Nuklear bomb

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by Madfish

[EDIT]
And by the way, the attack on Bari is interesting. It could be campaign material even but it appears that no German intel on the mustard gas bombs existed so I guess it wouldn't make much sense after all.

Does anyone care why the ship was carrying mustard gas? Or is it just more convenient to believe that the US was planning on using it offensively.

If you want to check out a really interesting/weird/far fetched weapon, google the "bat bomb" (hint: it has nothing to do with sexually ambiguous men in tights ).

Tokyo was never a target for the nukes, btw. The US did not want to kill the emperor. If the Emperor had died, Japan would never have surrendered.

Another city was also spared even after it was on at the top of the original target list. It was spared because of cultural and historical value...apparently it also hosted the honeymoon of one of the planners.

Friendly, you are on for that beer, even if you break down and make it over here .

Swiss: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) works when the other side is rational and does not want to get a large portion of their own people killed. "Rational" doesn't match the words coming from Iran. Israel has had nukes for a long time and refrained from using them when attacked (though they had them loaded on planes from what I remember reading). Interesting read! Thanks for posting.

Swiss again: Our government is vested with the responsibility of national defense by our constitution (not that we pay much attention to our constitution these days). Most of the other programs that are run through our government have nothing to do with "why" our federal government was created.

The scope of our government's powers has grown far beyond what was originally envisioned by the founders. Most of the power was to reside with the states but that changed after our Civil War.

Our government spends far more money each year than it takes in. The largest portion by far is for entitlement programs. Right now, 1 in 6 Americans is on some form of government assistance....which is untenable for any length of time.

So if the entitlement programs were cut (even frozen at current levels) it would be easy to cut the size of government. Plus, the government interferes with business in many ways that make creating profit ore difficult.

Another strange thing about our economy and government is that when we raise taxes, revenue to the government goes down. When we lower taxes, it stimulates business and revenue to the government goes up. Of course, our congress then spends the excess revenue and more on top of it lol.

Basically, our government is out of control.

Splitter

[Dozer_EAF19]

(Aww, the Internet ate my post. Here's v2.0)

I thought the American Business Model view is that the government shouldn't be in control? It should just defend property rights and act as referee over a free market of self-interested materialistic rationalists? And then everything is beautiful and Pareto efficient.

There is a competing point of view, that profits are a byproduct of delivering goods and services rather than the other way around. I quite like it

[Madfish]

Originally Posted by Dozer_EAF19

Madfish, I think you misunderstand. No-one is asking for nuclear bombs in Il-2 or SoW. I think everyone who's posted in this thread has been very clear how pointless it would be to have that! I never wanted nuclear bombs either, but you seem to think I did.

Hey, the opening post clearly says that along with numerous people biting the bait and actually defending the use of atomic weapons. Further down the thread (I read all of it but forgot some parts) the request was repeated again with people repeating the almost same statements.
Sorry for mis-understanding if you actually argumented against the use and implementations of such weapons. I interpreted it differently.

Originally Posted by Splitter

Does anyone care why the ship was carrying mustard gas? Or is it just more convenient to believe that the US was planning on using it offensively.

Sadly I don't have much information on it and my browser is suffocating in tabs (over 35x open at the moment). Do you have any links? What I found is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ha...#Bari_incident . It does kind of hint to an offensive use, especially given the nasty bombings later. So it might have been a good thing that the ship was destroyed there - or what makes you think that shipping the freight over there was meant to dismantle them in Italy, a very risky territory which had been occupied a little earlier?

If you want to check out a really interesting/weird/far fetched weapon, google the "bat bomb" (hint: it has nothing to do with sexually ambiguous men in tights ).

Tabs issue again... I know that the bat bomb was supposed to be a glider bomb with a radar head. Was it real? I never read too much about it. I'd appreciate a good link on it and by the way, there are other good search engines than goo** ;P

Tokyo was never a target for the nukes, btw. The US did not want to kill the emperor. If the Emperor had died, Japan would never have surrendered.

