Dec. 29, 2021
E5: Bombing the Turkish Economy - Part 1
This is Part 1 of a 2-part episode on the Turkish economy and its ongoing currency/debt crisis. In this part, we will discuss the merits of theory and how they do or do not apply when exposed to reality. We will explore the advice of classical economic theory given to President Erdoğan and the reasons for why he does not follow it, religious aspects notwithstanding.
Chapters
00:00 - Intro
02:45 - LeMay's Application of Theory
28:35 - Turkey's Economic Crisis
41:11 - Shortcomings of Classical Economic Theory
01:03:14 - Turkey's Economic Realities
01:22:11 - The Foreign Investment Drug
01:38:03 - The Perfect Storm
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Today, we are going to kick off part one of what is going to be a two-part episode where we'll talk about the current economic crisis that's going on in Turkey and the controversy surrounding president Erdoğan's comments about his interest rate policies.
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In today's part we're gonna set the stage by delving into how competing economic theories attempt to explain the situation that's going on in Turkey.
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And then in part two, we'll explore what happens when these economic theories clash with the reality of the situation on the ground.
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To start off, though, let's listen to a succinct summary provided by Deutche Welle and their reporting on the current crisis.
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Let's have a listen.
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Double-digit inflation and a crashing currency are turning the income and savings of millions of Turks to dust.
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The Lira has lost 50% of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the year, more than almost any other currency.
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Discontent is growing in recent weeks.
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Demonstrators took to the streets in Istanbul and Ankara, they called for the government to resign.
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Many lay the blame for Turkey's currency crisis on president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
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Every time he pressures the country's central bank and calls for interest rate cuts, the Lira plummets even further.
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Economists warn, inflation is spiraling out of control.
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And Turkish consumers are the ones who literally have to pay the price, but president Erdoğan hold the unconventional view that lower interest rates fight inflation.
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And despite the Lira crashing, shows no sign of changing his position.
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What we are doing might be politically very risky, but it's the right plan for our country and our nation.
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Come on.
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Don't Bullshit Me! Yeah, the economy slowed down, but you know, it's like telling someone, oh, you need to lose weight, but rather than then going on exercise and dieting, they chop off their legs.
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It's like, okay.
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Yeah, you reduced weight, but now there are bigger problems there.
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Welcome to"Come On, Don't Bullshit Me!", where we peel away the messaging of talking heads to get to the crux of today's issues.
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So one of the things that they teach us at the academy during military strategic studies is the flow from the academic Ivory Tower, if you will, of theory, the doctrine, to the strategy, all the way down to tactics, and more specifically, how each of them evolves along that chain of events.
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And there're countless examples of this throughout military history.
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All the way from Sun Tzu to modern day.
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But one of the big stories that stands out, particularly at the Air Force Academy is obviously of an Air Force general.
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And that was general Curtis Lemay, the father of the modern bomber force.
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And most people today know him as the father of the Berlin airlift, but there is a lot more to him than that in the Air Force.
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He's considered the father of SAC, the father of Strategic Air Command, which was essentially the bomber mafia.
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There there's an expression in the Air Force: fighter pilots make movies, but bombers make history.
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And while World War II was going on, the theory of warfare, which was being constantly tested because, you know, we're in the middle of a world, war was about how bombers should go and run their campaigns, right?
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So this is where the concept of strategic bombing came in, especially after the battle of Britain because the Germans, the Luftwaffe, pretty much destroyed all of the docks and the war making capability of the Brits after France capitulated.
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And according to some reports, there was a candid interviews of Churchill after the fact.
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But basically they were saying, okay, Britain was pretty much ready to capitulate and surrender to Germany right then and there, because the Luftwaffe was so effective in just completely decimating British war making capability.
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But then during that time, the British did a cursory bombing mission to Germany, and Hitler was obviously pissed off about, how dare the British come and reach out, and touch us, and bomb Germany.
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So he switched his focus.
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He ordered the Luftwaffe to, instead of bombing all the factories and the docks-- the British war capability, he said, we're gonna bomb London, the city, and bomb the civilians for their insulins of how dare they bomb the, the Fatherland, or whatever.
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Which actually allowed the British war making capability to recover.
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Because the Germans temporarily stopped bombing their factories, they were able to recover their war making capability and continue to fight.
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And obviously they didn't surrender.
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And then eventually, obviously the United States came in and tipped the tide.
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And while this was going on, they're like, okay, well now that the Germans decimated London, well now it's payback time.
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So the Brits were like, okay, we gotta go bomb Germans, but we need to figure out how we're gonna do this.
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Because obviously it's a, it's a difficult thing to do.
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And they tried to do...
