Random Enola Gay images. Was " Enola Gay, heroism or insanity?"

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Enola Gay, undoubtedly the most famous B-29 bomber ever built. The big question, his fame comes from an act of heroism or insanity? Click on the link below, answer this poll and leave your opinion. The link also contains a full report and photos about this important chapter of WW2. Be sure to visit and participate.

http://aviacaoemfloripa.blogspot.com.br/2012/02/enola-gay.html

Cheers.

Original post

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English language version?

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What a ridiculous, ill-thought-out question. What if you believe those who planned it or took part exhibited neither heroism or insanity to any notable degree? The question seems to suggest that heroism and insanity are opposites. As in truth they are near neighbours separated only in the moral dimension, the question, if you believe the act was either of the above, is the rather less histrionic 'was it moral'?

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Neither of the above!

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English language version?

Just click on translate, Bob. But not that it will get you anywhere because it tells the story we know well and I have no idea what the OP's question means. I think it is a language problem and our Spanish speaking friend needs to have another look at what he is really asking.

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No translate button to click on. Just wonder the point of posting Portugese (?) based articles here on an English speaking forum. And I shouldn't need to go through the hoops of getting a translation to read it. Just my personal view...

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My father was part of the Royal Navy `Tiger Force`.
If the bomb hadn't dropped I may not have been here.

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It's easy for younger people (especially non-Americans since the vast majority of allied casualties in any invasion would be American) to second guess. Especially if one doesn't know their WWII history.
It's well and good to be for peace, but the difficult gets more difficult the more you know about the realities of the situation.
Most of the time it's just an excuse to bash the US (and allies).

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On another site he is known as Swen from Sweden, he was banned from another well known aviation site,as this is just away to get hits on his blog.
Spam basically.

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17 years 6 months

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Neither. It would have been 'insanity' not to drop the bomb!

Does it matter if you are incinerated by a nuclear weapon, a firestorm started by a conventional incendiary or a USMC flame-thrower? Surely, the only thing that matters is the number of people killed and, to a lesser extent, whether they are soldiers, fighting-age, men, women or children.

If I were Japanese I think I'd have chosen nuclear weapons and a quick end to the war. Japan was going to lose anyway, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever about that, it is just a question of whether it would have been 'better' if they'd lost after millions more had died and much more of Japan would have been devastated. So no.

Nuclear weapons also gave Japan a convenient scapegoat; 'we lost because they had the bomb'! This is, of course, nonsense, but if that, and far fewer deaths on both sides, made the inevitable peace and post-war alignment easier (and it did) then so be it!

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Cant even be bothered to look at the link.

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Disciplined USAAF crews carried out a crucial mission in support of the Allies' war effort . "Theirs not to reason why......"
I had the privilege to lecture alongside an ex 509th Aircrew Officer from that time, to students in London in 1979.
His emphatic "YES!" as to whether he condoned it in retrospect caused ripples, despite the calculation that probably 1.5 million allied servicemens' lives were spared by avoiding the physical invasion of Japan. Plus , of course, the civilian casualties on the Japanese side ( almost certainly many times more than Hiroshima& Nagasaki combined). In addition there would have been the inevitably very heavy Japanese military casualties, enthusiastically throwing their lives away in support of their sacred Emperor.
Do you think the Japanese at the time would have given a humanitarian sh*t regarding the infliction of Allied casualties, on top of their own population, in such a venture?

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Yes, same old thing from Pampa14, posted on every WW or aviation forum, from here to Timbuktu.

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19 years 7 months

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On another site he is known as Swen from Sweden, he was banned from another well known aviation site,as this is just away to get hits on his blog.
Spam basically.

Yep - spam.

Banned on at least two sites I know. Uses lots of recycled pics that initially were without attribution until complaints rolled in.

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I do keep looking at the stuff Pampa posts. There is no value in it in terms of discussion, but in the words of Douglas Adams it's "mostly harmless"

One or two of the images he has trawled from around the net are new to me.

I can't see any reason to moderate his posts. If you don't like it, just don't click on anything with his byline.

One other forum I know of stuffs his posts in 'aviation photography.

Moggy
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Four of my mothers brothers served in Europe. (Canadians)
They all survived.
Each was prepared to remuster to go to Japan.
For reasons we all know, they no longer had to and all came home to raise families. (One with an English war bride :) )

Andy

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Creaking door highlights a thread of logic seldom mentioned. War by its very method creates injury ,death and destruction.The means to bring about that have varied over hundreds of years. A declared war is actually a failure by the potential adversaries to fully explore the alternatives or a failure to comprehend the cost in human and monetary terms of going to war in the hope that winning would be better than a situation being possibly improved by peaceful methods.
Caught up in the war are civilians and serving men and women who battle to just cope with the huge stress a war unleashes.

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That is true in theory but in practice those two tenets are rarely relevant. The failure of adversaries to explore alternatives and a failure to comprehend the human cost.

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It seems like a very odd question. I don't quite see how issues connected with politics and morality have much to do with an aeroplane that was simply used to carry-out a particular mission. It is what it is. If we're going to start examining the morality issues connected to every weapon of war...

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It seems like a very odd question. I don't quite see how issues connected with politics and morality have much to do with an aeroplane that was simply used to carry-out a particular mission. It is what it is. If we're going to start examining the morality issues connected to every weapon of war...

In the 80s at Duxford, there was a rather pejorative display next to the B-29 on the atomic missions. If showed blast zones maps, photos and to set it off, a roof of bamboo canes tied together with much of it burned away...an attempt to illustrate the effects of the bomb on buildings (though I don't believe typical city building in Japan used bamboo roofs, I believe they were clay shingles...or at leather were when I lived there in the early 60s).

I understand the historic significance of the introduction of atomic weapons and the role they played in ending WWII. Still, the display came across to be as an attempt to taint the aircraft because of the weapons it carried. This broad brush situation existed at the U.S. National Air & Space Museum with their hotly contested wording that accompanied the display of the Enola Gay (in restored pieces since it's was too large to display in one piece) in the 90s.

The Duxford display came across as a CND piece rather than an objective look at the B-29s role as a weapon in WWII, Korea and the Cold War (including RAF use).
After all, the Lancaster display didn't have charred brick walls displaying the effects on a German family at Dresden, or discuss the civilian casualties incurred during the flooding following the dams raid.

The distaste of atomic weapons ahs prevented many from seeing the B-29 for what it was, the most advanced warplane of WWII to see widespread service.
Like planes of all nations, it did what it was designed to do by men who were charged with protecting their countries.
If all we do is dwell on the morality of war and the pain, suffering and death caused by these weapons, then the sooner we scrap all warbirds...yes including the "pretty ones"...the better.

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I know of no better argument than Paul Fussell's article "Thank God for the Atom Bomb."

http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf

My Dad was on a destroyer at Okinawa. I remain deeply grateful that he didn't have to be part of any fight to land troops on Kyushu or Honshu.