>>28357435
If it was over water, it would be irrelevant since nobody would know where it is.

If it was over land, it's still irrelevant as it would be found and recaptured in the inevitable invasion. That's assuming the nips didn't poke it enough to set it off.

>>28357435

well they had absolute air superiority at that point pretty much, very little thread from fighters. the gun type bomb they were confident would go off without testing, but the implosion bomb was tested first.

not sure what sort of plans were in effect if it was lost over the mainland. probably nothing they really could do except saturation bomb the best guess as to where it fell immediately. i know they but the primers for the bomb together in flight to the target because they were afraid if the b-29 crashed on the runway they might accidentally the air base.

>>28357435
sick question.

The Japanese nuclear program was so primitive that if they got their hands on an atom bomb, they probably wouldn't realize what it was.

Keep in mind that the US dropped the bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th. The next bomb was scheduled to be available August 19th, and three more were supposed to be made in September.

B-29s were also hard as fuck for the Japanese to intercept with the limited resources they had left. Given that the Japanese didn't know about dem nukes, they probably wouldn't even bother to scramble fighters for one aircraft.

>>28358447
It was three aircraft, but your point stands.

There you go..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

Conclusion. There was no plan..

>>28358447
They captured a Mustang pilot after the second bomb fell, as I recall, and the guy told them we had hundreds of the things despite not knowing what they were before the interrogation.

>>28357435
Good question, considering that the ship that delivered the first? bomb to Tinian was torpedoed and sank on her return trip. Plan B was probably to burn the entirety of Honshu to the ground.

>>28358527


Fucking hell. Imagine being the guy who pulled that mindfuck....

> "You wirr terr us what this new bomb is, American dog!"
> "What bomb?"
> " The bomb that brew up two of our cities, you baka gaijin!"
> "Wha.... oh, THAT bomb! Oh, yeah. We've got hundreds of those."
> "Rearry?"
> "Oh, hell yes. I hate those damned things. Goddamned bombs everywhere. Fucking tripping over them on the way to the latrine every night. Pain in the ass."
> "Wait... REARRY!?!?!?"
> "Goddamned, yes. You know, they had a problem getting food shipped to us on Guam once and they actually tried getting us to eat those fucking bombs instead? 'Well, we have no food but we have all these fucking bombs...' they said. Absolute nightmare, let me tell you."
> *panicked conversation in Japanese*

>>28358447

They'd know roughly that it involved atomic power. Other than that, probably not.

>>28359596
kek'd

>>28359596
kek

>>28358527
There was a grand total of six days between Japan surrendering and the dropping of Fat Man. Usually what would happen is the P51 escorts would get to strafe ground targets after escorting the bombers, and that's when they were prone to getting shot down. I don't think there were any bombing raids between the second nuke and the surrender, so I have a hard time believing a P-51 was shot down and the pilot captured (instead of being killed on sight).

It sounds like a great story if it's true. Could you provide a link documenting the event? Or even tell me where you heard it? If it's true, I want to find out where and when it happened.

>>28359596
>"If you give me all the nip pussy I want, I'll tell them to call the bombs off"

>>28357435
>Or did they have other bombs on standby to complete the mission

Probably not, since two groups were trained and one was originally planned to drop over Germany.

If the Nuke runs had be not chosen, the next phase of bombing would have focused on the remaining railroads and supporting infrastructure. That would have starved Japan rapidly since they lack a large truck fleet to supply anything and what fuel remained was for the defense from the Allied invasion.

>>28361546

They were also planning to start dropping Napalm.

>>28358462

And they had flown the same mission profile for weeks before hand to acclimatize the japs to seeing three planes flying at altitude with nothing bad happening.

>>28361604

I'm wondering how much worse that could be from the general firebombing that was occurring. Is there a huge difference?

>>28361627
From what I remember the plan was incendiary bombing for cities, napalm for troop concentrations.

The US built replicas of both Japanese and German working-class buildings which they firebombed and rebuilt repeatedly to test for effect.

>>28357435

I actually met the co-pilot of Bockscar on the Nagasaki mission in the early 90's when I was like 12-14. It was at my Grandpa's Navy reunion. He gave a brief speech and did a Q&A afterward where I asked if he was scared of getting blown up in the bomb blast(cut me some slack, I was literally 12). He told me that the plane was stripped of all it regular machine guns except for the tailguns so it was a little lighter and faster than normal. Although this doesn't directly answer your question, I think if they were willing remove most of the guns from the plane the skies above Japan must have been pretty safe.

>>28358363
>might accidently the air base
Oh man you just made my fucking night thank you.

>>28361620
The japs got accustomed to a couple or three of B29s just doing some recon so they didn't bother sending fighters to intercept them as they thought it'd be a waste of precious fuel to shoot down some "harmless" aircraft.

>>28364381
Most b17s stopped flying with waist gunners over Europe toward the end as well, I assume thats true for stripped down superfotresses as well.

>>28361604
We had already been dropping napalm at that point.