Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 yellowdingo Sep 01, 2009 23:27:40	The bomber turned until it was lined up with the beach. "Altitude correct. Target coming up." Captain Macomb turned the key in the lock and sealed the bomb casing. Free of the device, Jack Macomb moved back into the Lead shielded Flight deck. Macomb strapped into his seat and turned to his second. "Deploy Arrowhead." The bomber pulled upward with the sudden loss of bomb weight. "All electrics off!" The bomber powered down to glide. The light came through first, then the shockwave hit the aircraft. Captain Hollister watched the mushroom cloud rise from the now cleared Beach where his landing craft would deploy. "Seal up!" He pulled his radiation suit up over his shoulders and his Mask down over his head as the Landing craft picked up speed.    Thoughts on The Use of Nuclear weapons on the Beaches of Normandy?
#2 owls_and_more_owls Sep 01, 2009 23:44:06	Bad Idea?
#3 toastedamphibian Sep 01, 2009 23:50:11	Terrible idea.
#4 cherubaddon Sep 02, 2009 4:29:29	Militarily speaking, wonderful idea, methinks. Few civilian targets, little collateral damage. But if you'd ever been to Normandy, you wouldn't ask that question - I hate to think what the gorgeous place would look like a nuclear wasteland. Besides, I don't think the bomb was ready by this point. Now, a Neutron Bomb we could talk about...
#5 pluisjen Sep 02, 2009 5:10:33	Yeah, great idea. Then, you land all your troops in the middle of this blast zone with a radioactive level that'll kill them in days, assuming their ships aren't all blown to bits or sunk in the resulting tsunami from detonating that thing so close to a sea. It'd guaruantuee a death-toll of 100% on the Allied side, nobody would live through that radioactive decay for long. You only use an Atomic bomb if you do not want to make use of a roughly 100km (at least) radius around the area for the upcoming 100 years. Not to clear an area for a troop landing.
#6 zombie_babies Sep 02, 2009 9:27:24	It would be terribly counterproductive.  I mean, the point of an invasion is to, well, invade.  Since you'd never be able to land where you used it, you'd effectively aid the enemy by eliminating one point of attack.  Any remaining troops near the area could be re-deployed to bolster the remaining places a landing could be attempted.  Not smart.  Considering the scenario as given, you'd also kill most of - if not all of - your landing party and utterly cripple your navy.  It's not like it's a couple of ships a few hundred miles off, it's a huge amount of ships close enough to be destroyed by a blast of that magnitude.  The idea that a WWII era soldier had the correct gear to 'seal up' is also incredibly way off base.  We didn't even know you'd need to 'seal up' at that point in time.  In short, it would be a military error so grave that it would likely doom any chance of victory for the invaders. If Hitler had the weapon, though, I'm pretty damned sure he'd have used it.  For him, it wouldn't be nearly as bad.  Sure he'd sacrifice some men and material, but he'd also eliminate the vast majority of the landing force set against him.  The set back would likely be more than enough to provide him time to recover from whatever losses he gave himself and - more importantly - shift more aid to the Eastern front.  That stated, he'd probably have used it on Russia before Normandy anyway.  Even if he didn't have any more, the use of an atomic weapon would force the Allies to radically alter their invasion strategy.  So for Hitler, it would have been a huge mistake not to use it.  Thankfully his goofball idea of scientific competition over cooperation (not to mention the deportation, imprisonment and mass exodus of some of the brightest minds in Germany at the time) slowed its development in Germany enough to prevent that from happening.
#7 RUMPLESTIX Sep 02, 2009 14:22:16	You would want to drop it a few miles inland to destroy any chance of reinforcements. With some luck you could get a surrender on the beaches from the close Germans. Then, when you pushed inland you could force the enemy into the dead zone while you skirted around it. Weather would be a prime factor because you would not want the cloud rolling over Britain. also, the timing of advance would be important as the wind pattern on the coast would shift (out to in or in to out from morning to evening?)
#8 1_ton_ghost Sep 02, 2009 14:22:25	Thoughts on The Use of Nuclear weapons on the Beaches of Normandy? How about no for innumerable reasons.  The French would never have ok'ed it; consider the "liberators" making their way in country.  A good many of those "Thank you's, have some wine & cheese" would be sour expressions (to say the least) for years to come.  Same thing after Market Garden (Dutch campaign)...they were pretty mad we bombed them to get the Germans out and bla bla bla.  Didn't even work really as it was considered a failure and turned towards France as our main point of insertion which is where we should've started anyway, not Italy or the Baltic regions. IDK what they were thinking...   And I'm thinking the English might have a thing or 2 to say about things like fallout, air currents, catastrophic tides, and sea lanes turning to Hell 1, 2, 3.  The Russians?  We were already getting pretty nervous about them.  Showcasing a super weapon might've just whetted their appetite sooner than later.  We likely would've kept it discrete for purely espionage reasons alone.  And the Germans did have designs.  They were dangerously close to a working model given the underground depot near Munich quarried out w/ slave labor.  Biggest of it's day.  Almost complete too, save for 1 main structural flaw/difference.  They would've surely used it, probably on London or Moscow I'm guessing.  Even sent a sub w/ designs in the hopes of the Japanese would be able to carry on after V-E Day.   D-Day was supposed to happen much earlier to begin with, but the weather and amphibious landings don't see eye to eye, even w/ such a narrow gap to cross.  It was kinda' last minute really.  This is not to say the Germans didn't have designs of their own; Seawolf, the ground war invasion of England.  Had Hitler wisely listened to his advisors and not opened up a 2nd front w/ the Soviets (so soon), the Blitz in England coupled w/ an amphibious landing...omg, would've been over.  They hammered the English early, but dropped the ball, before we jumped in which only would've made our involvement nearly impossible, a world away across the Atlantic.  Ending the war would've taken much longer.  Initial estimate was Xmas '44 as planned...   Nuking that beach head would've been disastrous and prolonged the war even more.  It wasn't even a choice target either.  They'd likely use it on an a big industrial city, staging point, or Axis capital.  So many reasons not to.
#9 cherubaddon Sep 03, 2009 3:05:00	I thought it was assumed the nuclear strike would replace the invasion, not complement it, as that would indeed have been terribly stupid. But using the nuke by its own, and on the right place in Normandy (the area around Calais, for instance), you could probably have destroyed a large part of the German army in one fell swoop. The psychological effects of that alone might well have ended the war - morale by this point was pretty low, I don't think Germany would have toughed it out no matter what Hitler said. And if not, well, the Russians could still have barged in as easily as they did, the bomb not affecting the Eastern Front, and if really necessary, the Allies could have landed somewhere else, like Denmark, or in larger strength in Italy, all without fear of monstrous reserves lurking in the north. It is, however, a fact that this would have killed a lot of French civilians - but then, the strikes on H&N killed several times that number, being quite a bit more densely populated. Indeed, those might even be argued to have made less military sense, as they were strikes directed only at civilian targets. Which also has strategic merit, to be sure, so 1_t_g's suggestion to target, say, Dresden isn't actually so bad, but if you were worried about international backlash during and after the war? Merry Christmas. Still not saying it would have been the right choice, or one I'd advocate, but I do believe it would have had more merit than you grant it, being in many ways a similar decision to the one concerning Japan. And for nothing in the world would I have wanted to be Truman having to make that decision.