No less an authority than Jon Stewart says we should have dropped them in the ocean and they’d have gotten the message. My takeaway: he’s an ecoterrorist who hates ocean life.
“No less an authority than Jon Stewart says we should have dropped them in the ocean and they’d have gotten the message.”
That sort of option was in fact considered - presumably one option that was discussed was dropping one of the first bombs in Tokyo harbor as a demonstration of what the Japanese would be in for.
That option was disregarded for a couple of reasons. One: we only had a couple of bombs at that point, and we weren’t even sure they’d work (even given the successful test at Alamagardo), and if we did make a big deal about demonstrating this “super-weapon” and nothing happened, our “loss of face” would only encourage the Japanese. And two: if we had dropped an A-bomb that did not go off, there was serious concern that the Japanese might recover the dud, and then reverse engineer it to ultimately use that knowledge against us. A long shot, but why take the chance?
At the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests three were planned. The first two were air and surface bursts. The radiation experience was so profound that the last underwater test was cancelled.