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To bomb specific factories ball bearing plants, because that's the rules of warfare.
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What the hell are ball bearings, right?
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But those are the key components, and bombing the ball bearing pants basically grounded the German war fighting machine to a halt, because ball bearings were essential components in motors and engines and whatnot.
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So, but the Brits realized that their bombs were ineffective, right?
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Because this was obviously before the days of the GPS.
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So they were pretty much reliant on flying over a target, dropping the ball and then letting Isaac Newton's law of gravity do the work.
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And it wasn't really that effective, especially because they were trying to be high up because of the flat cannons and whatnot were a big threat to the bombers.
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Flat cannons are the A AA anti-aircraft guns.
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So to avoid or to minimize the damage from anti-aircraft guns, you would try to fly above the flat cannons so that you can get to the German factories.
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But of course being that high up t hen it's obviously it's harder to hit your targets.
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So that really didn't work.
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So eventually they decided, okay, well we're gonna do nighttime bombing runs, because at night it would be, figured, it would be harder to hit the bombers and, we're gonna be like lows to the ground, and basically instead of targeting factories, we're gonna put like a box if you will, over a city or a town and just bomb the shit out of it.
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Right?
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That's why most German cities are pretty modern architecture, because all in the nice ancient architecture with the wooden façade, the old like, you know, from like Hofbräuhaus comics, you know, those, those don't really exist.
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Except for actually there's interesting...
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Another side story.
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There was this one town right on the Swiss border.
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I forget the name of the German town.
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But obviously Germany, they're like once they realized this nighttime bombing was going on, they pretty much said, okay, everyone has to shut their lights off, right.
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But this one German town that was like right on the Swiss border, they actually, left their lights on.
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And then the Allies thought, oh, well this town has their lights on, so clearly they're not Germany.
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And like it's right on Swiss border so, oh this must still be part of Switzerland.
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So they skipped that.
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And I forget the name of the town, but if you go there now today, you can actually see how Germany looked like, at least German towns look like pre-World war II, because they were saved, because they successfully outsmarted the Allies by saying, oh yeah, we're totally Switzerland.
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But anyway, so the Brits were basically, okay, we're gonna make a square instead of bombing individual factories and, based on the lighting of the towns, dump all your bombers into that square of the village and bomb the shit out of it.
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Like who cares if it's a factory or a civilian target.
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This is obviously the dates before Geneva conventions.
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So the Brits basically leveled entire towns.
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So the Brits would bomb at night.
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Fast forward to 1942: America has entered the war.
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And now there's this big thing where while the Europeans were fighting, the US was obviously neutral and we were doing our own thing.
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Like testing and R&D.
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So we developed this thing, called the Norden bombsight.
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It was this really super accurate bombsight where you can dial in your altitude and the wind speed.
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And then on the bombing ranges in the United States, even though you're like really high up, ridiculously high up based on what would be considered the flat cannon ceiling.
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And even despite flying above that ceiling with the Norden bombsight, you were like super accurate with the delivery of the bombs.
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So the Brits were like, Hey US, we're glad that you're part of the war effort, but we've been bombing the Germans, we've got like two years under our belt.
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We've got a lot of experience.
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So this is what we're doing, we're bombing at night.
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And we recommend you do the same thing.
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And the US being the cocky Americans that we are, we said, nah, screw it, we've got this thing called Norden bombsight.
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The Brits were like, what is it?
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Oh, that's classified.
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That's how, like, even though we shared things like Enigma code, stuff like that, amongst each other and breaking cryptograms and whatnot, the Norden bombsight was so top secret, that we didn't even share it with the Brits, the technology with the Brits.
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But we were like, yeah, we have this Norden bombsight, it's super accurate and we're not gonna do nighttime bombing.
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We're gonna do daytime high altitude precision bombing.
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And we can do that because we have this bombsight.
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And there's this big argument back and forth between British Air power theorists and the American Air power theories on what's a more effective bombing strategy: low altitude nighttime or high altitude daytime precision bombing.
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Long story short, Norden bombsight was shit, it didn't work.
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And we didn't really do that much damage.
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Because, turns out American, quote,"experience", was bombing ranges out in Arizona or whatever, desert conditions, no one's attacking you, nothing.
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So,, we quickly realized that...
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Well we actually, we didn't quickly realize, we didn't realize shit.
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Well, actually we realized it, but we didn't accept it, basically saying, no-no, high altitude daytime precision bombing-- that's the way to do things, and we're gonna do it.
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And then, you know, post mortum, we figured out that, oh, we actually weren't as effective as we thought we were, because the testing conditions on a bombing range are completely different than actual war over one of the most powerful modern empires of human civilization.
