Was it a war crime when US nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

Not to sidetrack the thread but I've often thought about the statistic that 90% of the horses of the Southern regiments at Gettysburg died at the battlefield.

Now the Union soldiers never shot at the horses, only at the riders, so even allowing for lack of precision shooting in those days I (personally) think that was an even greater war crime than murdering Japanese civilians; citizens should bear some responsibility for the actions of their governments, animals have no such duty. Anyone who doesn't love horses needn't comment on this post - thanks in advance <G>

My posts are not so much justifications, as they are challenges to claims that put the bombings in a worse light than the facts warrant.

That said, I have little in the way of moral qualms about the bombings, as the Japanese got away with far worse crimes.

oralloy, I'm not sure about "got away with far worse crimes." Our standards of war must be based on a higher plain than our enemies. I also don't have any moral qualms about the bombings of Japan, but for different reasons.

Don't know enough about the equine stats at Gettyburg to comment on this directly, Helen. But in the middle ages it was standard operating strategy to kill or maim the opponent's horse before going after the rider. First of all, a horse was more lightly armored than the man, taking it easier to take the beast out. Where an English archer's shaft might have a hard time penetrating plate armor (chain mail was les of a deterrent), the horse's relatively les cumbersome padding presented hardly any problem. In the heat of pitched battle, it was common practice to try to blind, maim, hamstring or otherwise incapacitate a horse so that its rider would end up on foot and be easier to disable. Now, I don't know if the Union soldiers killed Confederate mounts deliberately or not, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they did. If you're trying to stop a cavalry charge, it makes far more sense to kill the horse than to aim for the rider. Killing the rider won't necessarily stop the charge; piling up a wall of dead horseflesh could do so. And there would have been no one to object to such tactics in the 19th Century, certainly not to consider it a war crime. We didn't get sentimental about our animals when they were, literally, "work-horses." We developed a soft spot for horseflesh only after the beast was no longer valuable as a, well, beast, after it had been replaced by armor that moved on track-laying vehicles.

Merry Andrew - all you say has been true from before the Macedonian phalanx all the way to Crecy. Note however I was addressing specifically the question of the orders to the Union soldiers in that post, and the orders were not to shoot the horses - most of which were pulling artillery guns.

I'm certain of that as I checked all relevant documents including letters of soldiers in that battle.

You're saying the Union soldiers disobeyed orders?

P.S. if anyone was responsible for the cavalry (not artillery) horses dying in Gettysburg it was Pickett, who charged uphill.

Well, Pickett's three brigades--Kemper, Armistead and Garnett commanding--went in on foot and that included the three brigade commanders, all of whom were killed or mortally wounded. They were supported by a division formed from the remnants of Harry Heth's and Dorsey Pender's divisions, of Hill's second corps, who had fought on the first day. Heth had been incapacitated by wounds, and that division was in the command of the senior brigade commander, James Johnston Pettigrew (the civil service employees building at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is named for him). Those elements of Richard Stoddart Ewell's Second Corps which were still in good shape after the first day were lead forward by Isaac Trimble, who had been wounded at Cross Keys at the end of Jackson's famous Valley of Virginia campaign in 1862, and who had joined Lee without a command. All of these units went in on foot.

After Jackson's death, Lee had reorganized the Army of Northern Virginia into three corps, each of thirteen brigades, formed into three divisions each, two of four brigades, and one division in each corps formed of five brigades. This made the divisions of his army as large as or larger than the corps of Meade's Army of the Potomac. The division of Anderson, five brigades, had seen little action with the rest of Alvin Powell Hill's Third Corps on the first day, and it was held in reserve. Robert Rhodes' and Jubal Early's divisions of the Second Corps had seen heavy fighting in the town of Gettysburg and on the northern slopes of Cemetary Hill on the first day--that is why elements of Ewell's Corps were brigaded together to form a division under Trimble. Edward "Allegheny" Johnson had brought Ewell's third division in near sunset, and had attempted to take a position on Culp's Hill on the evening of the first day, but a continuous fire-fight through the night, and the appearance of Federal troops massing at Spangler's Spring and on both flanks forced his withdrawl.

The First Corps divisions of John Bell Hood and LaFayette McLaws had born the brunt of the second day's action--so that by dawn of the third day, only Pickett's division, with three out of five brigades present, and Anderson's division had seen no action. The cavalry played little part in the battle.

During this war, as in so many wars in the age of cavalry, many horses simply wasted away and died, not of wounds, but of too much heavy labor on short fodder. Amassing magazines of fodder severely limited the range of campaigning in Europe, and in American wars, the operative method was to acquire fodder as the army marched. Frederick II of Prussia estimated that in the Seven Years War, more than 100,000 horses died on campaign, of all causes.