I basically said that, didn't I? Sorry if it was written in a confusing way, English is not my native language.
I didn't want to mention the emperor though because that might lead to another debate if it would have brought down the country completely, throwing it into chaos, or if it would have led to a series of relentless attacks until the last man instead. Guessing that they saw the kamikaze I'd say they assumed the later. But we don't know, or wouldn't know. So I was just sticking to the weather and industry ;P

[Dozer_EAF19]

Originally Posted by Madfish

Hey, the opening post clearly says that along with numerous people biting the bait and actually defending the use of atomic weapons. Further down the thread (I read all of it but forgot some parts) the request was repeated again with people repeating the almost same statements.
Sorry for mis-understanding if you actually argumented against the use and implementations of such weapons. I interpreted it differently.

No worries. This thread's gone miles and miles off topic - I should revise what I just said. I don't think anyone who's been posting in it a lot actually wants to have an atom bomb in a WW2 flight sim

[Splitter]

Hey madfish,

The ship was delivering mustard gas shells from WWI. They were to be used in retaliation if the Germans used chemical warfare. Allied troops were often issued gas masks because the belief was that Hitler would resort to chemical warfare eventually.

I think both sides learned, in WWI, that chemical warfare was not as easy as it sounded. Lots of things tended to go wrong.

The "bat bomb" was an American program that strapped incendiary bomblets to actual bats. They would be dropped over Japanese cities and roost (do bats roost? I dunno, say hide lol) in the roofs and eaves of Japanese buildings. When the timer ran out, the incendiary would ignite (poor bat) and start a fire. Thousands of small fires would have erupted almost simultaneously in a city and it would have been almost impossible to keep all those fires from getting out of control. I think the war ended before it could be deployed or that funding got diverted.

Dozer: Yes, minimal government involvement in business (and in people's lives in general) was what the founding fathers envisioned. They are probably rolling over in their graves right now seeing how badly we have mangled their intentions lol.

And as for this frequent poster, no A-bomb for me. I've spent a lot of time wondering what the crew must have (or might have) been thinking, I don't really need a simulated bombing run to clarify things for me. As someone else said, it would be more of an X-Plane exercise than a mission for a combat flight sim.

Splitter

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Splitter

Hey madfish,

Dozer: Yes, minimal government involvement in business (and in people's lives in general) was what the founding fathers envisioned. They are probably rolling over in their graves right now seeing how badly we have mangled their intentions lol.


Splitter

I would agree with that but suspect what the founding fathers never envisaged was "big business" and in particular multinational corporate business bloating up to the point that it is now pretty much outdoing both church and state combined when it comes to bureaucratic bungling and interference in "people's lives in general" .

[Dozer_EAF19]

There was a point where New Zealand was more "American" than America where it came to economic policy. This was after the collapse of the interventionist Keynesian regime that spent large sums on giant steelmills that made a huge loss, which in turn was after the collapse caused by Britain joining the EEC and not buying NZ's exports any more. The hyper-American free-marketeers dismantled the state as far as possible, privatising everything, then there was a third collapse symbolised by the loss of electrical supply to Auckland because the distributor cut maintenance to boost profits until their network broke. I'd like to learn more of NZ's troubled history, it's grisly but fascinating.

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by Dozer_EAF19

There was a point where New Zealand was more "American" than America where it came to economic policy. This was after the collapse of the interventionist Keynesian regime that spent large sums on giant steelmills that made a huge loss, which in turn was after the collapse caused by Britain joining the EEC and not buying NZ's exports any more. The hyper-American free-marketeers dismantled the state as far as possible, privatising everything, then there was a third collapse symbolised by the loss of electrical supply to Auckland because the distributor cut maintenance to boost profits until their network broke. I'd like to learn more of NZ's troubled history, it's grisly but fascinating.

Aw crud, now I have something else to research. Damn you . I thought they just had a bunch of really weird animals.

Galway, I'll have to think on what you said. I am not sure they were completely inexperienced with such things given how powerful some companies were (like the East India Trading Company if I remember them correctly). There were many things they could not have envisioned, but none of those have invalidated their thoughts that they put down on parchment.

Example: They could never have envisioned the internet and yet their views on free speech still hold true.

Seldom do I ever read a thread that makes me think or re-think positions or that uncover anything interesting enough to send me off on a research jaunt.

Did this thread go off topic? Ummm, yeah, and I participated in it. Was it useful? Again I would say yes because while I saw a bunch of tired old arguments and prejudices that could not be substantiated, I also saw things that made me want to go do a little research. I think everyone should have their notions challenged on a regular basis to see if what they believe still holds true. It's healthy even when minds are not changed.

Of course, I agree with Mr. Churchill on an individual's evolution of political opinion .

Splitter