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Anyway, the other funny thing was that during this whole debate of whether nighttime or daytime was more effective, rather than one side convincing the other of when and how to actually bomb, because both parties couldn't come to an agreement, each side, each party, decided to do their own thing.
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So we basically took turns: like the Americans would bomb during the day and then the Brits would bomb at night.
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And then the daytime would come and the Americans would keep going on and on.
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So the Germans never actually got a chance to breathe, because because of our own infighting, we were like basically constantly bombing them around the clock.
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Kind of like that.
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Anyway, other than this being an interesting story, we took these lessons...
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Well, actually, they weren't really lessons, because as far as we, the Americans, were concerned, daytime precision bombing was totally the best thing and this Norden bombsight was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
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So we're gonna continue doing this and we're gonna upgrade our B-17s, the flying fortress, which was the main bombing aircraft.
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And you remember the movie,"Memphis Belle"?
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The plane that they were fighting in the"Memphis Belle"-- that's the B-17.
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But anyway, so the new aircraft that they were building was B-29, which was the super fortress.
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And that one was this upgraded airplane, like the Enola Gay-- the bomber that dropped atomic bomb, that was a B-29 as well.
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But it was this super fancy aircraft where everything was computerized, computerized fire control system.
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So rather than having 10 people like in the"Memphis Belle"-- a crew of 10-- essentially one person could control multiple guns on the bomber, on the aircraft.
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And the armor was up-armored to a point, where it said, okay, neither the anti-aircraft, nor the German fighters would be able to fire on it.
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So it was gonna be even more effective than that.
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And obviously it was going to be bigger and larger, and more capable.
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So you can even put more bombs on it, and what have you.
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So, all around, this was a pinnacle of American aviation technology-- the B-29.
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But by the time we got to be able to field it, well, the Germans already essentially surrendered, or at least there were close to surrendering.
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So there was not really no need for the B-29.
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So all that effort was for not.
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But obviously the Pacific war was still going on.
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So essentially all those assets were moved over to the Pacific and were used against the Japanese.
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And this is where Curtis LeMay, this really came about his genius, because basically everyone, at least on the American side, were saying: yeah, it's high altitude precision bombing, we've already verified it.
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Even though it was completely, you know, not true, but as far as they were concerned at the time, yeah, high altitude daylight precision bombing was the way to go, and that's what we're gonna continue doing.
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Until Curtis leMay came in and he was like, uh, wait, wait a second, I don't think we should do this.
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There's something to what the British were doing.
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And what he did was rather than just listening to the theory, and this is what's important, he looked at what the actual situation was on the ground, because...
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And this is why, and this is the whole point of the military MSS-- the Military Strategic Studies class at the Academy: it's not just knowing the theory.
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You have to understand why the theory came about.
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And in business schools they say, like, all theories or all models are, are lies, but some of them are useful.
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So he basically looked at this and said, okay, why are we doing a high altitude precision bombing in Germany?
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Well, because: one, we wanted to get above the ceiling of the flat cannons; and then two, we obviously, we got our Norden bombsight and so we can do a precision bombing there.
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But more importantly, the German war fighting capabilities were pinpointed in these factories, right?
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So that was the point to do high-altitude bombing.
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But in Japan...
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Obviously we didn't do really strategic bombing in Japan for a long time, because our bombers physically couldn't reach the Japanese Homeland.
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That's where in the middle of China, we had the bomber base, in Chengdu.
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But obviously, because back then Japan controlled pretty much the entire coastline of China, even any forces that we pre-positioned out in China were still really far away because the Asian content is ridiculously huge.
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But this is where we had the island hopping campaign where rather than fighting the Japanese, we just basically bypassed them until we got to a point where we conquered a couple of islands that were within bombing range of Japan.
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And that's when, when we could unleash on bombers and do massive damage.
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It's kinda like if you remember in"The Last of Mohicans" where the British and the French were fighting, and then the English were like, oh, we're gonna lose doesn't matter.
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And Daniel Day-Lewis was like, what are you talking about?
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And he's like, well, it's only a matter at a time: as soon as they get their artillery within the range of our Fort, it's pretty much game over.
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So they try to sue for peace and they left and a whole bunch of other stuff happened, and awesome theme song, but whatever.
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May I inquired after the situation, Sir, given that I have seen the French engineers from the bridge above?
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The situation is his guns are bigger than mine.
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That he is more of them.
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They keep our heads down while his troops take 30 yard of trench a day when those trenches are 200 yards from the Fort and within range, you'll bring in these 15 inch waters, lob, explosive rounds over our walls and pound dust to dust.