The Russian army from the time of Petr Alexeevitch onward drafted serfs for life. Being serfs, they had experience of livestock, and adopted a very pragmatic way of dealing with the charge of Tatar cavalry. Knowing that a horse will not willingly step on a prone man, they would open ranks as the enemy began his charge, and then at the last moment, throw themselves flat on the ground on top of their muskets. When the cavalry had passed over them, they would jump up, turn and fire a volley into the backs of their tormentors. The technique had a profound effect on Turkish and Tatar horse, who usually only attempted one such charge at the beginning of a campaign, and learned not to do it twice.

This is a modern image of "the high water mark"--there is a much more famous painting, of which i could not find the image, in the middle of which one can see Lewis Armistead with his hat on the tip of his sabre, which he used as a sort of "regimental colors" for his men to guide on. Here, you will see that Armistead has been grazed by musket balls on the left upper arm and the right knee. He had lost his hat by this point.

Few general officers, if any, lead from the front in our age, which is probably just as well. However, i doubt if Armistead's men would have breached the federal line and taken the batteries with what is today conventional leadership. Lewis Armistead died of wounds on the battlefield, in the arms of Alexander Webb, whose brigade, and in particular, the 69th Pennsylvania "Irish" regiment had stopped Armistead's men.

"That is my position on the subject also - on the off chance you wished for it!"

it is my greatest wish that you comment on my posts hoft.

Gentlemen - meaning the last 3 posters, at any rate, though there are others on the thread - I'm very grateful to you for your erudite comments and moral support. I have to speak in a church Monday (Steve, you may not know it's Memorial Day in the US) in a memorial service for a friend who was killed in Afghanistan.

This discussion on horses (my friend loved dogs and horses as much as I do, btw) started as completely off-topic but it does tie in: it seems to me that standing where we are in history the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan may have represented the high point of technological warfare and we've since retreated into a neo-medieval mode of fighting. In the Afghanistan campaign, for instance, fodder and saddles for horses had to be regularly air-dropped to units on the ground, the terrain being impassable for any other means of transportation.

If you think this train of thought is absurd, please speak up; obviously nobody will interrupt me in a church, let alone argue, but you see my problem - l don't want to say anything flat-out wrong! Finally, I had thought of ending with the verses of the medieval ballad:

"..Blessed is the man who at his end
Has such a mount
Such a hound
And such a friend."

Thank you again, Andrew, Setanta, Steve, for your comments so far, and thanks in advance to you and anyone else with ideas on the subject.

Hoft,
.....You asked was it more of a crime to kill horses, than Japanese men women and children. are Hitler, and General Custer, your heroes?

I'm a little disapointed that no one spoke on this racist, and inhumane statement.

Booman - since neither Custer nor Hitler are on record as killing any Japanese, I'm at a complete loss to account for your statement in toto, and for the "racist" epithet in particular.

Perhaps you'll clarify.

They both looked upon people of color as less than human. You see the Japanese as less than horses.

Nobody loves animals more than the people of Japan, among whom I've had the honor of living and working for many years.

You, Booman, appear entirely ignorant of Japanese law going back several centuries imposing the identical penalty for hitting a dog or other animal as for hitting a person.

Please take your half-baked criticism of "people of color" elsewhere.

I am posting here not re the immediate discussion.

I am avoiding some bookkeeping and looking at the threads available to read and see this one, so close to my heart that I avoid it.

I did a search to see if I posted before on it, I've thought I did, very early on, and it would have been a post with some emotion behind the words. Apparently not, or perhaps I edited myself as exposing too much of me.

My dad was chief of photographic services at the able & baker bomb tests.

He believed he was doing right in all that, I know that much, but not so much if he had later qualms.

It is one of my life gaps that we couldn't talk as adults about his views.

I have some clues, as he was the first person I knew of who wasn't enthused, very early, about our business in Vietnam.

My own views have moved from acceptance re bombing to dismay.
I have sloped down to abhor all bombing no matter how pinpointed.

I am not entirely anti war, though almost, but I am entirely antibombing.

Re the timing of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seems a push to me. But, but, but, the whole thing of blasting people and places? How very crude. Aside from immolation of humans caught in it, an almost unabsorbable matter to the mind, it ain't good for milleniums of stored history, or plain old ecology.

Hearts and minds, way to go, but not with contrived subterfuge. Hearts and minds with real arguments and discussion, with various sides increasing understanding.
Probably too late, of course.

No, I'm not an appeaser. But I'm not a bomber.

I've never seen war from an airplane, hope I never do. One must have his feet on the ground to experience the horror-show of war. I don't play video games either.

My dad was in the plane that shot the photo into the center of the abomb for the first time.

What am I saying. The horror is probably not circumscribed to the ground. I'd prefer no one be at either end of it.

It's almost sixty years and I remain horrified.

Hoft;
....I wasn't speaking of Japanese Law...I wasn't stating a notion on "people of color. I was addressing a statement that YOU made. Did YOU, are did YOU not, state that, YOU thought perhaps the killing of horses, was worse than killing JAPANESE civilians? If I misread you, please tell me how, most intelligent sir?