HistoryPorn

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Relive the Past in Jaw-Dropping Detail!

HistoryPorn is for photographs (or, if it can be found, film) of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!

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125

Remains of Osaka after a night of American terror bombing, Japan, WW2, 1945 (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/historyporn@lemmy.world

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[–] pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

What's the black thing on the left, in front of the building?

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 37 points 2 months ago

What was left of Namba Station. The black is the tracks leading into the terminal.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago

Railroad remains, I think.

[–] Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 months ago

Trainstation

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The amount of ordenance used during WW2 on cities just ploughing everything upside down is only dwarfed by the amount of ordenance dropped on Vietnam.

My grandma spent WW2 in a Japanese internment camp and whenever anyone said anything about how hard Japan was hit, she would only say "they deserved it all" and left it at that.

[–] cordlesslamp@lemmy.today 8 points 2 months ago

She's right. The things they did during WW2 in china, korea, and south east Asia are comparable to the holocaust.

[+] Warl0k3@lemmy.world -7 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, gonna need a source on this one. The streets are clear, there's no fires, seems less like "one night" and more "after an entire campaign of terror bombing". But if you really want to see what the strategic bombing campaigns were capable of, look up the aftermath of cologne. The re were only a handful of buildings that surived, I think in the double digits though I've seen people say it was everything except the cathedral (we didn't bomb that because we were using it to orient the bombing runs).

[–] Senshi@lemmy.world 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Japan had a lot more wood-only city buildings back then compared to the colder climate in Europe, where more massive stone architecture was common. In Europe, cellars are also common/default, unlike in Japan.

During high heat firestorms, most of the wooden material burns up and the ash gets carried away. The photo definitely shows cleanup and very likely was not taken the day after the bombing, but a single firestorm definitely can produce these results, much like other examples in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Würzburg,... Except those had much more stone rubble standing afterwards.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Japan had a lot more wood-only city buildings back then

Wood, and worse, paper. The US made mock-ups of civilian Japanese buildings when we were testing napalm for use in the terror firebombings of 1945. It was... very effective against the mock-ups.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 28 points 2 months ago

English: Osaka City Air Raid after the bombing which occurred on March 13, 1945. On March 13, 1945, for about three and a half hours, indiscriminate bombing of residential areas in Osaka Prefecture was carried out by the US military. A total of 1,733 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped from 274 B-29s, burning down the city center, resulting in 3,987 dead and 678 missing. You can see Nankai Namba Station on the far left, Matsuzakaya Osaka store (now Takashimaya Higashi Annex) in front on the right, and Osaka Kabukiza in the center.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Osaka_after_the_1945_air_raid.JPG

[–] Successful_Try543 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Basically any larger German city was turned into rubbles. The website trolley-mission.de (! The different language versions don't show identical content !), named after the documentary mission of the USAF, shows interesting photographies of the aftermath, here some pictures of Cologne.

[–] WordBox@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

They fire bombed at night. Picture in the day. Lots of wood structures burned fast. Couldn't bomb during the day because AA forced the planes too high for accurate drops.