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Aye.
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So once we got our bombers in range, Curtis LeMay, who was in charge of the 8th Air Force and responsible for this bombing of the mainland, he looked at it and said: okay, well, first off with the jet stream, and basically Japan on virtue being an island, Japan was almost always cloudy.
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It wasn't clear skies like in Germany.
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So going a high altitude necessitated going above the cloud line, which means obviously you can't really see what you're bombing at.
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So, that's one big issue.
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But he also noticed that the Japanese war making machine, if you will, wasn't concentrated in factories like with Germans, but actually they farmed it out, because it was a total mobilization of the population.
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Basically the entire population, including the cities and towns, were also used for war fighting.
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So bombing specific targets for precision bombing strike wasn't as effective in Japan as it would've been in Germany, because the Japanese weren't in specific factors or whatnot, they would be at home or in their little town areas, doing whatever it was that needed to be done for the war effort.
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So the entire cities were contributing to the war effort.
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So precision bombing really didn't make sense.
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And the other thing was, unlike in Germany where most of the buildings were stone or metal work, it was all wood and paper, right.
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So it was highly susceptible to fire.
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So Curtis LeMay said, okay, you know what?
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Even though daylight precision bombing worked in Germany-- and that's what the theory says, even though we technically didn't work, but again, that's, besides the point at that time everyone thought it did work-- he said, okay, even though it worked, I'm not gonna go do that, because it doesn't make sense.
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Because Japan is not Germany, and the conditions in Japan do not apply to the conditions in Germany.
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So we've got to change the theory.
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The theory was right for Germany, but when you apply it to Japan-- for a different area-- it doesn't work.
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So what he said was, okay, we're gonna do nighttime low altitude fire bombing.
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And that's where you had the whole fire bombing of Tokyo and a whole bunch of other cities.
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And of course it ultimately culminated with the atomic bomb, but that's a separate story, which is obviously immaterial to Curtis LeMay's decisions.
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Actually, before this, his whole big genius, if you will, was still, while he was a commander of the 8th Air Force back in Germany, because his whole thing...
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The fighters normally would accompany the bombers.
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Also basically when the bombers would roll in through to where they were gonna go bomb, because it was high altitude, the German radar see them, right?
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Because of the curvature of the earth, it's much easier to see something up higher altitude than it is to see something close to the horizon.
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So there was plenty of warning.
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And because we were going high altitude, we'd have our fighter escorts.
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And when the Luftwaffe would come and try to shoot down the bombers, the fighters would fight, and you have all those zillion different World War II.
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Films like that scene, that famous scene from Millennium Falcon in"Star Wars", you know, the original"New Hope" where they're fighting the TIE fighters.
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And like Luke finally shoots down one of the TIE fighters, he is like, a h, I got one! And H an S olo i s like, u h, don't get cocky kid, right?
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You know,'cause there's more.
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Got it.
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I got him,
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Great kid.
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Don't get cocky.
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There's still two more of them out there.
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That all was inspiration from all those old World War II movies, because that's kind of like how it was basically: you had these guys just like Han and Luke in their little separate shooting laser pods.
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You had like 10 guys on a B-17, on the bomber.
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Most of them, they would've been in their different little gun pods, shooting at the fighters that were flying around.
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And Germans would try to shoot down the bombers.
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And then the fighters would try to protect the bombers and yadi yadi yada.
00:21:35.119 --> 00:21:42.339
And obviously if all the fighters were destroyed, or if they ran out of fuel or whatever, they had to leave, obviously.
00:21:41.980 --> 00:21:46.380
Then the bombers would be exposed and the German fighters could pick off and destroy the bombers.
00:21:46.589 --> 00:21:46.940
Right?
00:21:46.941 --> 00:21:47.890
That was the whole thing.
00:21:48.309 --> 00:21:54.849
But then LeMay, what he did, what he decided was, okay, we're not gonna have the fighters escort our bombers.
00:21:55.480 --> 00:22:01.210
What we're going to do, I'm gonna send all my fighters ahead of the bombers.
00:22:01.240 --> 00:22:03.450
Like, you know, an hour, a half hour ahead of them.
00:22:04.109 --> 00:22:09.359
And then the Luftwaffe, they're gonna be alerted, because they see all that on a radar, all these, allied aircraft.
00:22:09.759 --> 00:22:11.240
So they're gonna send all their fighters up.
00:22:11.740 --> 00:22:24.079
And even if our fighters aren't effective, because they're like half hour to an hour ahead of the bombers,'cause bombers are in air, right, they're just behind, they're just behind the fighters; the they're gonna do their fighting and everything like that.
