The Nuking of Japan

[The Grand Nudger]

Superiority achieved by brutal and surprisingly effective dive bombing from the Douglas SBD ‘Dauntless’, largely. A fun fact, air superiority was not conferred to the allies in the Pacific through technology or training. The A6M was hands down the best fighter (and it was the worlds first long range escort, no less- very important in the pacific) flown by the best pilots until the introduction of the F4U Corsair and P-38 Lightning (the top two American aces in the Pacific flew the P-38 btw). The P-40 and the Hellcat were incapable of dogfighting with the Zero (technically..pilot skill notwithstanding) but there was a long list of concessions that were made in it's design to achieve it's legendary speed, climb, range and agility. Namely, low wing loading(limited the amount of ords it could carry), poor pilot protection, lack of self sealing fuel tanks, and extremely light construction. What ended up happening with this fighter was that the allies produced aircraft that were the polar opposite of it's flight envelope. High altitude, heavily armored, heavily armed -dive bombers. Some variants of the Corsairs, for example, had 8 50cals plus a couple thousand lbs of ords. Had the war drug on at a stalemate (or with Japan slowly inching us out) they would have eventually been incapable of defeating our aircraft in any case. It was always going to end by bombing, one way or another. I'd wager that sustained carpet bombing would have cost more lives, personally. There was really nothing that the Japanese could have done in retaliation by the end of the war. They had the KI-84 which might have put up a fight but we had so many P-38's by that time it would have been a swift war of attrition.

(I'm surprised - or maybe I just missed it- that no one has compared the detonations over Japan to the fire-bombing of Dresden yet)