[defrost]

The fact that the destruction was caused by a single bomb was shocking to those that appreciated that fact from a distance.

The destruction it caused was on par with conventional overnight HE+incendiary raids already carried for months across Japan and previously across Germany prior to German surrender.

From photographs and M&M stats alone it would be difficult to seperate destruction in Hiroshima from that in Tokyo.

[bombcar]

The atomic bomb was “shock and awe” - the implication was that the US would just continue to delete cities one by one easily until Japan surrendered. The destruction was comparable or even less than other firebombing raids but done with one plane.

[defrost]

At the time ... the two atomic bomb tests were the first live theatre tests of two aerial bomb designs only one of which had been previously tested in a controlled tower detonation (Trinity).

The two tests (Hiroshima & Nagasaki) were squeezed into an long ongoing campaign that had already "deleted" 72 cities .. at a time when the conventional campaign was already running out of good targets.

The atomic bombs had been developed at great expense to use on Germany and were not yet ready to test when Germany surrended.

Those military at the head of the Manhatten Project were desperate to find live theatre test sites before Japan surrended to either the US or, god forbid, the Russians (who had advanced so far through the formerly Japanese occupied terrirory in China that Japanee surrender to Russia was considered a very real possibility at the time).

While the Project had the ability to painstakingly handcraft more bombs at a low rate (and at very very great expense), they had not yet developed the Cold War production line ability to reliably turn out hundreds more bombs.

It's well worth reading up on the thoughts of the time before the after the fact post surrender stories spun up and atomic weapon use became a key part of the Cold War zeitgeist.

[nequo]

What do you mean by M&M? Did the overnight raids in Tokyo also kill 80,000 people? I don’t know the numbers for Tokyo but that would sound surprising.

[ustolemyname]

Yes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1...

[nequo]

Thanks for sharing that.

[defrost]

Mortality and Morbidity Statistics.

Those directly killed and injured and those indirectly killed and injured.

Water and food supplies were disrupted and polluted, infections followed, etc.

As someone else linked and as I stated the scale of each event was very similar.

See also Kurt Vonnegut's accounts of the Dresden firebombing he lived through as a US PoW in Europe some months earlier.

[weinzierl]

Dresdens destruction was so severe that now, 78 years later, reconstruction efforts are still ongoing - despite huge efforts and spending of enormous financial resources over the past decades.

[varjag]

Plenty places in Europe were hit harder than Dresden, but lacked a world renowned author to document first hand account.

[Spooky23]

The nuclear bomb was shocking, and distracted from the horror of conventional bombing. Dumping white phosphorus and napalm on cities is no less barbaric than nuclear explosions.

LeMay and his ilk were monsters, eager to rain destruction down with any tool available.