(June 20, 2018 at 1:29 am)Minimalist Wrote: There was no need to launch it at all. That's the point. Japan was finished.
By that point we were far more concerned about Stalin's promise - which we now regarded as a threat - made at Yalta to enter the Pacific War 90 days after Germany surrendered. Stalin was punctual about doing so attacking the Japanese in Manchuria on August 8, 1945 exactly 90 days after VE day. Not so coincidentally that was the same day as Nagasaki and a mere two days after Hiroshima.
And he was always going to attack Japan, he wanted the losses from the Russo-Japanese war back. Marshal Voroshilov told The Great Stalin that he could put an amphibious attack ashore on Hokkaido on August 25th. Stalin canceled this on August 24th.
BTW, Gen. Marshal was to be given tactical control of ten atomic bombs for the invasions, four for Kyushu and six for the Kanto Plain/Tokyo area invasion. That would have been a round dozen atomic bombs used on Japan if they had continued to be hard headed.
