Warbird Information Exchange

Has anyone else read "Danger's Hour", by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy?

While the book reads as if it went into print without the benefit of neither historical nor style editing, it tells a fascinating story behind the famous photograph of the smoke and destruction taken from flight deck level of the Bunker Hill after the kamikaze strike on May 11, 1945.

If you can get past the historical and technical inaccuracies, you'll be left with interesting insights into CV life, as well as a heart rending account of the crew as it dealt with the unimaginable conditions caused by the attack.

Read it a few months ago, hard to believe 1 plane could cause that much damage.

I met the author Max Kennedy at a book signing here in Philly last year. He did an amazing amount of research and was able to answer questions about the ship and planes in great detail. I think that some of the technical and historical errors may have been the result of the editors.

He was primarily interested in the heroism of the black gang who kept the ship functioning while slowly losing their lives.

It was apparent that the hindsight factor was in place when he started to question the use of the atomic bomb to end the war.

He felt that since all the leaders, MacArthur , Halsey, Nimitz, et al, were aginst it's use, that maybe it shouldn't have been dropped since in effect, the war was over for the Japanese.

Inspite of what to a man the vets he interviewed said, he felt the bomb was unecessary. I guess the 1Million who would have been casulties in Operation Olympic/ Coronet!

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One of my uncles was on cv-17 at the time of the attack. He said very little about his experiences so the book was very informative to me. BTY is it true what the author says about the Franklyn on page 402? That they just closed off the lower decks and left the bodies til they got back to Pearl Harbor?

Its easy to see why the Admirals and Generals were against the use of the A BOMB.

They wouldn't be needed any more. Maxwell seems to think that it was because they were feely touchy, not career promoters.

In chasing down online reviews of the book, I came across one-I'm thinking at Amazon-in which someone connected with the Franklin vehemently denied closing off the lower decks. The reviewer states that the living searched everywhere for the dead and then buried them at sea.

I thought that didn't sound right. Pearl Harbor was about a 1-2 week journey and the crew would have had to go below decks. Thanks for the reply

Another book in a similar vein is "Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in World War II" by Joseph A. Springer. Really, a very good account of the Franklin from all aspects of shipboard life, and various positions within the ship during the attack.

When the ship was being scrapped in the late 60s (the first Essex class carrier to get scrapped), they found additional human remains from the March 1945 attack.

Interestingly the only two Essex-class carriers from CV-9 through CV-20 to not receive the SCB-27 and SCB-125 modification were Franklin and Bunker Hill, even though both had their war wounds repaired.

Bunker Hill survived into the mid-1970s as a testing hulk. It may have been the last Essex class carrier still in its World War II configuration in existence. It's a pity no one had the forethought to try to preserve it. Then again, the Cabot slipped through everyone's hands only 10 year ago.

I guess it's just me, and I'll preface this by saying that I'm not trying to be prideful or say that I know more than the generals at the time. That said, I've often wondered if either the US or Japan would've come to some sort of terms waaay before the projected 1 million casualties. I'm kind of sick of hearing how it's OK to murder civilians (that's how I see it) so my father or grandfather who was a soldier didn't have to fight. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad your father / grandfather, and my relatives are still alive, but I am still of the opinion that there are rules and boundaries that apply even to warfare, and that the killing of large civilian populations in their homes - whether by A-bomb or napalm - is wrong.

Ryan

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Aerial Photographer with Red Wing Aerial Photography currently based at KRBD and tailwheel CFI.
Websites: Texas Tailwheel Flight Training, DoolittleRaid.com and Lbirds.com.

The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD. - Prov. 21:31 - Train, Practice, Trust.

Amen.

Not to start a fight but the Japanese didn't care about murdering civilians until it was them. They slaughtered millions of Chinese, and didn't mind doing so. They started a war, we finished it. I don't feel bad for it, and I don't think that anyone from the allies should ever appologize for the dropping of the bomb. I am so tired of people looking too deep into it. If you are at war and have a weapon that will end it, then use it. The Japanese would not have given up. It took them 2 A bombs to finally say they had enough. Go ask the Chinese about the rules and boundaries that the Japanese showed them in WWII. I am sure that you will get a very interesting reply. The WWII axis were evil in it's purest form. Dropping the bomb was right.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

I'm married to a Japanese & I've lived here for 16 years & I agree with Mustangdriver. My Japanese friends that are my age just don't get it. It's not really a matter of them not knowing their own history, revised or other wise, it's just that they don't understand the drive, determination & single-mindedness of their Grandfather's generation.

To my friends way of thinking, the war was lost & there wasn't anything that Japan could do about it. To them, with their current values, it only makes sense that in a very very short time without the Bombs being dropped Japan would have surrendered. Therefore, the Bombs were unnecessary. The problem is is that their Grandfathers didn't have the current generations values to contend with. Every man, women & child would have fought tooth & nail to defend Japan no matter what the cost was to them or their family.

I feel that the number of people that were saved by dropping the Bombs, American & Japanese, Civilian & Military, so far outweighs the number that were lost to the Bombs that it would have been a mistake not to drop them.

Mac

I didn't intend to stir up a political or moral discussion. I was just commenting on the times and how we feel about it now.

I can appreciate both points of view and found it intersting that if it was a vote , that it would have been 11,000,000 for unemployment versus the 12 or so for employment!

Pics here on topic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18532986@N07/3602155564/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18532986@N07/3534163345/

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

And that, right there, is exactly why it is so hard for the current generation to understand why the bombs were dropped. Every generation since WWII has lived with the specter of nuclear annihilation as a threat- we know unquestionably how horrifically effective an atomic bomb is, thus we cannot possibly fathom any reason for it's use. It's ingrained into the value system of every first-world individual, and many third-world inhabitants as well.

But what gets lost in the debate is this sense of perspective. We were in an all-out life or death struggle with an enemy for whom the idea of surrender went against every single fiber of their being, and they demonstrated this fanatic will to resist at every turn. If we were to finally force Japan to surrender, it was necessary to demonstrate that we had the ability to take every single Japanese life if necessary in order to do so. Let's not forget the firestorm which swept Tokyo on 9 March 1945... death toll estimates from that one raid are somewhere around 100,000, far exceeding either Hiroshima or Nagasaki in terms of sheer numbers, and STILL the Japanese fought tooth and nail. Clearly, after three years of uninterrupted defeats across the Pacific and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties through "normal" strategic bombing, that message of "Surrender Or Be Annihilated" was not getting through.

It was not a decision made lightly, and I'd dare say it's not a decision or an action to be celebrated in the slightest... but strategically, it proved to be a correct decision. And ultimately, the shadow cast by those nuclear explosions proved once and for all that Man finally possessed the capability to wipe himself off the face of the planet- which has caused every succeeding generation to recoil from using those weapons at all costs.

It was a high price to pay, but I think in the long run, it was worth it.

Respectfully,

Lynn