Posted on 12/02/2018 4:33:05 PM PST by MtnClimber
NOTES: A large number of these photos were assembled from the RG-77-BT collection in the Still Photo collection of the National Archives II building in College Park, MD.
Early Bombs
(Excerpt) Read more at alternatewars.com ...
Bkmrk.
I like the single label “FRONT” on the dolley.
And the fact that, after so many hundred million of 1940 dollars were spent on nuclear physics and advanced weapon design and delivery, they still had to hand chisel off the “too high” curbs on the pit walls to get the tracks in place level. Just like the Egyptian stone masons did 5500 years before.
always wondered why the pics of Fatman had painted seams
Nice articles. Thanks for posting.
Subtitled “Things That Go Boom In The Night”.
Thank you for the article. Brought back memories of my grandfather who worked at both the Oak Ridge and Hanover sites during the Manhattan project.
Thanks, I worked on the Pershing 1A Upgrade and Pershing II development intermediate range nuclear missile programs for the US Army in the early 1980s.
Interesting. The Norman Ramsey identified in one of the early photographs later won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the Ramsey inferometer, the heart of atomic clocks. He spent his post war career as a professor at Harvard. The Ramsey inferometer is a quantum mechanical device unrelated to his work on the atomic bomb.
It seems the US Government threw their best and brightest at this program.
The loading photos are a historical record of the last day before the world changed forever.
Gone With The Wind II.
With the success of the Trinity test some of the scientists wanted to strip the thin man and make it into eight fat boys. The fat boy trigger was necessary for the plutonium bomb because the time constants associated with plutonium fusion meant it would tear itself apart before most of the fuel fissioned in a thin man configuration. The fat boy was a more efficient trigger but the thin man was such a simple design they felt their was no need to test it.
The military felt the urgency of delivering a blow was more important than having more weapons later. Their calculations were correct. Two bombs sufficed.
I also realize that it was a history changing step. I am grateful wee got it worked out before Hitler did.
I have always wondered if they had more in case they needed them.
Ping
L
Ramesy was a student if I.I. Rabi, a Columbia professor, who served as the director of the Radiation Lab at MIT during the war. The Rad Lab concerned itself with radar. It was at the Rad Lab that Ramsey learned microwave technique necessary for his inferometer. I am not sure exactly what role Ramsey played in the Manhattan project, but the bombs did use radar altimeters for fusing.
The Rad Lab had a bigger budget than the Manhattan Project. Radar won the war. The A-bomb ended it.
On August 10th, 1945 the U.S. had exactly as many atomic bombs as any other country in the world. The U.S. had the capacity of producing approximately one nuclear weapon per month and fully intended using them Target number three was Tokyo.
The U.S. actually drew up schedules and was making target lists. Ironically, Hiroshima had been largely spared conventional bombing because the U.S. wanted to keep it “pristine” to evaluate the effect of atomic bombs. The locals believed they had been spared because many people from the Hiroshima area had emigrated to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
Thanks for posting.
Cool!
I’ve never seen the proposed “Thin Man” casing design.
No wonder they were worried about getting it off the ground.
Thin Man was a design which was rejected as it would fail due to Pu240 spontaneous fission.
It was also very, very heavy to the point is was likely they would need a Landcaster to drop it.
Thanks to all for a fascinating and informative thread, including the comments.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.