Here is some intresting reading, did you know about the third bomb??

[I am Carbon]

Quite a interview with details on the project that I have not heard before







> Take the time to read this. It is very interesting.
>
>
> Here's a bit of American history yet to reach the history books -- an August
> 2002 interview by writer Studs Terkel with Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the
> B-29 that dropped the first atom bomb. It's fascinating.
>
> Studs was a Chicago based newspaper & TV columnist and I read some of his stuff in which he was a working mans historian. Ole _____
>
> The Manhattan Project (Off-The-Cuff Interview)
>
>
> Studs Terkel: We're seated here, two old gaffers. Me and Paul Tibbets, 89
> years old, brigadier-general retired, in his home town of Columbus, Ohio,
> where has lived for many years.
>
> Paul Tibbets: Hey, you've got to correct that. I'm only 87. You said 89.
>
> ST: I know. See, I'm 90. So I got you beat by three years. Now we've had
> a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. I noticed as we sat in that
> restaurant, people passed by. They didn't know who you were. But once upon
> a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in
> Japan, on a Sunday morning - August 6 1945 - and a bomb fell. It was the
> atomic bomb, the first ever. And that particular moment changed the whole
> world around. You were the pilot of that plane.
>
> PT: Yes, I was the pilot.
>
> ST: And the Enola Gay was named after...
>
> PT: My mother. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my
> dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles.
> When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the Army
> Air Corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you
> automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on,
> you're on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give
> a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly
> airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that.
>
> ST: Where was that?
>
> PT: Well, that was Miami, Florida. My dad had been in the real estate
> business down there for years, and at that time he was retired. And I was
> going to school at Gainesville, Florida, but I had to leave after two years
> and go to Cincinnati because Florida had no medical school.
>
> ST: You were thinking of being a doctor?
>
> PT: I didn't think that, my father thought it. He said, "You're going to be
> a doctor," and I just nodded my head and that was it. And I started out
> that way; but about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly
> it - I soloed - and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes.
>
> ST: Now by 1944 you were a pilot - a test pilot on the program to develop
> the B-29 bomber. When did you get word that you had a special assignment?
>
> PT: One day [in September 1944] I'm running a test on a B-29, I land, a man
> meets me. He says he just got a call from General Uzal Ent [commander of
> the Second Air Force] at Colorado Springs, he wants me in his office the
> next morning at nine o'clock. He said, "Bring your clothing - your B4 bag -
> because you're not coming back." Well, I didn't know what it was and didn't
> pay any attention to it - it was just another assignment.
>
> I got to Colorado Springs the next morning perfectly on time. A man named
> Lansdale met me, walked me to General Ent's office and closed the door
> behind me. With him was a man wearing a blue suit, a US Navy captain - that
> was William Parsons, who flew with me to Hiroshima - and Dr Norman Ramsey,
> Columbia University professor in nuclear physics. And Norman said: "OK,
> we've got what we call the Manhattan Project. What we're doing is trying to
> develop an atomic bomb. We've gotten to the point now where we can't go
> much further till we have airplanes to work with."
>
> He gave me an explanation which probably lasted 45, 50 minutes, and they
> left. 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 a 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.
>
> ST: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We
> didn't know that.
>
> PT: 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. And so he said, "I
> don't know what to tell you, but I know you happen to have B-29s to start
> with. I've got a squadron in training in Nebraska - they have the best
> record so far of anybody we've got. I want you to go visit them, look at
> them, talk to them, do whatever you want. If they don't suit you, we'll get
> you some more." He said: "There's nobody could tell you what you have to do
> because nobody knows. If we can do anything to help you, ask me." I said,
> "Thank you very much." He said, "Paul, be careful how you treat this
> responsibility, because if you're successful you'll probably be called a
> hero. And if you're unsuccessful, you might wind up in prison."
>
> ST: Did you know the power of an atomic bomb? Were you told about that?
>
> PT: No, I didn't know anything at that time. But I knew how to put an
> organisation together. He said, "Go take a look at the bases, and call me
> back and tell me which one you want." I wanted to get back to Grand Island,
> Nebraska, that's where my wife and two kids were, where my laundry was done
> and all that stuff. But I thought, "Well, I'll go to Wendover [Army
> Airfield, in Utah] first and see what they've got." As I came in over the
> hills, I saw it was a beautiful spot. It had been a final staging place for
> units that were going through combat crew training, and the guys ahead of me
> were the last P-47 fighter outfit. This lieutenant-colonel in charge said,
> "We've just been advised to stop here and I don't know what you want to
> do... but if it has anything to do with this base, it's the most perfect
> base I've ever been on. You've got full machine shops, everybody's
> qualified, they know what they want to do. It's a good place."
>
> ST: And now you chose your own crew.
>
> PT: Well, I had mentally done it before that. I knew right away I was going
> to get Tom Ferebee [the Enola Gay's bombardier] and Theodore "Dutch" van
> Kirk [navigator] and Wyatt Duzenbury [flight engineer].
>
> ST: Guys you had flown with in Europe?
>
> PT: Yeah.
>
> ST: And now you're training. And you're also talking to physicists like
> Robert Oppenheimer [senior scientist on the Manhattan project].
>
> PT: I think I went to Los Alamos [the Manhattan project HQ] three times, and
> each time I got to see Dr Oppenheimer working in his own environment.
> Later, thinking about it, here's a young man, a brilliant person. And he's
> a chain smoker and he drinks cocktails. And he hates fat men. And General
> Leslie Groves [the general in charge of the Manhattan project], he's a fat
> man, and he hates people who smoke and drink. The two of them are the
> first, original odd couple.
>
> ST: They had a feud, Groves and Oppenheimer?
>
> PT: Yeah, but neither one of them showed it. Each one of them had a job to
> do.
>
> ST: Did Oppenheimer tell you about the destructive nature of the bomb?
>
> PT: No.
>
> ST: How did you know about that?
>
> PT: >From Dr Ramsey. He said "The only thing we can tell you about it is,
> it's going to explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT." I'd never seen
> 1 lb of TNT blow up. I'd never heard of anybody who'd seen 100 lbs of TNT
> blow up. All I felt was that this was gonna be one hell of a big bang.
>
> ST: Twenty thousand tons - that's equivalent to how many planes full of
> bombs?
>
> PT: Well, I think the two bombs that we used [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] had
> more power than all the bombs the Air Force had used during the war on
> Europe.
>

