Thousands of feet march to the beat, it's an army on the march
Long way from home, paying the price with young men's life
Thousands of feet march to the beat, it's an army in despair
Knee deep in mud, stuck in a trench with no way out
-The Price of a Mile, Sabaton
What's the price of a mile?
On June 18th, 1815, the price of a Belgian mile was 48,000 men.
In July 1863, the price of a Pennsylvanian mile was 35,087 men.
On July 1, 1916, the price of a French mile was 65,470 men.
In 1941, the price of a Soviet mile was 5,622 men.
On June 6th, 1944, the price of a mile at Omaha Beach was 4,200 men.
In March and April 2003, the price of an Iraqi mile was 151 people.
Submarines are ships too. They are narrow, cramped, long, penis-shaped ships who's job is to shove similarly penis-shaped objects into other ships, exploding dramatically into a hole that then destroys the other ships.
I've been reading too much feminist literature. Everything is a penis now.
Anyway, this is about one of the most famous submarines in naval history. Like many other famous vessels, this ship had a long and distinguished career, but had one action that really made it stand out - one of the greatest submarine actions in American history. We're talking about:
Archerfish was one of 128 Balao-class submarines built by the United States Navy during World War II. The Balao-class vessels provided the bulk of the work done by the USN in the submarine war against Japan, and was very closely related to the preceding Gato-class ships. Like the rest of the ships in her class, Archerfish displaced around 1500 tons on the surface, was around 100 metres long, and could rip along at a stately 20 knots while surfaced. 10 torpedo tubes could deliver 24 torpedoes during one cruise.
Like many submarines, Archerfishstarted her war in 1943, and wasn't particularly notable right away. She had a few failed attacks and rescued the life of a downed naval aviator during air attacks on Iwo Jima. So, a fairly boring and basic life for a submarine.
That all changed on 28 November, 1944. Archerfish was stationed off Tokyo Bay as a recovery craft for B-29 crew from airplanes shot down or damaged over Japan. However, on that day, there were to be no B-29 raids. However, a large ship was spotted leaving Tokyo Bay - probably a tanker. Archerfish was given license to pursue the ship.
Upon reaching station, Commander Joe Enright, in charge of Archerfish, realized that the ship was not a tanker at all, but instead an aircraft carrier. He tracked the ship carefully, and the carrier turned into Archerfish's path. Enright prepared a spread of six torpedoes, to run shallow to hopefully capsize the top-heavy enemy ship.
Four of the torpedos hit, and Archerfish could hear the enemy vessel making breaking noises as she dove away from the scene of the attack. One of the enemy's escorts pursued the US sub, attacking it with depth charges. However, Archerfish survived, and was hailed as a hero. Enright won the Navy Cross - and Archerfish herself won the Presidential Unit Citation.
Turns out the ship the Archerfish sank was the Shinano, a Yamato-class battleship that had been converted into an aircraft carrier secretly by the Japanese, and was capable of carrying like 160 airplanes. She displaced 72,000 tons, and thus was the largest ship ever sunk by submarine.
Shinano was a rush conversion, and design flaws contributed greatly to Archerfish's ability to send her to the bottom. In addition, the damage was originally presumed to be minor; Shinano was able to continue steaming. But the ship's watertight doors weren't quite watertight - some theories have said that they failed to close due to incompleteness. In addition, the crew of Shinano was a skeleton crew, moving the ship to where her finishing touches would be added, and not very experienced in fighting floods.
She stayed up for 4 hours, then capsized and sank.
Archerfish served after the war, in the role of an attack submarine, and a research boat after the advent of the nuclear sub. She was finally retired in May of 1968 after 25 years of service in the United States Navy. She was then sunk as a target. In addition to her Presidential Unit Citation, Archerfish received seven battle stars - often as the role of lifeguard for US airplanes. But she will forever be remembered for her role in striking down desperate Japan's one last great weapon for making war.
