Re: Please can we keep the accolades coming...
"Had the bomb not been dropped on Japan, my father would have been part of the invasion force and I very likely would not be writing this."
My father was sent out there as part of the proposed invasion force (he had had combined ops training and been on D-day and was one of the relatively few of them who survived in good condition.)
It was pretty apparent that the blockade was working and the Japanese were being rolled up everywhere. The fact that two bombs could be dropped from aircraft itself demonstrates that the Japanese no longer had a credible air defence, because if they had done, the risk would not have been taken of them being shot down and the bombs recovered by the Japanese. Long before the bombs were dropped, his service in the East had turned into cruising around river deltas sinking Japanese boats.
The bombs were dropped partly so the US could end the war with Japan, before the Russians released from their Western front could invade Japan and bring it into the Communist world. So they might have had a strategic effect but it was political, not military.
(The nearest my father came to getting killed in the East was the victory celebrations when he came back to his boat drunk from the Admiral's party, fell in and had to be fished out by his CPO.)
Bottom line: In terms of defeating the Axis in WW2, the Manahttan Project was a sideshow.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
