Posted on 08/06/2016 1:15:15 AM PDT by MCF
At a cocktail party at a Florida military base in the early 1960s, two old enemies who led World War II missions that changed the course of history met for the first time. "I'm Fuchida -- let's talk about it," Japanese Self-Defense Force member Mitsuo Fuchida said, extending his hand to then-Base Commander Paul Tibbets, who knew exactly what "it" meant.
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...
I found this interesting:
‘After the war, Fuchida wrote extensively of his adventures, then converted to Christianity and became a Protestant minister, preaching in America, mostly to Japanese-Americans.’
I think Kruschev also converted.
I read that the creator of the Czar Bomba, is that what it was called, knew that after a certain amount of plutonium, the explosion would be no greater. I forget his reasoning.
Anybody know anything about that?
Can you make a bomb that could engulf the world if it had enough plutonium in it?
I know when they tested the hydrogen bomb at sea and the explosion kept going on, some scientists were afraid the earth’s atmosphere would catch fire and that would be the end of life on Earth.
Tebbets is a very distant cousin. It is interesting to see the discussions on the Warfield family research bulletin boards. When he was alive, I’d hear about occasional appearances he would make.
A man in the little town I grew up in was the lead mechanic for Tibbet’s plane. He had a bunch of pictures of the planes and the airfield on Saipan
Indeed.
http://www.legacy.com/ns/paul-tibbets-obituary/97120088yu
If you choose the expanded obit you find this:
Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said.
Wise man. I wonder if they make them like that today?
Met Paul Tibbets at an air show at Lunken Field in Cincinnati. It was a book signing for the 2004 Restoration Edition of his book Enola Gay. It was signed 9/11/2004.
The fighter escorts were in Saipan. The B29s were on Tinian, jus a few miles away.
I’ve been to both islands. There were B-29’s here too
The bomb was 'detuned' from a nominal 100 MT yield to a nominal 50 MT yield and yielded 57 MT. A 50 MT blast will give you a fireball about 7 miles in diameter and the troposphere is about 7 miles in thickness. Anything greater gives a fireball large enough that a lot of the energy is wasted by escaping uselessly into the stratosphere.
In theory, you can make a bomb with a yield just about as large as you want but there are utilitarian limits to what one might want to build. If one wants to devastate an opponent the results of several smaller bombs well placed can be much more effective than one big one.
Plutonium may be the trigger (or highly enriched uranium) but the yield comes largely from the fusion of a fuel such as lithium deuteride.
Of course, this all applies to fusion devices, primarily. For a fission only device there is no fusion fuel and the yields are considerably less.
Tinian was the island Tibbits unit was stationed on.
You can Tinian from Saipan. I have been to them both. Saipan is a bit bigger. I got them confussed
It should be noted that even in his old age, with many infirmities, Brigadier General Tibbets would still make appearances at the The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History (formerly named National Atomic Museum) on the grounds of the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.
When he would do so, the admiring crowd of thousands would be SRO, listening to every word.
I believe the Tsar Bomba also was a three stage weapon, fission-fusion- fission, I believe. The only US weapon that was three stage was the 25 megaton B-41, and it evidently was too big to be useful beyond the smaller number produced.
From my limited understanding there is no upper limit to the size of explosion, but the Tsar Bomba was physically so big that it took a modified TU-95 to carry it with resulting very limited range, so it was not considered an operational weapon. In fact the “doomsday weapon” in Dr Strangelove was the brainstorm of Rand think tank strategist Herman Kahn who envisioned a physically huge buried thermonuclear device (s) since there was no need for delivery, jacketed by cobalt-60 to spread fallout for 100 years.
Fascinating stuff.
Back to OP, I do wish our jackass in the whitehouse would focus on disarming our potential enemies first before disarming ourselves. All the other major nuclear powers, and many smaller ones, are actively building new weapons, and even Russia has indicated they have no interest to go below the present nuclear treaty with a new lower treaty, so any smaller US arsenal would be unilateral disarmament.
“The documentary video, “Enola Gay: The First Atomic Mission,” made by the Greenwich Workshop of Shelton, Conn., has been seen by more than 1.5 million people at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., but has never aired on an American network.”
“One network official told me they did not want to offend their Japanese stockholders by airing it,” Hicks said. “However, it has been broadcast on Japanese television.”
God help me, but I loathe and despise the liberal left in our country at all levels in every nook and cranny with a white hot hatred.
I share your sentiments of the left.
I just wish they (the left) understood that the constitution in its original intended form, is the only thing that keeps us from civil war.
That is their aim. They think they will come out on top.
Thanks. I forget the difference between fusion and fission, someone told me here once but it’s gone from my head!
Destroy the earth is a silly environmentalist phrase as there are only a few ways to truly Destroy the Earth, but killing off EVERY SINGLE living thing to a single celled organism, is that possible?
Thanks :)
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