This week's airplane is another monoplane fighter. This is from the 1930s and early 1940s, and was a pioneer in that it was the first cantilever monoplane with a fully retractable undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit (which most Red Army pilots ripped off). It served with distinction in the Spanish Civil War, and while outclassed by the Bf-109 and Fw-190 in 1941, was still pressed into service. It's a stubby little fighter:
This tiny little fighter was a highly maneuverable and very quick plane for its time. An all-weather fighter (a must in Russia), the I-16 had a Wright Cyclone engine in a small body, giving it a very high power-to-weight ratio. A well-designed wing gave it a high lift - and the fighter could be quickly whipped off the ground on a short, undeveloped runway (again, a must in Russia). Combining these features created a world-beating fighter that the Russians mass-produced.
The I-16 (also known as the Rata or Mosca in Spain and the Siipiorava in Finland) had a heavy armament of two 7.92mm machine guns and two 20mm cannons, which brought more punch to the fight than its contemporaries in Spain. The He-51 and the Ar-68 only had two machine guns, and were biplanes. The I-16 was more than a match for them in the sky.
Unfortunately, the little Rata ended up battling the Messerschmitt Bf-109 in Spain as well, a plane which rather outclassed it. However, the I-16 remained a valuable plane in both Spanish and Soviet service, for the reasons previously mentioned. It was, numerically, the most important fighter in VVS service in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and it came up against the Bf-109 again during Operation Barbarossa.
The stubby little fighter showed its worth. The "Istak" (as it was fondly known to the Soviet pilots) could fight in all weather conditions and it whipped easily off the ground. However, it couldn't bring the same speed to higher-altitude combat that the Bf-109 could. The Fw-190 completely had its number. Regardless, the airplane inflicted many kills on the Luftwaffe, usually out of desperation and skill rather than luck and airplane superiority.
The little plane also served in Chinese service, giving the Japanese a good fight in the air, and served with Spain till the 1950s. By all accounts it was a very easy and pleasant plane to fly and fight, and it was chosen as a satellite test platform for dropping fighters from bombers for longer mission support. A handful of examples survive today, and the small fighter that could is still loved by airplane enthusiasts worldwide.
The Great Raid is a 2005 war movie starring Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes, and a few other decent bit players scrabbled together in an attempt to recreate the January, 1945 raid on Cabanatuan Camp. It shows the depth of success of the mission, which saved 514 soldiers from near-certain death at the hands of the vicious Japanese prison camps, and was not a bad movie. Though there were some things that truly bothered me. Regardless, that is what a review is about. Yarrrr.
The raid at Cabanatuan brought the 6th Ranger Battalion and allied partisan Filipinos through Japanese-occupied territory to the Cabanatuan camp. There was some disagreement between the principle commanders of the raid - US Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, US Captain Robert Prince, and Filipino Captain Juan Pajota - over how to make it go down. Pajota, being on the scene for much longer than either American, was the best help possible, and they delayed the raid for a day to make the necessary arrangements.
This raid was thought as necessary because it turned out the Japanese were summarily executing all their POWs as the Americans got close, throwing them into air-raid shelters, dousing them in gasoline...and burning them alive, to dispose of any evidence of their war crimes. Lovely people, the Japanese were. So this mission was out of desperation. Tens of thousands of Americans had surrendered to the Japanese, but only a few thousand were left alive, and those who were were malnourished, underfed, and diseased.
Pajota suggested that the Americans attack the camp while he and his partisans held off the Japanese at a nearby bridge. In order to let the Rangers approach the camp, Pajota suggested an American plane buzz the camp, distracting the guards. A P-61 Black Widow performed this task, lingering over the camp and eventually faking an engine failure, while the US Rangers crawled close. At sundown, they established a base of fire on the Japanese garrison, killing and wounding the majority of the 700 guards (523 casualties), while freeing the prisoners.
Two US servicemen and a prisoner died, and a couple dozen Filipinos were killed, but we don't have exact numbers for them. But 514 US servicemen were saved from the hell of Japanese prison camps - and the shorter-lived but ever so final hell of burning alive.
The movie did a very, very good job recreating the history leading up to the raid, especially the interactions between Mucci, Prince, and Pajota. The movie also tried to link the story of Margaret Utinsky to the camp by romantically linking her to Joseph Fiennes's character, who was mostly fictional. This part particularly failed to be accurate, but was effectively dramatic.
