Posted on 04/18/2016 7:17:04 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Most everyone has a pretty good idea of what an atomic explosion looks like. Through images and video, we know the flash, the fireball, the mushroom cloud. Seeing it all in person is quite different, however.
One of the few firsthand accounts immortalized to paper comes courtesy of the inimitable Richard Feynman, who was present for the very first detonation of a nuclear weapon. The test, codenamed "Trinity" was carried out on July 16, 1945 in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico. The 20-kiloton blast was the culmination of years of work by the scientists of the Manhattan Project. One of those scientists, the 27-year-old Feynman, sought to view his handiwork with his own eyes: They gave out dark glasses that you could watch it with. Dark glasses! Twenty miles away, you couldn't see a damn thing through dark glasses. So I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes (bright light can never hurt your eyes) is ultraviolet light. I got behind a truck windshield, because the ultraviolet can't go through glass, so that would be safe, and so I could see the damn thing.
Time comes, and this tremendous flash out there is so bright that I duck, and I see this purple splotch on the floor of the truck. I said, "That's not it. That's an after-image." So I look back up, and I see this white light changing into yellow and then into orange. Clouds form and disappear again--from the compression and expansion of the shock wave.
Finally, a big ball of orange, the center that was so bright, becomes a ball of orange that starts to rise and billow a little bit and get a little black around the edges, and then you see it's a big ball of smoke with flashes on the inside of the fire going out, the heat.
All this took about one minute. It was a series from bright to dark, and I had seen it. I am about the only guy who actually looked at the damn thing--the first Trinity test. Everybody else had dark glasses, and the people at six miles couldn't see it because they were all told to lie on the floor. I'm probably the only guy who saw it with the human eye.
Actually, Feynman wasn't the only person who chose not to don their safety glasses that day. Ralph Carlisle Smith, the future assistant director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, also observed the explosion with the naked eye. Here's what he saw:
The blast caused a trucker to run off the road (Rt 380) just North of the Trinity site! ;-) See: https://goo.gl/maps/AroBsCBsb9E2
His books are well worth reading as well. I weep when I think of a scientific mind like Feynman, and the so-called “scientists” today ginning up Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming scare material.
>>They said they believed the US government when it said a million US soldiers would have died if we didn’t drop the bomb and invaded the island instead
Anyone who knows the history of the battle of Okinawa believes it, or should. The core Home Islands would have been Okinawa writ large. The bombs also saved the lives of many Japanese who would have died in a conventional invasion. It is thought that more civilians died at Okinawa than Japanese military.
Feynman was always such a real world, practical guy, for someone with such a high level Physics background. It is one of the things that makes him so special. That tabletop demonstration is just genius, from the standpoint of getting his point across.
“Saving face”
IIRC, the Allies discovered that Japanese revulsed at the notion of “surrender” began laying down their arms in droves when called upon to “cease resistance”.
Letting the Emperor keep his throne helped greatly, too, since it could be afterward implied that there had been no “unconditional surrender”.
This is the Three Red Books that I paid big bucks for many years ago, for free. Fabulous!
I always wondered what it is like to be near a bucket of instant sunshine, maybe if I had the durability of Superman, I would try it for myself.
One group does the saving, while another betrays it.
Unfortunately it wasn’t just the universities, it has been the establishment of both of our political parties.
“Letting the Emperor keep his throne helped greatly, too, since it could be afterward implied that there had been no “unconditional surrender”.”
Absolutely. Having Hirohito alive was a great help.
Unconditional surrender is usually a bad idea. You back your enemy into a corner and and they will fight you to the bitter end.
But in the case of Japan they were inclined to do that anyway until Hirohito told them that they were permitted to stop.
Hirohito made his prerecorded “Jewel Speech” to a dumbfounded population and the warlords’ house of lies crumbled in an instant.
Then MacArthur strode into Tokyo and a peaceful occupation. I read once that to the Japanese mind nothing happens by accident, all is foreordained by the gods and the powers of heaven having spoken must not be disobeyed.
It also helped that MacArthur was rather godlike in his own mind; that photo of him towering over the diminutive Emperor said to the people, “I’m depriving you of your emperor god, but I’m giving you another - me!”
Gods are usually lawgivers, and MacArthur did not disappoint. The MacArthur Constitution of 1947 governs Japan to this day.
And that was 20,000 tons worth, Russia made a 50,000,000 ton equivalent H bomb that is all over Youtube.
Interesting!
How those Generals stood out, unlike the cookie-cutter wearers of four stars today, who have learned how to PC their way to the top.
And the NYT had not yet become the hard left scold of the military which it is today.
Check out the youtube videos featuring HR McMaster and you’ll find that we have at least one general officer cut from the same cloth.
And if you’re interested in how Vietnam turned out as it did pick up his Dereliction of Duty. It’s an expanded version of the PhD thesis that he wrote as a major. But he’s not just a scholar, he played a lead role in the huge 73 Easting tank battle of Iraq War I. He was a captain commanding tanks back then, he’s now a four star. Gives me hope for the future.
I’ll look into it, thanks.
Dad & I happened to serve in Vietnam almost at the same time in 1972. For an excellent account about the last full year, read “Trial By Fire” by Dale Andrade, Center for Military History, 1995.
Covers the NVA Easter Offensive in great detail.
I remember reading with horror about the Japanese civilians, whole families, throwing themselves off cliffs onto the rocks below and into the sea to avoid capture by American troops.
That battle eliminated most NVA heavy equipment. But once the Watergate Congress cut SVN off from ammunition and gasoline the North simply rebuilt and reloaded, and then conquered the South at their leisure in a conventional armored attack.
Had Ford ignored Congress and unleashed the Navy and Air Force Highway One would have been a highway of death to rival anything we did in Kuwait. Abandoning SVN when they were willing to do their own fighting was of the most shameful episodes in American foreign policy, and one that the useless idiots running the GOP have never exploited.
"Dad & I happened to serve in Vietnam almost at the same time in 1972."
Dad retired from the Army in 1966 and the draft didn't see fit to scoop me up. I'd been following events there since 1962 when dad did his tour, and by 1969 it was obvious to me that no one here had a plan or the will for winning the war. Good that you came back in one piece.
For later. Thanks.
L
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