The tragedy of the carrier Zuikaku

One of the results of the overflies, the US nuclear war plan for 1956.
1100 nuclear strikes on the Soviet Bloc - to be delivered in a very short time, designed to completely destroy the Soviet aerial warfare capability (from the future of life blog).


At that time the Soviets had really nothing to respond in kind, secrecy was their only defense. This makes the overflies much more serious and deadly matter than the few Japanese subs prepositioning themselves in Pearl Harbor.

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Which just goes to show exactly how tragic the sinking of the Zuikaku really was.

 

Hardly,

The 1,100 was the result of USAF/SAC trying to get the lion's share of the US defense budget.

Just look at how US nuclear warfare plans ballooned in the number of targets...In 1947, their were only 20 targets, and this would grow to 104 by 1949. The list would eventually grow to some 80,000 targets globally.

 

Yes, and no. The did photo reconnaissance of cities and installations. However, they were also performing ELINT, which did not require overflying a specific target. Further, they were also looking for hitherto unknown Soviet installations, which again, would not require overflying a specific target.

Unlikely, as the "nuclear bombers" did not carry the amount of fuel that the reconnaissance aircraft did. Inflight refueling would help, but only to a point, as there were not that many airborne tankers to support a massive first strike.

Except your argument is not that it was a shooting war...Your argument was that US nuclear bombers overflew the Soviet Union. Which you have still not proved...and will be unable to prove.

You should also remember that the"shooting war", also took place in international air space.

Well, neither Boyne or Tart mention any nuclear bombers. They do, however, give many examples of reconnaissance aircraft overflying the Soviet Union.

So, yes, you are "guessing".

 

What???

Beria had control of Soviet Rocket design since the late 1930's.

The rocket design center was never really left a war footing, as they had to defend Moscow against nuclear attack and further the development of ballistic missiles.

Most, if not all of the Soviet rocket scientists were released from the Gulags in the immediate post-WW2 years, when the Soviets finally came to the conclusion that the Gulag hindered rather than helped the scientists.

Beria and his son did have quite a hand in the development of the S-25 Berkut/SA-1 Guild. However, Beria and his son had absolutely zero to do with the S-75 Dvina/SA-2 Guideline - as Beria the elder had died of "lead poisoning" aka executed, and his son was "fired" from his rocketry position.

The only author claiming they were on a simulated nuclear attack is Boyne...No other author I have seen makes this claim...Not even Tart does this in his book.

 

AFAIK, this was first done by RB-45Cs loaned to the RAF, and flown by RAF crews, with RAF markings.
http://www.spyflight.co.uk/scul.htm

That being said, the RAF was conducting their own overflights of the Soviet Union since late-1948.

 

The amount of fuel they carried wasn't visible on Soviet radars. Most of the targets were located close to the Soviet borders anyway, as the map shows.

Beria was personally supervising their (their = TGU, the Third Main Directorate) work, his son was the chief designer. Resources and money was allocate to the TGU even at the expense of the Soviet atomic program.
Their designed S-25 Berkut, Guideline was its, created later, mobile version.
His son was briefly arrested, but later worked as a chief designer on various Soviet projects under his mother's name Gerechkori.

Although the TGU was created in 1950.

 

Well, duh!

The recon types were visible and identifiable to the intercepting fighters...Which happened quite often, although they were not necessarily always fired upon.

Again...Well, duh!

You yourself have said that it was the RB-45Cs that were used for such "short distance" recon work...

The RB-47s were not wasted on targets that could be covered by other aircraft.

You still have yet to prove that Beria the Elder had anything to do with the S-75 Dvina...Hint - We are not talking about the S-25 Berkut.

The S-75 Dvina was far cheaper to produce, more flexible to use, but less capable.

Yet, there were several other Soviet Rocket design bureaus that existed well prior to the creation of the TGU. All of which Beria gained control of in the late 30's...As I said earlier, Beria controlled Soviet rocket design since the late 30's.

 

I don't quite understand, according to Boris Chertok both S-25 and S-75 were developed in Factory No. 293 owned by the Beria controlled KB-1, and later owned by the non-Beria-controlled KB-2. Beria's input in developing S-75 may be questionable or not, but the fact is all that development was started in 1950 when Stalin was informed by his unwilling-to-admit-the-truth-henchmen that the USSR didn't have air-defenses worth speaking of against American bombers.
And the fact is Beria were ordered to do something about on it the double, and at the expense of every other military projects including the atomic bomb one.

The point is not who constructed what, or the purpose of RB-47 (this is why I don't use the obscure the facts RB-47C designation), or if the C was visible from a Soviet fighter or not. After all if a American bomber overflow Moscow, other Russian city, or their command center they had to assume he was carrying a nuclear weapon, it would madness not to.

The point is the Americans entered Soviet airspace many times, gathering information absolutely vital for the successful execution of a devastating attack on the Soviet Union. An attack which would make Pearl Harbor a child play. So it's hypocritical to complain that a few Japanese subs entered Pearl Harbor before the war started, because the Americans did exactly the same, and the consequences of their actions would be much more severe.

The original Japanese plan called for 30 minutes delay between the delivering the declaration of war and the shooting war (even the subs were supposed wait for the moment if I'm not mistaken). This delay (much less in practice, the ambassador had to read his long message first after all) wouldn't give the Americans any advantage. They wouldn't be able to warn Pearl Harbor in such a short time, especially that they didn't even expect Pearl Harbor to be attacked.
If fact earlier they issued (inept) war warnings, that didn't do them any good.

So Pearl Harbor was going to get it irrespectively there were a declaration of war or not. And as it was said many times the requirement to deliver a declaration was a bureaucratic one, it wasn't meant to prevent Pearl Harbors.

 

No it's not at all hypocritical. There's also a significant difference between sending military forces into another country or near it to gather intelligence and sending them with orders to attack. The consequences are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Wrong! The Japanese did not plan on delivering a declaration of war prior to the PH attack. That declaration (or declarations) came well after the attacks on PH as well as certain British possessions.

Why do you consider the war warnings "inept"? The rather unsupported speculation as to them not doing any good seams questionable as well.

Said many times where? A declaration of war was indeed a bureaucratic requirement but that doesn't address it's purpose at all. As to whether or not one of those purposes was to "prevent Pearl Harbors" that's quite debatable and depends to at least some extent on exactly what is meant by the phrase.

 

This thread has gone far and away from the original topic.

 

I agree with Gromit - I've skipped the last page or two of responses here because they are not only off topic, but are on an entirely different conflict and time period altogether.

If the loss of human life is tragic, then it doesn't matter what side you are on or whom is responsible for starting a conflict, nor does it matter if its a solider doing his duty and following his orders. Many hate the US for its war on Iraq and Afghanistan, but I don't see anyone blaming the soliders or saying 'they got their due' - they were simply following orders issued to them from higher up.

 

We've definitely drifted way off topic. But the reason for it was a very debateable side comment. Much like the following.

If one considers the loss of human life for any reason to be tragic then you may be correct. Most however put some qualifiers on it. They may view the loss of life of innocents or the loss of life of someone in the service of a good cause to be tragic but few would view say Hitler's death as such

Then you aren't really keeping up with things. That's pretty much the rational used by most of the terrorist groups. Not sure if I'd agree with your definition of "many" either.

To get back to WWII at least the post war trials came to a rather different conclusion in regards to "just following orders". Indeed it depends a great deal on what those orders were.