Abstract
The dramatic finale of World War II at Hiroshima and Nagasaki rescued the doctrine of strategic bombardment. Without the atom bomb the theorists of airpower would have been pushed onto the defensive, hard put to justify the pounding of cities for limited rewards. With the atom bomb, airpower could be said to have come of age.
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Notes
Perry McCoy Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace 1939–1945 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1970), pp. 46, 17.
Quoted in David Maclsaacs, Strategic Bombing in World War Two: The Story of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (New York: Garland, 1976), p. 165. The survey was a thorough investigation, directed by civilians, into the effects of the bombing campaigns on the economies and civilian morale of Germany and Japan. Maclsaacs has edited the reports in ten volumes, also published by Garland in 1976.
General H. H. Arnold, ‘Air force in the atomic age’, in Dexter Masters and Katherine Way (eds.), One World or None (New York: McGraw Hill, 1946), pp. 26–9. Arnold admitted that his calculations were ‘rough’. The USSBS estimate for the number of B-29s needed to commit an Hiroshima was 210, and 120 for Nagasaki. Their conclusion was that: ‘The atomic bomb in its present state of development raises the destructive power of a single bomber by a factor of between 50 and 250 times, depending upon the nature and size of the target.’ Summary Report, Pacific War, United States Strategic Bombing Survey, iii, p. 29. This conclusion was not altogether popular with those airmen, such as General Curtis Le May, who looked forward to ever-expanding fleets of long-range bombers.
See Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).
Major-General J. F. S. Fuller, ‘The atomic bomb and warfare of the future’, Army Ordnance (January–February 1946), p. 34.
Bernard Brodie and Eilene Galloway, The Atomic Bomb and the Armed Services Public Affairs Bulletin No. 55 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress Legislative Reference Service, May 1947), pp. 30–1.
Vannevar Bush, Modern Arms and Free Men (London: Heinemann, 1950), pp. 90, 96–7.
Brodie and Galloway, op. cit., p. 32; Bush, op. cit, p. 117; P. M. S. Blackett, The Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy (London: Turnstile Press, 1948), p. 68.
Reprinted in Morton Grodzins and Eugene Rabinowitch (eds.) The Atomic Age: Scientists in National and World Affairs (New York: Basic Books, 1963), p. 13.
Edward Condon, ‘The new techniques of private war’, in Masters and Way, op. cit., p. 41 (‘We must no longer expect the special agent to be special’). On this concern see Roberta Wohlstetter, ‘Terror on a grand scale’, Survival, xviii:3 (May/June 1976), pp. 98–9.
Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946), p. 49.
William Fox, Atomic Energy and International Relations (Mimeo: Yale Institute of International Affairs, June 1948), p. 4.
Jacob Viner, ‘The implications of the atomic bomb for international relations’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, xc:1 (January 1946), p. 55. Fox (Atomic Energy, pp. 11–12) doubted that small countries would find bombs much use for ‘blackmail’ purposes, though he thought ‘they might strengthen respect for neutrality’. Others were less certain of the advantages: ‘Even small countries can make these bombs in numbers if they are such utter fools as to engage in this lethal business. They will not because they know they would be completely destroyed if bombs were used’, Harold Urey, ‘How does it all add up?’, in Masters and Way, op. cit, p. 55.
‘Very greatly increased bomber speeds will immensely increase the difficulties of providing adequate warning and effective interception, and indeed the fighter’s superiority of speed over the bomber… may well dwindle to almost nothing.’ Lord Tedder, Air Power in the War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947), p. 44.
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© 2003 Lawrence Freedman
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Freedman, L. (2003). Offence and Defence. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379435_2
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