07-11-2022, 10:05 AM
(07-10-2022, 10:05 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: Something just occurred to me:
The planes that dropped the atomic bombs flew alone, correct?
Didn't Japan have any planes that flew over the Pacific to provide defense in case of any attack?
They had radar, even if it wasn't great, so wouldn't they have at least scrambled planes to attack our planes carrying the bombs or at least attempted to shoot them down?
All seems too easy that a country at war would have no defense for an aerial attack.........
Japan was essentially a destroyed country by the time the nukes were dropped. A total of 66 Japanese cities were bombed and destroyed (key word) during WWII. They just didn't have the resources to be combat the B-29 raids. On top of that, like you mentioned, their radar was quite poor and short range. They could usually provide an hour notice that bombers were incoming - that simply isn't enough time to scramble fighters. On the rare occasions that they did get fighters up, they rarely intercepted the bombers. The bombers flew very high, and at that altitude, could actually fly faster than the Japanese fighter planes.
Again, on the rare occasions that they did intercept the bombers, the B-29 was an absolute tank and could sustain a lot of damage and keep flying. Many pilots felt like their attempts simply weren't doing anything. They had little chance to even intercept the bombers, and when they did, they had a very hard time taking them down. So, in short, they didn't have the planes to effectively defend themselves, nor did they have the pilots. Also, like George said, a single bomber wasn't viewed as a threat. They had no idea what those planes had on them.