The assault was very, very well done. It showed the true power of an American platoon in combat in World War II - semi-automatic rifles, Thompsons, and BARs brought a huge amount of firepower to battle that the Japanese could not handle with their bolt-action Arisaka rifles. The amount of lead the US guys could throw out, wow. It was a very well done recreation of a set-piece company-level battle.
There was some additions to the battle; tanks that likely weren't there, added for the pure explosion and adrenaline factor. The movie didn't rely on shaky-cam technology, so that I found it easy to watch. The torture of the characters felt very real. Martin Csokas (Celeborn from Lord of the Rings) played a captain who was Joseph Fiennes's friend in the camp, but he was a real hardass who wanted to escape. When the Kempeitai threatened to execute 10 men for every one who escaped, he expressed that he didn't care. When he was caught, and 10 men were shot before he was, you could see the defiance just leeching out of him. A very good performance by a less famous actor.
Overall, I wasn't too sure what the movie was trying to say on the subject of religion. Benjamin Bratt's character, Mucci, declared that he didn't "want any damned atheists on this mission". Mucci was a fan of taking everything on faith. The faith of the prisoners was in focus; the common funerals were given by a prisoner padre. Men crossed themselves before being executed. Priests gave Margaret Utinsky shelter, believing in their faith, and were executed for it. Martin Csokas's character thought aloud, "I can't believe he still believes in god."
The other contrast was with men like Prince and Pajota, both of whom were against a headstrong attack, like Mucci wanted, and trying to plan everything out. Prince was shown as restraining the aggressive Mucci, but there was never a flat-out denial of religion. As an atheist, I would like to think that faith isn't needed to save people from hell on earth, but that seemed to be a requirement. It is possible they were trying to make a point about the pointlessness of faith, but I don't think it was well made.
Overall, it was an enjoyable movie. It was better at history than allegory, and I give it a solid 3.5/5.
If there was ever a pilot for all-time, this is the guy. Today's Dude of the Week is one of the most famous airplane pilots to ever hop in a cockpit, up there with Lindburgh and von Richthofen. He served with the United States Army Air Forces and the United States Air Force from 1941-1975, winning a plethora of medals. He was a World War II fighter ace, flew over a hundred missions in Vietnam, and was the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. He is:
Chuck Yeager was a high school graduate from West Virginia who enlisted in the US Army Air Forces before World War II came to US shores, in September of 1941. Though he wasn't a university graduate, once war came, Yeager trained as a flight officer. He flew P-39s and P-51s, being shot down once and scoring 11.5 kills - including 5 in one day, and he snagged a Me-262. So, he's badass already.
After the war, Yeager decided that he needed to get the reputation as being the most awesome fucker who ever flew a plane, and he flew the Bell X-1 "Glamorous Glennis" to Mach 1.07, breaking the sound barrier for the first time in a manned aircraft. He did this with two broken ribs, and he couldn't even close the aircraft canopy without a jerry-rigged handle.
Yep.
Yeager did his best to keep his title as the fastest man alive. When Scott Crossfield became the first person to punch through Mach 2, Yeager planned to take the record from him, just before Crossfield was honoured as "the fastest man alive" at the 50th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight from Kitty Hawk. So, Yeager basically took a giant dump on Crossfield's head. Awesome.
As an accomplished fighter pilot, Yeager realized that if he flew fighter planes in Vietnam, it would just be too easy for the US to win, so he completely switched professions and became a bomber pilot, flying B-57s and F-4 Phantoms. He then hooked up with the Pakistani Air Force as a liason, helping their air force fight the Indians, spending his time fucking off in a F-86 Sabre for shits and giggles.
Since retiring, Yeager has gone off and set records in every airplane they'll still let him fly, usually light civilian types. He set speed records, distance records, and endurance records. In 1997 Yeager flew a F-15D to celebrate the anniversary of him ripping the sound barrier a new one. That's right, they let him fly a $30 million aircraft at age 74, because he is awesome.
In conclusion: Chuck Yeager is allowed to bone your girlfriend.
