Posted on 08/10/2002 3:43:33 PM PDT by Reaganwuzthebest
US Planned to Drop an Atomic Bomb
on Europe During WWII
In early August 2002 Studs Terkel interviewed Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the Enola Gay on its mission to nuke Hiroshima. In the middle of this fascinating interview, General Tibbets dropped a bombshell of a different sort. Tibbets relates that after being briefed about his upcoming mission by General Uzal Ent (commander of the second air force) and others:
General Ent looked at me and said, "The other day, General Arnold [commander general of the army air corps] offered me three names." Both of the others were full colonels; I was lieutenant-colonel. He said that when General Arnold asked which of them could do this atomic weapons deal, he replied without hesitation, "Paul Tibbets is the man to do it." I said, "Well, thank you, sir." Then he laid out what was going on and it was up to me now to put together an organisation and train them to drop atomic weapons on both Europe and the Pacific--Tokyo.
Studs Turkel: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We didn't know that.
Paul Tibbets: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific because of the secrecy problem--you couldn't drop it in one part of the world without dropping it in the other.
This is the last thing Tibbets says about nuking Europe, and Turkel never follows up! Thus, we don't know which city was to be targeted (presumably it was a German one) or why the plan wasn't carried out. The Memory Hole has written to Tibbets, asking these logical follow-up questions. Assuming he responds, we'll let you know what he says.
Later in the interview, Tibbets reveals another important piece of hidden history--that the US was just about to drop a third atomic bomb on Japan when it surrendered:
Studs Terkel: Why did they drop the second one, the Bockscar [bomb] on Nagasaki?
Paul Tibbets: Unknown to anybody else--I knew it, but nobody else knew--there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got a phone call from General Curtis LeMay [chief of staff of the strategic air forces in the Pacific]. He said, "You got another one of those damn things?" I said, "Yessir." He said, "Where is it?" I said, "Over in Utah." He said, "Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it." I said, "Yessir." I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Trinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over.
Studs Terkel: What did General LeMay have in mind with the third one?
Paul Tibbets: Nobody knows.
Source: "'One Hell of a Big Bang'" by Studs Terkel. Guardian (London), 6 Aug 2002.
No. And I don't believe there was a "third bomb", either -- despite Tibbetts' reference to it.
All the historical references are quite clear. There was enough material for three "devices" -- the plutonium device that was tested at Alamogordo, the uranium bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima (everybody was certain it would work, no need to test it) and the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated, Hanford Works had not yet manufactured enough plutonium for a "third bomb", as Tibbetts described it. It was still several months away.
P.S. LeMay would've known this. In fact, did know it...
Who were the physicists who didn't want the bomb used on Japan?
All the historical references are quite clear. There was enough material for three "devices" -- the plutonium device that was tested at Alamogordo, the uranium bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima (everybody was certain it would work, no need to test it) and the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated, Hanford Works had not yet manufactured enough plutonium for a "third bomb", as Tibbetts described it. It was still several months away.
But Tibbets may not have know this. It would have made a lot of sense to have members of the 911th believe that there were more bombs on the way. That way if one was captured following the first attack, the Japanese would have "discovered" we had five or six more on the the way.
Certainly by that stage we were trying to get them to cry Uncle in order to avoid an invasion.
As stated earlier, the bomb was developed for use on Nazi Germany, but they folded before we could send them a Alamogordo Love Letter. We used it on Japan because they refused to surrender, viewing the United States, the Chinese, and our allies as subhuman vermin. Dying was preferable to giving up this view of the world. So in a sense, the bomb was used because of racism -- Japanese racism.
As a friend once put it. "No more Hiroshimas? Easy! No more Pearl Harbors."
My copy of Rhodes' book is in storage. But, as I recall, Leo Szilard, the Hungarian physicist who had been a leading light in developing the theory, left the project because of the decision to use it on Japan.
There were several others who objected, but Szilard was the only one who had the courage of his convictions.
Several of these same physicists subsequently refused to work with Edward Teller, another Hungarian physicist, on the H-bomb.
My suspicion, as well. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Ok, I'll bite. How so? Aside from the fact I too believe the bomb would have been used in Europe in a heartbeat if we had it at the time.
Atomic bombs of the Fat Man or plutonium type were already in production. The first had been tested at Alamogordo in July; the second had been available on Tinian on August 1 and was dropped on Nagasaki. The third could have been available on Tinian by late August. Possibly three more could have been ready in September, And the production rate was expected to increase to seven or more per month by December 1945. The Little Boy uranium bombs were more difficult to produce. The first was dropped on Hiroshima, and a second would have been ready by the end of the year. The bomb-production schedule could have put numerous atomic bombs in General MacArthur's invasion arsenal. Groves's principal deputy,Brigadier General Kenneth D. Nichols, later recalled that "If the landings actually took place, we might supply fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops."
The source is a memoradum from George L. Harrison (Secretary of Interim Committee) to the Secretary of War, Tripartite Conference, Babelsburg, Germany, 24 July 1945 (National Archives)
Robert Oppenheimer was said to have remarked, on witnessing the first atomic explosion, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"(quoting the Bhagavad Gita).
I don't recall reading that Oppenheimer was against the initial use of the bomb, but he was suspected and the target of McCarthy's squad for his comments after the war.
As a side note, I recommend Richard Feynman's excellent book "Surely you Must Be Joking Mr. Feynman", a serious/whimsical memoir of the time building the bomb at Los Alamos.
And I won't argue with it. Thanks for the reference. I was relying on my memory of Rhodes' book -- which also comes highly recommended. Very readable and, in a virtuoso performance, somehow makes the physics involved quite understandable to the layman.
At any rate, there was no bomb "back in Utah", as Tibbets thought. Not in early August. Tibbets may have believed there was, but LeMay would've known better.
This is a credible interview, it's not from the Onion.
As to whether there were two, or three, or a hundred bombs available was not my point in the post, although it's there to be discussed for those who want to. I am mainly interested in debunking the liberals who forever say the bomb was dropped on Japan for racist reasons, as if we couldn't do what we had to to win. It would have been dropped in Europe as well if we had it at the time.
There's also some relevancy to today's events. "Compassion" comes after the war, if ever considering the foe we're up against.
My dad in England saw a B-29 *once*, sometime in 1944 when they were still relatively newly operational. It attracted a considerable amount of attention among the B-17 folks at the airbase. Perhaps this was part of a training mission. In any case, B-29s in Europe were very rare. (I do believe Russia got a couple as part of the technology transfer; they cloned them after the war to make their own first generation long range strategic bombers. I have a dim recollection that these were flown across the north pacific rather than through Europe, though.)
At the Paul Garber Facility in Suitland, Md., the docents that used to give tours of the Enola Gay would refer to a nuclear bomb rack that they found in the Enola Gay (I believe), although formally it was on record as having been destroyed or recycled elsewhere. They said that this was indirect proof that a third undocumented nuke existed but that its existence was suppressed in the postwar period to avoid the appearance of being inhumane to the Japanese civilian population. I think the bomb rack itself ended up being hurriedly classified and recalled once its existence became known to the facility restoration crew at that time, and they were asked not to say anything about it (supposedly they didn't, for a while).
...The Will to Survive.
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