Posted on 06/08/2015 2:17:41 PM PDT by StormPrepper
The German V-weapons (V-1 and V-2) cost $3 billion (wartime dollars) and were more costly than the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb ($1.9 billion)
It’s conversations like this that make me wish that “Manhattan” tv show had been something other than a cheap revisionist soap opera.
There was one funny scene tho where the female physicist is being polygraphed and is asked if she believes in God.
Very sarcastically she answers “Ive met God. His name is Neils Bor”
(this was after recently-escaped Bor shows up at Los Alamos, but rather than “saving” the effort it’s just a glorified tour)
The first true fusion device (not a deployable bomb) was detonated in 1951.
And if I remember correctly, the yield was considerably more than the physicists expected.
Ivy Mike?
Yeah it basically vaporized a decent-sized island and was the “dirtiest” explosion the US had. But it wasn’t a bomb, more like a large building with all sorts of plumbing to produce the second stage. The Sovs allegedy ridiculed it as being a “thermonuclear facility, not a thermonuclear bomb”
Never saw the show but if it was on TV I can bet it had super liberal slant.
You're thinking of the first actual weapon, which was detonated at Bikini [Castle Bravo.] In order to weaponize the fusion components, dry Lithium was used. The calculation of fusion components missed a significant tritium producing reaction in what was thought to be an inert component of lithium. As a result, much more fusion occurred, this produced many more fast neutrons, and caused an enormous increase in the yield of the secondary fission part of the bomb as well.
Oh yeah, all sorts of plays to various interest groups with writing and plots right out of daytime soaps.
Kinda sad tho. Such wasted potential. Quite a contrast to “The Last Ship” which ran last Summer as well (and is coming back in less than two weeks!)
The 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of uranium disappeared. It was most likely transferred to the Manhattan Project’s Oak Ridge diffusion plant. The uranium oxide would have yielded approximately 7.7 pounds (3.5 kg) of U-235 after processing, around 20% of what would have been required to arm a contemporary fission weapon.[11] One report says the fuel was used to help build the Little Boy uranium fission weapon which was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-234
Exactly why Truman brushed aside suggestions that we “demonstrate” a bomb to the Japanese. You would waste one in any case; it might be a dud; and the impact either way was not guaranteed. Even if it worked, the Japanese might have said, “Big deal. It was a trick. You can’t do it over Japan.”
Yes. This is all in “Heisenberg’s War.” But I think that book disproves the notion that he was deliberately misleading the Nazis. He just was on the wrong path, and as you say, had no chance anyway given the infrastructure, resources, and demands of the Eastern Front.
It is my opinion that Leó Szilárd ought to be regarded as the father of the Atomic Bomb. He was always the right guy in the right place at the right time with the right Idea.
He figured this thing would work long before anyone else had worked out the details. I think he pushed it to fruition more than any other person.
We’re like France in 1939.
Not so fast. Richard Rhodes mentions conversations Heisenberg had with Neils Bohr (I think) that can be interpreted to mean he was foot dragging. Also, certain experiments which were well within Heisenberg's competency range, were delayed, bungled, and redone. Things which he had the knowledge and ability to get right, but didn't.
Rhodes certainly implies that Heisenberg might not have been so gung ho about giving the Fuhrer a new weapon.
Maybe he was really trying, but there certainly seems to be reasons to think maybe he wasn't.
Little Boy was the Gun Assembled weapon and was used first on Hiroshima because the scientists knew it would work without having it tested.
Fat Man was the plutonium implosion device and was dropped on Nagasaki and the Trinity device was of the same design as Fat Man.
I always write detractors on how racist it was to drop the bomb on Hiroshima (been there, saw ground zero, etc) and Nagasaki. They say that karma is a biatch, well Nagasaki was where the torpedo’s were made that were used at Pearl Harbor. What goes around, comes around.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
What you are talking about is when the fusion reaction is used as a source of neutrons to fast fission (a different reaction than the normal reaction of a fission device) a uranium tamper (shell) that surrounds the fusion stage of the device. That can increase the yield significantly, and makes the device a lot more "dirty".
If I remember correctly, around 500 KT is the maximum yield for a pure fission device, as the speed of the reaction blows away any remaining material.
However, it is misleading to say that most of the yield of a fusion device comes from fission. This is not necessarily true, and very dependent on the design of the device. There is a gradation of designs that range in yield from nearly all fission yield ("boosted") to over 97% of yield due to fusion reactions (Tsar Bomba, at 50 MT, tested at half of its designed potential yield).
This site is a wealth of information: Nuclear Weapon Archive.
The island's nickname was Flora and the device left a large underwater crater in the coral were the island was located. I have a copy of a double photo, one taken before the detonation and one after. The two photos were shot via a remote controlled aircraft flying the same path. The second photo has an overlay of several Pentagons, scaled to size, over the crater.
The building housing the "Sausage" and the Primary was about four stories tall.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitmate military-industrial targets. Nagasaki was also huge for naval shipbuilding, while Hiroshima was hq for one of the Army groups tasked with defending against an invasion.
There was a city, Kyoto I think, that was on the original target list due to it’s geography and physicists wanting to see how the shockwaves worked (similar to how Nagasaki was in a “bowl”). But it was primarily a religious/cultural center with limited military presence, so it was dropped.
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