 

[I am Carbon]

> ST: So Ramsey told you about the possibilities.
>
> PT: Even though it was still theory, whatever those guys told me, that's
> what happened. So I was ready to say I wanted to go to war, but I wanted to
> ask Oppenheimer how to get away from the bomb after we dropped it. I told
> him that when we had dropped bombs in Europe and North Africa, we'd flown
> straight ahead after dropping them - which is also the trajectory of the
> bomb. But what should we do this time? He said, "You can't fly straight
> ahead because you'd be right over the top when it blows up and nobody would
> ever know you were there." He said I had to turn tangential to the
> expanding shockwave. I said, "Well, I've had some trigonometry, some
> physics. What is tangency in this case?" He said it was 159 degrees in
> either direction. "Turn 159 degrees as fast as you can and you'll be able
> to put yourself the greatest distance from where the bomb exploded."
>
> ST: How many seconds did you have to make that turn?
>
> PT: I had dropped enough practice bombs to realise that the charges would
> blow around 1,500 ft up in the air, so I would have 40 to 42 seconds to turn
> 159 degrees. I went back to Wendover as quick as I could and took the
> airplane up. I got myself to 25,000 ft, and I practised turning, steeper,
> steeper, steeper and I got it where I could pull it round in 40 seconds.
> The tail was shaking dramatically and I was afraid of it breaking off, but I
> didn't quit. That was my goal. And I practised and practised until,
> without even thinking about it, I could do it in between 40 and 42 seconds,
> all the time. So, when that day came...
>
> ST: You got the go-ahead on August 5.
>
> PT: Yeah. We were in Tinian [the US island base in the Pacific] at the time
> we got the OK. They had sent this Norwegian to the weather station out on
> Guam [the US's westernmost territory] and I had a copy of his report. We
> said that, based on his forecast, the sixth day of August would be the best
> day that we could get over Honshu [the island on which Hiroshima stands].
> So we did everything that had to be done to get the crews ready to go:
> airplane loaded, crews briefed, all of the things checked that you have to
> check before you can fly over enemy territory.
>
> General Groves had a brigadier-general who was connected back to Washington
> DC by a special teletype machine. He stayed close to that thing all the
> time, notifying people back there, all by code, that we were preparing these
> airplanes to go any time after midnight on the sixth. And that's the way it
> worked out. We were ready to go at about four o'clock in the afternoon on
> the fifth and we got word from the President that we were free to go: "Use
> 'em as you wish." They give you a time you're supposed to drop your bomb on
> target and that was 9:15 in the morning, but that was Tinian time, one hour
> later than Japanese time. I told Dutch, "You figure it out what time we
> have to start after midnight to be over the target at 9 am."
>
> ST: That'd be Sunday morning.
>
> PT: Well, we got going down the runway at right about 2:15 am and we took
> off, we met our rendezvous guys, we made our flight up to what we call the
> initial point, that would be a geographic position that you could not
> mistake. Well, of course we had the best one in the world with the rivers
> and bridges and that big shrine. There was no mistaking what it was.
>
> ST: So you had to have the right navigator to get it on the button.
>
> PT: The airplane has a bomb sight connected to the autopilot and the
> bombardier puts figures in there for where he wants to be when he drops the
> weapon, and that's transmitted to the airplane. We always took into account
> what would happen if we had a failure and the bomb bay doors didn't open: we
> had a manual release put in each airplane so it was right down by the
> bombardier and he could pull on that. And the guys in the airplanes that
> followed us, to drop the monitoring instruments, needed to know when it was
> going to go. We were told not to use the radio, but, hell, I had to. I
> told them I would say, "One minute out," "Thirty seconds out," "Twenty
> seconds" and "Ten" and then I'd count, "Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four
> seconds", which would give them a time to drop their cargo. They knew what
> was going on because they knew where we were. And that's exactly the way it
