Interesting Telex found about A-Bomb

[chesmart]

While Browsing Warships1 I found this page with a very interesting Telex the Japanese forces sent after the first A-Bomb attack.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4 ... 7618808300

[USSAmerica]

Wow, very cool to read.  

[Lrfss]

Cool read indeed! About time it surfaced in the public after all these years.

[Durbik]

thanks for the link, fascinating stuff!

[Cap Mandrake]

Oh...yeah...this should work

I suppose it is no worse than "duck and cover"

[Chickenboy]

I'm so jaded about reading 'telegrams' from WWII (a or b-model, thank you), that I cannot believe the verity of your tale, OP. Cap Mandrake-would you have any possible thoughts as to why some readers may doubt the legitimacy of 'telegrams' posted on this forum? [:D]

[Nemo121]

Well, firstly, it wasn't a Japanese telex. It was a US telex summarising communications intercepts from Japanese sources.

Also, I find it a bit difficult to believe that the Japanese would have estimated the altitude at which the Atom Bomb exploded. Surely anyone close enough to it and looking at it in order to see the height of explosion would have been either:
a) killed or
b) blinded and horribly irradiated

and not in a fit state to give an estimate as to the height of explosion. Maybe I'm wrong though, anyone have any proper info on this?

[chesmart]

Nemo from what i found on the web these cables have been verified to be authentic and checked versus US navy records.

[Klahn]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Well, firstly, it wasn't a Japanese telex. It was a US telex summarising communications intercepts from Japanese sources.

Also, I find it a bit difficult to believe that the Japanese would have estimated the altitude at which the Atom Bomb exploded. Surely anyone close enough to it and looking at it in order to see the height of explosion would have been either:
a) killed or
b) blinded and horribly irradiated

and not in a fit state to give an estimate as to the height of explosion. Maybe I'm wrong though, anyone have any proper info on this?

There were some survivors as close as 300 meters from ground zero, but to my knowledge they were all inside buildings. Also, the telex mentioned the white object was dropped along with other bombs. Were other bombs dropped with along with Fat Man? I thought it was the only weapon used on that raid.

[Nemo121]

Ryvan,

Aye, I agree there were people close enough to it going off to report but I seriously doubt any of them had eyes on the bomb to report the height of detonation.


With that said it is entirely possible some Japanese AAA gunner in the surrounding hills gave an estimate of height etc...

As to the other bombs... Well, I'd just chalk that down to FOW. As far as I know no other bombs were dropped at the same time but in a war where Neosho got mistaken for a CV eyewitness accounts are suitably suspect.


So, it looks like it is a real US Navy telegram account of intercepted Japanese signals. Interesting.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
I'm so jaded

All respect to you and Cap Mandrake, but you guys are thinking in contemporary terms, and trying to apply them to the world of 1945. The ‘bomb’ was just discovered to work. The vast majority of people thought of it as a weapon that had the prompt effect of 2 kilotons of TNT. So traditional defenses against that degree of ‘heat’ and ‘overpressure’ are realistic.

Nobody knew what the ‘other’ implications of the weapon would be. Conventional thinking was that it was going to be a “monster” bang, so perhaps the traditional ‘duck and cover’ response wasn’t quite all that glib.