Did historical bombs typically make big explosions? Reading some numbers from the war, it seemed like the strategy was more to dump enormous volume of ordinance and hope to get lucky hitting something vital.
That strategy was not because the bombs weren't very destructive, but because they just could not be placed accurately. So they had to drop a lot of bombs and hope a few of them hit the strategically important targets.
Yep. The US did drop around 160,800 tons of conventional bombs on Japan during WWII, thought that's still relatively tame compared to the 623,000 tons they drop on Germany. Though the two nukes more than made up for it, I guess.
Bomb findings during construction is nothing especially rare in these countries.
The conventional bombing of Japan was scheduled for massive increase. To quote Ian Toll's "Twilight of the Gods":
> If the war had lasted any longer than it did, the scale and ferocity of the conventional bombing campaign would have risen to inconceivable new heights. [...] At the height of the bombing campaign, between May and August 1945, a monthly average of 34,402 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped on Japan. According to USAAF chief Hap Arnold, the monthly total would have reached 100,000 tons in September 1945, and then risen steadily month by month. By early 1946, if the Japanese were still fighting, eighty USAAF combat groups would be operating against Japan, a total of about 4,000 bombers. In January 1946, they would drop 170,000 tons of bombs on Japan, surpassing in one month the cumulative tonnage actually dropped on the country during the entire Pacific War. By March 1946, the anticipated date of the CORONET landings on the Tokyo plain, the monthly bombing figure would surpass 200,000 tons.
> The conventional bombing of Japan was scheduled for massive increase.
Allegedly.
It's possible it's true, but claims like this have the incentive of selling the "atom bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary and justified" narrative behind them, so that should be taken into account as a factor.
It doesn't even have to be consciously disingenous - the more one can convince oneself (and thus eventually others) of how destructive and costly conventional warfare would have been, the more digestible the nuclear option becomes, so there's a lot of motivation to fuel some motivated reasoning.
Professionals talk logistics indeed. To imagine what kind is pipeline would be required to enable such a venture. Producing, assembling, and shipping millions of tons of explosives as a continual operation.
'Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II.' - https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2eae918ca40a4bd7a55390b...
>Though the two nukes more than made up for it, I guess.
Not if you go by the kiloton rating of those two bombs: they were each in the kiloton range (around 10-15 kT IIRC), so if you add a generous 30,000 tons to the 160,800 you mentioned before, that's 190,800 tons, still far short of the 623,000 tons dropped on Germany.
In some parts of France, you can’t dig without getting a specialized surveyor inspection and certificate it’s safe to dig this deep in that place first.
Absolutely. In my country it is mandatory to submit an UXO report as part of getting the building permit for nontrivial stuff. Most of the time this is boring office work (Was there a strategic target nearby during WWII? Are there any records of bombing happening here? Have there been earthworks in the last 70 years significant enough to rule out anything still remaining?) and you get a report noting that there's no risk expected, but sometimes you have to call in the cavalry and go searching with ground-penetrating radar.
It's just part of doing business, really. Same story with archaeological remains, chemical contamination, or threatened animal species.