> worked, it was absolutely perfect.
>
> After we got the airplanes in formation, I crawled into the tunnel and went
> back to tell the men. I said, "You know what we're doing today?" They
> said, "Well, yeah, we're going on a bombing mission." I said, "Yeah, we're
> going on a bombing mission, but it's a little bit special." My tailgunner,
> Bob Caron, was pretty alert. He said, "Colonel, we wouldn't be playing with
> atoms today, would we?" I said, "Bob, you've got it just exactly right."
> So I went back up in the front end and I told the navigator, bombardier,
> flight engineer, in turn. I said, "OK, this is an atom bomb we're
> dropping." They listened intently but I didn't see any change in their
> faces or anything else. Those guys were no idiots. We'd been fiddling
> round with the most peculiar-shaped things we'd ever seen.
>
> So we're coming down. We get to that point where I say "One second," and by
> the time I'd got that second out of my mouth, the airplane had lurched
> because 10,000lbs had come out of the front. I'm in this turn now, tight as
> I can get it, that helps me hold my altitude and helps me hold my airspeed
> and everything else all the way round. When I level out, the nose is a
> little bit high and as I look up, there the whole sky is lit up in the
> prettiest blues and pinks I've ever seen in my life. It was just great.
>
> I tell people I tasted it. "Well," they say, "what do you mean?" When I
> was a child, if you had a cavity in your tooth, the dentist put some mixture
> of some cotton or whatever it was and lead into your teeth and pounded them
> in with a hammer. I learned that if I had a spoon of ice-cream and touched
> one of those teeth, I got this electrolysis and I got the taste of lead out
> of it. And I knew right away what it was.
>
> OK, we're all going. We had been briefed to stay off the radios: "Don't say
> a damn word, what we do is we make this turn, we're going to get out of here
> as fast as we can." I want to get out over the sea of Japan because I know
> they can't find me over there. With that done we're home free. Then Tom
> Ferebee has to fill out his bombardier's report and Dutch, the navigator,
> has to fill out a log. Tom is working on his log and says, "Dutch, what
> time were we over the target?" And Dutch says, "Nine-fifteen plus 15
> seconds." Ferebee says: "What lousy navigating. Fifteen seconds off!"
>
> ST: Did you hear an explosion?
>
> PT: Oh yeah. The shockwave was coming up at us after we turned. And the
> tailgunner said, "Here it comes." About the time he said that, we got this
> kick in the ass. I had accelerometers installed in all airplanes to record
> the magnitude of the bomb. It hit us with two and a half Gs. Next day,
> when we got figures from the scientists on what they had learned from all
> the things, they said, "When that bomb exploded, your airplane was 10 and
> half miles away from it."
>
> ST: Did you see that mushroom cloud?
>
> PT: You see all kinds of mushroom clouds, but they were made with different
> types of bombs. The Hiroshima bomb did not make a mushroom. It was what I
> call a stringer. It just came up. It was black as hell, and it had light
> and colours and white in it and grey colour in it and the top was like a
> folded-up Christmas tree.
>
> ST: Do you have any idea what happened down below?
>
> PT: Pandemonium! I think it's best stated by one of the historians, who
> said: "In one micro-second, the city of Hiroshima didn't exist."
>
> ST: You came back, and you visited President Truman.
>
> PT: We're talking 1948 now. I'm back in the Pentagon and I get notice from
> the Chief of Staff, Carl Spaatz, the first Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
> When we got to General Spaatz's office, General Doolittle was there, and a
> colonel named Dave Shillen. Spaatz said, "Gentlemen, I just got word from
> the President that he wants us to go over to his office immediately." On
> the way over, Doolittle and Spaatz were doing some talking; I wasn't saying
> very much. When we got out of the car we were escorted right quick to the
> Oval Office. There was a black man there who always took care of Truman's
> needs and he said, "General Spaatz, will you please be facing the desk?"
> And now, facing the desk, Spaatz is on the right, Doolittle and Shillen. Of
> course, militarily speaking, that's the correct order: because Spaatz is
> senior, Doolittle has to sit to his left.
>

