Wednesday, May 5, 1943. First Nuclear Strike Chosen

 

Choosing the first atomic target – May 5, 1943

From the linked in site:

May 5, 1943 is one of the most important dates, and possibly the least known, in the history of the nuclear age. It was the date when the first atomic bomb targeting decision was made — a full two years before the end of World War II in Europe.

Also from that site:

Like many I have concluded that the bombings were unjustified, though that is an opinion far from universally held. But some of my reasons may surprise you. I explained them in a talk I gave in Santa Fe in 2012, entitled From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima.

I'll be frank, I also view the bombings as morally unjustified acts.  Indeed, of the worst sort.  There's simply no escaping that the scale of a nuclear weapon, when used on a city, is going to have the primary effect of killing civilians.  Indeed, no matter how dressed up, by the wars end, that was looked at unflinchingly and was largely the point.

Of course, by that war the Allies had acclimated themselves to firebombing in Japan with the intent to destroy civilian housing, and thereby deprive Japanese war workers of their dwellings.  Once again, the use of force was over matched to the goal.  Striking factories is one thing, burning people to death in their homes quite another.

Make no mistake about it, Germans, under the monstrous Nazi regime, had become monstrous themselves, and in a way that no individual German can really excuse. The Japanese, who retained a peasant culture to a very large degree going into the war, likewise did, with the average soldier routinely committing murders and the entire military being acclimated to atrocity.  The Allies undoubtedly had the moral side of the war, and there's no two ways about it.  Nonetheless, that doesn't excuse the crimes committed by the Allies themselves, which in the case of the Western Allies came principally from unprincipled bombing.  Over European skies, the British were much more guilty of this than the Americans, having turned to inaccurate night bombing early in the war out of necessity, but then having readily adopted the liberal bombing views of "Bomber" Harris thereafter.  In the Pacific, the United States, the major Western combatant, went to free bombing of civilian targets with firebombs by the end of the war, as noted.  In some ways, the atomic bomb could almost be viewed as an extension of the late war firebombing, but in a new, much more devastating, and horrifying, way.

Sarah Sundin noted a true World War Two technological landmark, the first flight of the P51B.

Today in World War II History—May 5, 1943: 80 Years Ago—May 5, 1943: First flight of production-model North American P-51B Mustang (with a Packard-built Merlin engine), at Inglewood, CA.

The combination of the British engine with the P51 airframe, in what had been an Anglo-American project to start with, would revolutionize and completely alter the performance of the fighter.  It would be the P51B that would really start long range bomber escorts all the way into Germany.

Sundin noticed several other events of this day on her blog, including that Admiral Sir Charles Little was naval as the Allied naval commander for the invasion of France from Britain, although he would not hold the post long.

She also noted that the Japanese launched an offensive south of the Yangtze toward Chongqing. The often forgotten front, to the West, in China, remained Japan's largest ground commitment and in many ways most important theater of operations in the war. 

Twenty-seven ships of all types were lost in the war on this day.

A new law went into effect in California requiring marriage licenses to identify race.  Interracial marriage was illegal in California, as it was in much of the United States.