This has nothing to do with the X-Men character of the same name. Operation Jubilee is the codename for a raid that occurred on the coast of France on August 19th, 1942. It was the largest seaborne raid of World War II that wasn't intended to make a lodgement, and also failed spectacularly. In Canada, this operation is synonymous with waste and failure. It's better known as:
This mission was a clusterfuck from the beginning. Basically, the idea was to use a major raid to capture a French seaport from the Germans to see what the reaction time of German High Command would be; in addition, the Allies wanted to see what the reaction of the Germans would be to a raid in force, and hopefully draw the Luftwaffe into a battle where the RAF would apply overwhelming force and cripple the defenders of German-held France.
None of this worked. First of all, the mission was originally set up to go in July, but the Germans figured the damn thing out, and hit the buildup with bombers. So, the Germans had a pretty good idea something was coming. Secondly, Mountbatten (the guy in charge of the raid) didn't really have much permission to launch the attack, so his intelligence was out of date. Thirdly, the forces brought were wholly insufficient to pierce Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
Let's talk about the Atlantic Wall for a moment. This was one of Adolf Hitler's little projects wherein he thought the Atlantic Coast of the Reich should have an impenetrable wall build up upon it. It wasn't a reality, but most French ports were already fortified, and so Hitler added a bit to them, specifically in the form of German soldiers. The Allies targeted Dieppe because, quite frankly so they could blow stuff up as they withdrew. They were to find out that hard targets were a poor choice for an amphibious assualt.
Finally, the plan needed soldiers. Canadians were chosen, for no better reason than they hadn't been in a fight in too long. Add in some commandos to take the flank, a few tanks, and no direct fire naval support, and you have a huge recipe for disaster and damnation.
As you can see, Dieppe is surrounded by fucking cliffs. Brilliant, isn't it? Fucking cliffs! Rule 1 in amphibious warfare: DON'T ATTACK FUCKING CLIFFS.
Rule 2 in amphibious warfare: have direct fire support from the fucking navy! It's not like Canada was bobbing around in rowboats, anyway. They were being brought along by the Royal Navy. They had ships. They just didn't care to use them.
Rule 3: air support is a good thing. The RAF sent in like 70 squadrons, most of which were Spitfires operating at their maximum range, and completely outclassed by the Fw-190s they came up against. With little time to linger, they had to bug out or be shot down after a very short engagement. Longer range fighters would be needed in order to support future raids.
Rule 4: DON'T ATTACK CLIFFS.
So, the attack went down, and was a total clusterfuck. The commandos did their job pretty well, but the Germans in the centre, where the Canadians were attacking, held and inflicted around a thousand fatalities on the day. The landings were delayed, letting the Germans take all the time in ze veld to get ready for the attack. Adding on to that, the Allies had no idea what the beach conditions were like - no tanks got off the beach past an anti-tank barrier.
It would have been nice to blast open the anti-tank barrier, with say, naval support, but six destroyers just didn't have the short-support capacity needed to effectively blow shit up for the landing. In the end, the boys barely got off the beach, and the Canadians took something like 60% casualties in the raid.
Dieppe changed the way the Allies looked at amphibious assault. It became obvious that you couldn't do this on the cheap, that you needed to plan and plan and plan. Future assaults would have prodigious aircraft cover and direct fire support; save for the Torch landings in November, there would be no more attacks on harbours. There would be airborne and better tank support. Armoured vehicles designed to clear beach obstacles were designed.
Still, though, 907 Canadians died on the beaches of Dieppe, a cost far too high to pay for lessons that should have been well-known already. A damn tragedy.
No ship was larger when she was launched; since then only a handful have ever superseded her. She had the speed of a cruiser, and the armament and armour of a battleship. She was tougher than a battlecruiser, and she sank in her only engagement on the high seas. She was the HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, who blew up and died battling the Bismarck in one of the last battleship vs. battleship battles ever fought.
Hood was the first of four planned Admiral-class battlecruisers commissioned by the Royal Navy during World War 1, designed to counter the Mackensen-class German battlecruisers being launched in Germany. However, only Hood was completed; the other ships of her class were broken up, as the Mackensen-class was never completed. Despite this, Hood quickly became the jewel of the Royal Navy.
