From one-legged, Russian-born Alexander de Seversky (Victory through Air Power) came a declaration intended to be heartening: the atomic bomb is just another bomb.
After surveying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the self-chosen priest of omnipotent air power told U.S. newsmen in Tokyo:
¶ Much of the effect of the atomic bombs in Japan was due to flimsy construction. In a steel-and-concrete U.S. city, one of the bombs would have done no more damage than a ten-ton TNT bomb.
¶The bomb was a great step, but only a step, in "the science of demolition."
¶ Two hundred Superforts with old-style bombs could...