And I know historians who are just “sure” of the way things were ... except they weren’t.
Maybe, but I’ll go with all the sources OF THE DAY who said they didn’t know.
Easy in hindsight to claim “Oh, we all knew.” BS. Nobody did. And you don’t waste one of six if there is a chance it won’t work, and you don’t know if the other, totally different design that hadn’t even been tested, worked either.
And finally, remember certain elements of the bomb still had to assembled in flight.
Let me pose it this way, and if we don’t agree we don’t.
You’ve tested a parachute under controlled circumstances but no one has ever jumped out of a plane and pulled a rip cord with it. Do you “know” it will work?