Named for Admiral Samuel Hood, HMS Hood was the largest ship in the world when she was launched, and held that record until her future nemesis Bismarck was launched. She remains the longest ship to ever serve in the Royal Navy; her length and her low, sleek superstructure gave her a graceful, fast look. Her prime armament was eight 15" guns capable of a broadside weight of 15,360 lbs with a preferred armament of armour-piercing shells, and she had around four dozen supporting batteries in secondary, and tertiary mounts.
Hood had thick armour for a battlecruiser; many battlecruisers bore an armour belt of around 8" - proof against a cruiser's guns, but not a battleship's. However, Hood had 12" of protection in her prime belt, giving her additional resilience. The armour was one of the first arranged after the individual ship disasters that occurred at Jutland; the vertical and horizontal belts didn't necessarily work together and provide adequate protection from all angles, and future developments (additional torpedo rooms that were later removed, new magazines) weren't intended, but occurred. Eventually, this poorly-designed armour would lead to Hood's fate.
Despite her status as a battlecruiser, given her increased armament and her thicker armour, she was more of a fast battleship. Hood's engines were incredibly powerful, and she could develop 31 knots on two turbines totalling 113 megawatts of work (approximately three times the potential work of a Saturn V rocket's first stage). This speed, the heavy (for the time) armament, and the general beauty of the vessel led to her being known as the "pride of the Royal Navy".
In this role, Hood took on a greater job in the public relations department. She would visit various ports-of-call and host tours, or moor for festivals. Such a job kept her working almost constantly - in the end, she barely had time for refits, even in the leadup to World War II.
Hood was kept in service following the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. She saw her first action when attacking the French fleet at Oran, developing heavy fire against the French ships there, to deny them from falling into German hands. Italians ran a bombing mission against her, and she shot down one of their bombers. But overall, Hood had a quiet first two years of war. She returned to Scapa Flow and moored with the Prince of Wales as part of the Home Fleet.
When Bismarck and Prinz Eugen made their famous sorteé, Hood and Prince of Wales were immediately dispatched to intercept. Prince of Wales was the newest ship in the Royal Navy, and the Hood was generally considered the best ship. They intercepted the Bismarck on the 24th of May in the Denmark Strait.
The battle was quick and fierce. Hood engaged for eight minutes, but due to the way Hood and Prince of Wales approached, neither ship could bring all of their gun batteries to bear on the German ships, while both Prinz Eugen and Bismarck had free reign. In addition, the Hood (with her suspect armour) was in the van, and she became the natural target for both German vessels.
While attempting to turn to engage the Germans with all guns, Hood was straddled by a volley from Bismarck. There was a gout of flame and the Hood exploded, breaking in two. At the time, it was assumed the Germans snuck a shell into one of the stores of cordite, but later examination of the wreck suggests a 4-inch battery blew up, igniting the main fuel line that caused a fuel tank to blow. Regardless, the Hood sank in three minutes - with only three survivors.
It was a shocking blow to the Royal Navy, as one of her finest and most famous ships was suddenly, completely gone; Prince of Wales was badly damaged. The entire Royal Navy set off in pursuit of the Bismarck, and she was sank some days later. But the loss of the Hood left a stain on the Royal Navy's record that would not be expunged.
Goddamn, sometimes a good song can really affect you. I can't pretend to be swayed by pop songs, or sex drugs & rock'n'roll songs, but a well-done song about a powerful piece of literature, or an amazing event can surely move me. Famously, I wept during the first time I heard "Paschendale", by Iron Maiden. And who can blame me? Check it out.
Warning: SHAMELESS PLUG
"Paschendale" is the story about a soldier at the Third Battle of Ypres, best known as the Battle of Passchendaele. This battle was a brutal slaughterfest in a raining field of muck and mud that was intended to be the first part of a major operation designed to cut off a large force of Germans, and deny them a valuable U-Boat base on the North Sea. However, it failed; taking the village of Passchendaele was only supposed to take a week. It took six months and 508,000 casualties to take that damned village.
