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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2582 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 21, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Came across this story on Wikipedia while reading a bit about Japan's surrender in WW2 and found it really funny

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_McDilda

Long story short - an american P-51 pilot was shot down over Osaka and captured 2 days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The Japanese started torturing him and threatening to kill him asking questions about "how many atomic bombs does the USA have" - to this pilot at this time, an Atomic Bomb would have been something out of an HG Wells novel, a theoretical science fiction possibility. Imagine a Japanese officer threatening to cut off your head unless you explained how many Warp Drives the USA had..."we have warp drives?" - but not only that, they then demanded that he explain how the atomic bomb works - to which his explanation is actually not half bad in my opinion. He also claims that the USA has 100s of atomic bombs because the guy isn't accepting 0 as an answer, and my understanding is that this intel helped partially lead to Japan's surrender.

He's so convincing that he gets flown in as a VIP to Tokyo where a civilian scientist realizes he's full of crap, but appears to not fully narc him out? I'm just imagining this story, finding out via your captors that some space age tech is real and then being forced to answer questions about it! Kind of funny to imagine

The cherry on top of this story is that his claim of the US having hundreds of bombs makes its way into the pivotal War Council conference on peace terms on August 9. The meeting had been insisted upon by the Emperor - with some grumbling - after the bombing of Hiroshima and the Soviet entry into the war. Halfway through the meeting, news is delivered that Nagasaki has also been destroyed by an atomic bomb. Defence Minister Korechika Anami brings up this claim from McDilda that the US has limitless A-bombs, and immediately discounts it as nonsense. But then he reflected that maybe it would be better if it was true: "Would it not be wondrous for the whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?"

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