> It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous sources out of context and uncritically
Sure. But to be fair-- there were tons of civilian experts involved that had no great personal stake; It's not like it was written by arms manufacturer lobbyists or generals personally involved in past decision making.
And I'm mostly missing strong fact-based counterarguments, so my personal opinion is going to remain that the atomic bombings probably expedited Japans surrender, but were not necessary (nor would a ground invasion have been).
"The experience of the Pacific war supports the findings of the
Survey in Europe that heavy, sustained and accurate attack against
carefully selected targets is required to produce decisive results
when attacking an enemy's sustaining resources . It further supports
the findings in Germany that no nation can long survive the free
exploitation of air weapons over its homeland . For the future it is
important fully to grasp the fact that enemy planes enjoying control
of the sky over one's head can be as disastrous to one's country as
its occupation by physical invasion."
It does literally end with a call to separate the Army Air Forces from the Army.
I haven't found a copy of the whole report, including the hundreds of individual reports, but I've been given to understand that they are thorough, detailed, and contradictory.
Sure. But to be fair-- there were tons of civilian experts involved that had no great personal stake; It's not like it was written by arms manufacturer lobbyists or generals personally involved in past decision making.
And I'm mostly missing strong fact-based counterarguments, so my personal opinion is going to remain that the atomic bombings probably expedited Japans surrender, but were not necessary (nor would a ground invasion have been).