Passchendaele was a mess of muck and mud; a filth-ridden series of trenches swarming in putrid disease, rats, and human remains. The worst rains recorded in French history thundered down on the battlefield, ensuring that it was impossible to navigate; thousands drowned in the muck, or were wounded and simply hadn't the strength to stay afloat. It was an unconscionable slog; a brutal and useless battle, and probably the worst fighting conditions in human history till Stalingrad.
The battle tells me the story of one particular soldier, who waits and waits for his turn to hop the trenches, waiting in terror and rain and fear. When the moment comes, there's the solos, short, intense, rapid sounds, a verse lamenting slaughter, and the soldier's violent death. It was probably the most hyped song of the Dance of Death album, and it hasn't lost its poignancy yet.
So, what are some others songs that affect me the same way?
Let's see. Let's try...Gettysburg (1863) by Iced Earth.
Yes, the song is like 30 minutes long, and comes in three parts. The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent, where one hundred and sixty-five thousand Americans clashed over three violent days, resulting in around 50,000 casualties. (Yes, that is one in four.) Gettysburg was a fluke; advance columns of Harry Heth's division of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia met with John Buford's Federal Cavalry under the command of the Army of the Potomac.
Buford correctly identified the heights surrounding Gettysburg to be a critical defensive position that must be denied to the numerically inferior Confederates. Buford, and many other Union generals, were familiar with the ability of the Army of Northern Virginia to defend - the Battle of Fredericksburg was not so long ago, where James Longstreet's Corps had handed the Union army a thorough drubbing from a strong defensive position.
Buford deployed his cavalry, dismounted, and engaged Heth. He held for some hours, waiting for reinforcements. Just before he was about to be pushed back, however, John Reynolds and the Union I and XI Corps arrived to reinforce. Reynolds (one of the most experienced and talented commanders in the Union army) took personal command until he was killed, likely by friendly fire. Winfield Scott Hancock arrived on the field to take command around noon; upsetting Oliver Howard of XI Corps who felt he was the senior commander.
Regardless, Robert E. Lee's full army was coming down on two Corps, eventually forcing them back through the town of Gettysburg and onto the hills behind it - Culp's Hill, Cemetery Hill, and Cemetery Ridge, forming a defensive "fishhook" as other Corps arrived - II Corps (Hancock) and III Corps (Sickles) formed the left end of the line along the Ridge, to the hill called "Little Round Top", while I Corps (now under Newton) and XI Corps held Cemetery Hill; XII Corps under Slocum entrenched on Culp's Hill on the far right.
The second day started with Lee's forces preparing an assault on the far left of the Union line. Longstreet formed up two of his three divisions for an assault. III Corps, responsible for that side of the line, moved forward out of position, and was caught in the attack by Hood and McLaws. III Corps was dissected and destroyed in detail; V Corps under Sykes was rushed into position, extending from the end of II Corps's line to the top of Little Round Top, where the 20th Maine Regiment under Joshua L. Chamberlain was placed.
A professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin University, Chamberlain was not a likely soldier. However, operating at the extreme left of the Union line, finding the far right of Hood's division coming up the hill at him, Chamberlain and his Maine boys performed admirably, firing till their ammunition was exhausted, then leading a charge down the hill with bayonets to rout their foe. Had the 20th Maine broken, the Rebels might have swept the line apart; by ending the charge, they ended the day's danger.
On the third day, Lee decided on a grand charge. Three divisions (Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble) under Longstreet attacked Hancock in the line's centre, trying to split the Union force in twain. Fifteen thousand men charged across a mile of field, being wracked apart by cannon and canister, by musket and rifle, and ending up in a vicious hand-to-hand battle. Armistead's brigade of Virginians broke the line, and for a moment the Confederate battle flag flew over Cemetery Ridge. But Armistead was mortally wounded, and the Charge broken. Around half of those who set out never came back, or were badly wounded, or captured.
