of the atomic bombings, such as the massive increase in cancer risk (we knew there would be an increase but it was estimated to be linear with dose, reality is closer to exponential) etc.

Without those two horrific events, nuclear medicine might have taken years longer to reach the stage we are at now, with much more people being unnecessarily exposed to radiation through X-rays (especially CT scans), radiotherapy etc.

About the only measurably, definitively good thing that came from the bombings.

There was also that time the U.S. government released radioactive iodine plumes over the continental U.S. to see what would happen.

They've been fighting a link between iodine and thyroid cancers (which increased exponentially under the plumes' paths) ever since.

Coincidentally, I'm sure.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
It wasn't that Japan couldn't afford high-grade steel, they physically couldn't produce it in the quantity needed.

All that steel would have been far better served building carriers or destroyers.

Wouldn't have helped them anyway. At the risk of preaching to the choir, between the failure of Pearl Harbor to sink the US carriers and the fethup in delivering the declaration of war after the attack rather than before the Japanese were never going to get the US to agree to an armistice, which means the US wins through sheer industrial output. You guys built 24 Essex-class carriers (and a bunch of others) throughout the war, IIRC Japan built less than five carriers in total (including Shinano).

Or did you mean the steel in the Iowas would've been better spent on CVs and DDs?

er...yes to that too?

yes the only way Japan could win the war was to not fight the war.

Except even then they lose. America had cut off their oil. I'll let you imagine the effects upon the nation without any oil. They HAD TO HAVE the oil in Indonesia, or they suffer complete economic collapse.

In the end, while Japan made the decision to start shooting, their only other option was to basically surrender their autonomy completely back in 1941. America had cut off all other options. The ultranationalist government of the time just wasn't going to submit without a fight.

One could argue in light of that, what happened to Japan WAS a victory in the end. Yes, we smashed them flat... but then we helped them back up to vastly greater heights. Had the capitulated in 1941... would we have helped them back up that far afterwards? Somehow, I think not.

No. The point of the oil embargo was for them to quit their depredations in China and Indochina. They could have quit their depredations in China and indochina. After all, they did just fine after the war.

The odds of that happening are at around the same level as the U.S. letting Japan get away with Pearl Harbor.

Which was their problem. The difference being, no one was attacking them. THEY were attacking China.

 Frazzled wrote:

Which was their problem. The difference being, no one was attacking them. THEY were attacking China.

I'm not arguing that. It's just that the Japanese government at that time was no more likely to give up their war in China than America would be to give up their war on Japan after the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. It. just. is. not. going. to. happen. You need to postulate an entirely different government in power in Japan at the time for it to happen.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Well, there was a possibility of causing sufficient casualties to the US that they would choose to back off through pressure back home.

Not really. The US had complete air and naval superiority and could simply blockade Japan while bombing every square inch of the country into rubble with near-zero casualties. The US has little or no pressure to invade immediately in an era where bombing cities off the map was considered standard procedure instead of a horrifying atrocity. And at some point enough of Japan would be slaughtered that an invasion could succeed.

So why did they not plan this? The US strategy was to launch an invasion of Kyushu which was predicted to result in a million US servicemen casualties.

Of course, the US strategy changed with the successful deployment of nuclear weapons, but until then, they clearly thought an immediate invasion was necessary. Apparently conventional bombing was not considered effective enough to end the war by itself. Only nukes seem to have changed this.

The Japanese seemed to agree, seeing as it took the nukes to change their tune.

 Haighus wrote:

So why did they not plan this? The US strategy was to launch an invasion of Kyushu which was predicted to result in a million US servicemen casualties.

Because that scenario presumes that the US and its allies would willingly sit out Japan and wait for it to surrender for who knows how long, which is a big presumption. If after 6 months the US public asks "when will the war end" and the US government says "whenever Japan gets tired of us bombing them" then people start wondering when their sons/husbands/fathers will ever come home. The troops wonder whenever they'll come home.

War is not a situation where you can really get away with perpetually waiting for the other side to just give up. You either force them into submission, or your own people start wondering what the point is. EDIT: Can see this somewhat in how support for the Vietnam war rapidly dwindled as the years went on with no sign of the situation really improving. Public support for the conflict tanked and the US was eventually left with no option but to withdraw.

Another thing to bear in mind was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. If America had piddled around too long, the Soviets would have invaded and taken Japan - or at least Hokkaido and part of Kyushu - first.

 Vulcan wrote:
Another thing to bear in mind was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. If America had piddled around too long, the Soviets would have invaded and taken Japan - or at least Hokkaido and part of Kyushu - first.

I doubt Russia could have assembled the naval forces required for mass landings, especially on the other side of the world from their industrial areas, in a reasonable time frame. It would have been at least a year or so before they had transports to carry out a landing, let alone naval forces to support them. Japan would probably have capitulated from conventional bombings before Russia could have done anything other than taking stuff on the mainland.

Vulcan wrote:Another thing to bear in mind was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. If America had piddled around too long, the Soviets would have invaded and taken Japan - or at least Hokkaido and part of Kyushu - first.

Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Another thing to bear in mind was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. If America had piddled around too long, the Soviets would have invaded and taken Japan - or at least Hokkaido and part of Kyushu - first.

I doubt Russia could have assembled the naval forces required for mass landings, especially on the other side of the world from their industrial areas, in a reasonable time frame. It would have been at least a year or so before they had transports to carry out a landing, let alone naval forces to support them. Japan would probably have capitulated from conventional bombings before Russia could have done anything other than taking stuff on the mainland.

Yes, I think in this context America would be more concerned about the outcome of events in China and not wanting the country to become communist... Which happened anyway but people didn't know that yet in 1945

 LordofHats wrote:

Vulcan wrote:Another thing to bear in mind was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. If America had piddled around too long, the Soviets would have invaded and taken Japan - or at least Hokkaido and part of Kyushu - first.

Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Another thing to bear in mind was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan. If America had piddled around too long, the Soviets would have invaded and taken Japan - or at least Hokkaido and part of Kyushu - first.

I doubt Russia could have assembled the naval forces required for mass landings, especially on the other side of the world from their industrial areas, in a reasonable time frame. It would have been at least a year or so before they had transports to carry out a landing, let alone naval forces to support them. Japan would probably have capitulated from conventional bombings before Russia could have done anything other than taking stuff on the mainland.

Yes, I think in this context America would be more concerned about the outcome of events in China and not wanting the country to become communist... Which happened anyway but people didn't know that yet in 1945

Also, China, there was not just China, Burma, Korea and multiple other areas with alot of rescoures and valuable postition out for the taking.

Exclude mainland Japan, but theres alot to gain.