Quote:
Originally Posted by ViPER
reasons - right -wrong - necessary - and you can bet a touch of hate is factored in, balance?.... ok
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I'm not saying the hate wasn't there.
I'm saying there were numbers that made the case, cold hard unemotional facts.
Aircraft produced, aircraft lost, correlating with target selection in a way that didn't rely on emotion.
The hate was just piling on to a decision already made by the numbers.
The bombing of Japanese cities was based on a different calculus, but equally unemotional.
At a certain point in the war, the US could reach Japan with long range bombers. There was a short target list of war factories, well defended, and there were cities. Once the war factories had all been hit, there were just cities, and the alternative to bombing cities would have been to stand down the air corps. The city defenses were not as effective as the concentrated defenses around war production facilities, resulting in smaller losses, coupled with the increased production of long range bombers, it meant more and more demand for targets, and a target list that included fewer and fewer military targets, leaving cities as targets.