Posted on 03/16/2008 10:37:34 AM PDT by Alouette
It was never 'tested.' They only had enough U-235 for one device and they were highly confident it would work. And it did, on Hiroshima.
We had made a deal with the Soviets which might have looked good in retrospect if the atom bomb had been a dud. FDR was desperate to get Stalin to go to war with Japan. It wasn’t until July that Truman knew that the bomb would work. As it turned out, Stalin kept his promise to declare war on Japan within 2-3 months of the end of the war in Europe (declaring war exactly 3 months after VE-Day).
If the war against Japan had dragged on into 1946, Americans would have been happy that Russians were dying in the war and not as many Americans. I don’t think many Americans in May 1945 would have welcomed Truman saying, “Germany has surrendered but now we’re going to push the Russians out of Germany. We’ll finish off the war with Japan eventually.”
Japan was the enemy, while the Soviets had been our allies for the past several years. The US had about 400,000 killed in the war up to the time Germany surrendered—what American President would ask the country for a few hundred thousand more Americans dead to improve the postwar situation in Europe, when few people had any inkling of what was about to emerge in the countries occupied by the Red Army?
Anyway, good post, Verginius.
“Anyway, good post, Verginius.”
And great posts, CZB, ohioman & Ditto.
All this becasue of spanalot, who probably learned nothing from it.
But I enjoyed it!
“35 years? It’s 63 years, and I’m curious what the ‘proof’ was.”
Earth to Dotto - the article was written 28 years ago, and it is not a movie but well documented website.
You know nothing of World War II - would you like to try the Viet Nam War where we finally confronted russian troops and kicked their ass?
“A Mongel army could live off the land.”
You obviously know nothing of the vast infrastructure that the mongols took on their great campaigns - you cant reliably feed 30,000 off the land.
“Do you have somewhere I can go to see when and where we detonated the “uranium bomb”?
Hmmm?”
let me ask you this - do you really think they designed “Little Boy” without any tests? Presuming so is laughable, isn’t it?
“They only had enough U-235 for one device and they were highly confident it would work.”
Would you like to buy a bridge?
“We had made a deal with the Soviets which might have looked good in retrospect if the atom bomb had been a dud.”
Hey, you russophiles need to get on the same page.
You cant say that Little Boy was a potential dud while Dotto is saying that it was a slam dunk and did not need testing.
Too bad the communist Oppenheimer was in charge of the project and made sure that we did not build a stockpile that would have made kicking Russia’s ass very feasible.
“Anyway, good post, Verginius.”
And great posts, CZB, ohioman & Ditto.
All this becasue of spanalot, who probably learned nothing from it.
But I enjoyed it!
The US wasn’t gonna conquer Russia in 1945-46 even if we had 10 nukes to drop. But I do I think FDR could have saved eastern Europe and thus moved the Cold War lines a little closer by heeding Churchill’s advice re: the Soviets. And Patton’s advice too. Subsequently, as well, there were other opportunities to quicken the Cold War, 1948 and East Germany (an uprising that lacked only our support), 1956 and Hungary, 1968 and Prague—a lot of people fell down on the job for a very long time.
I don’t want to trash anyone here though. I appreciate spanalot’s point about our atomic weapons program being delayed in part because it was rancid with Soviet agents. I think that was disputed somewhere in this thread but it’s beyond dispute. Fuchs, Oppenheimer, the young genius whose name I always forget, the whole New York cell, all the infiltrators in Britain—there are entire books people can read about this subject. And of course the Eisenhower administration WAS infiltrated. Read the KGB-Mitrochin files if you don’t think so. It’s a big, complicated story.
Anyway, Bro, glad you enjoyed it.
Earth to Spam-A-Lot.
Your post did not have quotations marks, source, or link.
Yep, I’ll buy that one in a second.
Sure you can if you take food from those who are already on the land where you are passing through.
See General Sherman and his March to the Sea in 1864.
He intentionally cut his own supply lines and fed 60,000 troops and livestock with no supply lines whatsoever.
They all gained weight on their march.
Allow me to ask. Are you professionally ignorant of history (i.e. an NEA member) or do you just do this for fun?
I doubt that supporting any German uprising in 1948 would have been very popular with the American people. There was little in the way of sympathy then.
No full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon had occurred before the "Little Boy" device was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon had been of an implosion-type weapon using plutonium as its fissionable material, on July 16, 1945 at the Trinity test. There were several reasons for not testing the "Little Boy" device. Primarily, scarcity of uranium-235 compared with the relatively large amount of plutonium which, it was expected, could be produced monthly from the Hanford reactors. Additionally, the weapon design was conceptually simple enough that it was only deemed necessary to do laboratory tests with the gun-type assembly (known during the war as "tickling the dragon's tail"). Unlike the implosion design, which required very sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work without full testing.
Yes I know waht the official story line is...and Sherman took savanah only with the aid of supply shipes awaiting him on the coast.
You were only predictable in your bashing of Patton, but now you are boring ...enjoy the rest of the thread.
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