What If           
No Atom Bomb?   

   Thanks to Hitler's aggression in 1939, the U.S. had an answer for Japan in August 1945. Who knew? 

   The U.S. Army Air Forces began development of a long-range bomber, a $3 billion gamble - America didn't want war. Pearl Harbor changed everything.

   President Roosevelt intended to avoid harming civilians, but Hitler made it hard to fight nice. He didn't surrender, but shot himself when Russians closed in. Then he discovered that Darwin was wrong.

   Japan's top dogs - now defeated in 1945 - planned a massive resistance, which would have cost enormous numbers of Allied invaders plus Japanese soldiers and civilians alike. 

   It was March 1944 when the B-29 Superfortress - the biggest and deadliest aircraft ever - was ready. Its wingspan almost the width of a football field; its tail fin as tall as a three story building. 

   A B-29 could fly more than 5,000 miles at 350 mph with tons of bombs. It had a General Electric system for remote firing of machine guns, an analog computer, radar, and 150 electric motors, seven generators and 11 miles of wiring. Nearly 4,000 were built. 

   Germany, its original purpose, was being leveled by B-17s and B-24s. The B-29 in fact was the only plane capable of covering distances between Guam, Tinian and Saipan and the various Japanese islands. 

   Some 334 B-29s bombed central Tokyo with napalm in March 1945, setting a firestorm on the wooden city. No surrender.

   They went on to more than 60 of the largest cities. Still no surrender.

   If President Truman hesitated using two atomic bombs in August, conventional bombs had been falling on civilians en masse. Does it matter to the victims? Gen. Curtis LeMay guessed that had he lost the war, he "would have been tried as a war criminal." 

   Finally, Japan quit, but it was not unanimous.  

         Jimmy