... hiroshima was targeted because the primary objective was obscured by overcast. ... also, why all the hoopla about hiroshima? The fire bombings of Tokyo caused much more damage and death than the hiroshima bombing.
Yes. Those clouds almost make me think there is a god who enters into our daily lives occasionally. The primary target was Kyoto, chosen as it had never been bombed. Kyoto is more than 1000 year old. A center of learning (several universities) and high culture with little industry and less military significance.
I don't know if you are correct or not about deaths and firebombing of Tokyo. I read a book
Fire and the air war* many years ago. It is about the planning for the raid on Dresden. A dozen or so highly educated men, experts in probability calculations were sequestered in a military barrack in or near London for several weeks (with two guards at the door 24/7) Their job was to determine the "optimum" mix of bomb types to insure the city burned to the ground. (High explosives to make debris in the streets that would burn and block fire trucks, etc. incendiary bombs and what fraction of them should have parachuts with hooks that would catch on the roofs rain gutters etc.) How many minutes after the HE bombs were dropped before the incendiary bombs should be released? How long after those with parachuts should the fast fall incendiary bombs be dropped, etc.? What was the desired pattern and density of each. etc.? Should the parachut incendiary bombs be the first dropped and others guide on their pattern, if wind? etc.? It is a complex uncertain problem.
These skilled mathematicians were feed and given a little coal, but could not leave the barrack until done. The thin-walled, un-insulated, barrack was very cold and they went on strike for more coal - saying that their fingers were so cold they could not hold pencil to calculate with. This problem in a few days reached all the way up to Churchill who with some anger said: "Give them their God dam coal !!!" and the calculations resumed.
Dresden too was chosen as it had never been bombed before - too far to the east for bombers to go from airfields the allies controlled earlier in the war. The raid was late in the war with no immediate military significance - Germany was already essentially defeated. The real purpose was to impress Stalin at the soon to come Yalta meetings which would decide the fate of nations the Germans had occupied.
For me this has always been the epitome of misuse of education. They did their job well - made the only definite firestorm of the war - the city burned for days and many who took shelter in the bomb shelters, died for lack of oxygen in air, and then, in some shelters, had their body fat rendered from their bodies to form pools of congealed fat on the floor as with days of fire above, many shelters became ovens. Almost all who were in the city when the bombs began to fall died.
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* I don’t know if you can still find a copy of this book, but if you can (and don’t get disturbed too easily), read it. The un-needed Dresden raid was a war crime, far greater than Heroshima, as it had no effect on WWII and probably little on Stalin; But of course only defeated Germans faced justice at Nierenberg.