00:22:24.080 --> 00:22:26.440
Hopefully our fighters will basically destroy the fighters.
00:22:26.441 --> 00:22:30.630
But even if they don't, the German fighters will run out of fuel and they're gonna have to be forced to land.
00:22:30.930 --> 00:22:35.990
So by the time the bombers actually come on station, there's not gonna be any German fighters there.
00:22:36.049 --> 00:22:40.349
We either killed and shot them all down, or they had to RTB-- Return to Base.
00:22:41.049 --> 00:22:42.150
So, and that was the thing.
00:22:42.170 --> 00:22:44.990
And then, okay, I shouldn't be like completely praising him on this.
00:22:44.990 --> 00:22:55.099
Because part of this was because with the invention of the P-51 and Mustang, which was the brand new aircraft that allowed him to do this tactic.
00:22:55.240 --> 00:23:04.180
But still the fact that he even came up with this tactic and said, basically, I'm gonna leave all my bombers exposed, which was back then was unthinkable, because bombers are your most important asset.
00:23:04.440 --> 00:23:11.930
He said, no, I'm gonna leave them completely exposed, but I'm gonna send this fighter screening ahead of them to basically bait the Luftwaffe.
00:23:13.009 --> 00:23:14.369
It was kind of ingenious at the time.
00:23:15.010 --> 00:23:15.769
Now it makes sense.
00:23:15.829 --> 00:23:17.849
But back then, obviously it was a super genius thing.
00:23:18.750 --> 00:23:21.009
So he already proved his genius in Germany.
00:23:21.509 --> 00:23:30.009
So when he came to Japan, he was already primed with credibility of successfully challenging assumptions, underpinning doctrine or theory, or whatever.
00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:40.079
So I spent all this time talking about how this amazing new aircraft B-29, that was super up-armored and got all these fancy control systems and could carry all these bombs and whatnot.
00:23:40.390 --> 00:23:45.839
Curtis LeMay was like, well, I see all that fancy armor that we have: we're stripping all that out.
00:23:45.840 --> 00:23:49.640
Which all the fighter, all the airmen were like, uh, are you serious?
00:23:49.641 --> 00:23:50.839
You're gonna get rid of all of our armor?
00:23:51.660 --> 00:23:59.000
But Curtis LeMay, his philosophy was like, okay, we need to end this war, the Japanese aren't gonna submit willingly.
00:23:59.019 --> 00:24:02.240
So we need to do as much damage as we can to shorten the war.
00:24:02.250 --> 00:24:02.599
Right?
00:24:02.601 --> 00:24:11.109
That was basically the theory of almost every single general during that time, because Japanese famously wouldn't surrender.
00:24:11.250 --> 00:24:21.309
So the only way we can really get them to capitulate is just do maximum carnage, because in a weird mess up way, that's actually gonna save the most lives, if we do the most damage.
00:24:21.730 --> 00:24:30.299
So he said, okay, obviously we can only carry a certain amount of bombs on the B-29 because of the takeoff weight.
00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:35.980
But if we remove all the armor, or the unnecessary armor, we can put more bombs on.
00:24:37.319 --> 00:24:39.859
And obviously the airmen were like, you can't take all our armor.
00:24:39.580 --> 00:24:41.900
And he was like, no you're gonna do that, because we need more bombs.
00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:44.940
But to counteract, we're gonna fly at night.
00:24:45.720 --> 00:24:50.849
Because the Japanese were famously known to be not good at fighting at night.
00:24:50.960 --> 00:24:56.369
Like their anti-aircraft and their fighters, their airmen-- they just weren't effective at night.
00:24:56.470 --> 00:24:57.769
So we're gonna go at night.
00:24:58.309 --> 00:25:04.690
And we're not going to have advantage of the bombsight, but in order to counteract that, we're gonna fly at a low altitude.
00:25:05.589 --> 00:25:14.759
And that was another reason why you'd want to do low altitude: it was in order to get up to the cruise ceiling of, I think it was like 30,000 feet that takes a lot of gas, right?
00:25:14.900 --> 00:25:20.680
To get all the way up to station of like 30,000 feet high, drop the bombs, and then obviously you come back.
00:25:21.121 --> 00:25:25.039
But getting up to that high altitude takes up a ridiculous amount of fuel.
00:25:25.619 --> 00:25:29.509
So if you just go low altitude, well, then you don't need that much fuel.
00:25:29.599 --> 00:25:38.390
Which means two things: you can put more bombs on your aircraft, or you can have the same amount of aircraft, but you can fly it from further back.
00:25:38.730 --> 00:25:43.269
And when you're talking about the Pacific theater being islands, you don't have that many places to fly from.
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