Lee's final gamble failed spectacularly, and the Army of Northern Virginia was forced to retreat. Just as exhausted, George Meade and the Army of the Potomac followed, failing to press the issue. With around a third of the strength of both armies drained, neither felt like fighting too hard in the days following. It's a terrible time in American history, but capturing it, remembering it, is oh so important.
We'll do one more in this segment of "Historical Songs"...
Silver Wings by Bruce Dickinson is an examination of those who performed night bombing for Bomber Command during World War II, from the perspective of a pilot flying an Avro Lancaster four-engined bomber on a mission towards Germany. Night bombing was a thankless, exceptionally hazardous mission. There was no fighter escort, and by the late war, Germany had developed many, many effective night fighters to engage Allied airplanes.
The song laments the poor prospects of a bomber crew as they enter their raid over a German city - how the searchlight seems to have caught them, how they lose engines and have to dump the fuel, how the pilot advises the crew to bail out, and likely how his plane crashes to the pilot's death. It's a very...powerful song, both in the music and the words.
"Tonight, on silver wings, I am soaring through the mountains of the moon...on silver wings, flying where no angels fly"
Bruce's lyrical ability highlights the incredible joy of flying (he would know, as a pilot), the power one feels, with the simple fact that they were harbingers of death for those in Germany. Flying where no angels could fly. It makes me a little teary just pondering that terrible contrast.
Welcome to the fourth installment of "Of the Week" on my blog. This time I've chosen to do the Historical Event of the week, when I'll discuss a historical event that had an anniversary over the past week. Today's feature will discuss one of the seminal moments in human history:
On August 6th, and August 9th, 1945, the United States of America struck Japan with two atomic bombs, ushering in the Atomic Era. B-29s flying from Alaska dropped the newly devastating weapons, obliterating both targets. The two nuclear weapons were the extent of the American nuclear arsenal, but they appeared to be all that was needed. By August 15th, Japan transmitted its willingness to surrender.
Japan, of course, was already in quite the pickle at the time. The massive and battle-hardened (and utterly vicious) Soviet Army had been unleashed on Japan's puppet Manchukuo (aka Manchuria). The fleet of USAAF B-29s flying from Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa had levelled several Japanese cities with a campaign of firebombing. To all appearances, those Japanese who favoured peace had been ousted from power.
When Okinawa fell, there was no further obstacles to an American invasion of mainland Japan, an invasion that made even the most bloodthirsty US generals more than a little anxious. The vicious campaign for Okinawa had demonstrated the Japanese capacity for defense; despite overwhelming Allied forces and firepower, the defenders of Okinawa had killed or wounded 50,000 Americans while still managing to die nearly to a man.
This may not represent the reality of the situation; some historians have stated that the resistant Japanese psyche was crumbling, and they may have yielded before the invasion of Japan eventually came, or shortly after that invasion. Such historians point to the force already being brought against the island of Japan as evidence that the Japanese would have given in. Truman wanted to use nukes to avoid the huge amount of casualties that would have occurred in the case of a mainland invasion; the generals wanted to test the bombs to see how effective they were in neutralizing enemy hard targets before an invasion.
Since the date, people have accused the United States of being cruel or overly violent. I am disinclined to believe such things; war is a time of unnecessary cruelty in general, and the unnecessary cruelty of Japan's empire is very well documented. In addition, the US had already inflicted hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries to Japanese civilians in their vicious firebombing campaign, essentially destroying most of the built-up areas on the main islands already. What Truman was hoping for was that the immense shock and awe of the bombs forcing the Japanese to capitulate.
Hiroshima was destroyed on August 6th. The United States waited three days for a response to their demand for surrender; on the 9th, Nagasaki was destroyed. The cities have since been rebuilt but both city cores were utterly obliterated. Somewhere in the range of 110,000-150,000 people were instantly killed, with perhaps as many as half a million more dying of radiation over the next ten years.
Criticism of this ultimate weapon continues to this day; my opinion is not important. But I hope that this interests you enough to further educate yourself on these two days, seared by atomic fire into the fabric of our combined history.
"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one...now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
-Translation of the Bhagavad Gita as recalled by J. Robert Oppenheimer, as he watched the first atomic bomb explode.