 

[I am Carbon]

>
> Then I was taken by this man and put in the chair that was right beside the
> President's desk, beside his left hand. Anyway, we got a cup of coffee and
> we got most of it consumed when Truman walked in and everybody stood on
> their feet. He said, "Sit down, please," and he had a big smile on his face
> and he said, "General Spaatz, I want to congratulate you on being first
> Chief of the Air Force," because it was no longer the Air Corps. Spaatz
> said, "Thank you, sir, it's a great honour and I appreciate it." And the
> President said to Doolittle: "That was a magnificent thing you pulled flying
> off of that
> carrier,"(http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/misc-42/dooltl.
> htm) and Doolittle said, "All in a day's work, Mr. President." And he
> looked at Dave Shillen and said, "Colonel Shillen, I want to congratulate
> you on having the foresight to recognise the potential in aerial refuelling.
> We're gonna need it bad some day," and Shillen said, "Thank you very much."
>
> Then he looked at me for 10 seconds and he didn't say anything. And when he
> finally did, he said, "What do you think?" I said, "Mr President, I think I
> did what I was told." He slapped his hand on the table and said, "You're
> damn right you did, and I'm the guy who sent you. If anybody gives you a
> hard time about it, refer them to me."
>
> ST: Anybody ever give you a hard time?
>
> PT: Nobody gave me a hard time.
>
> ST: Do you ever have any second thoughts about the bomb?
>
> PT: Second thoughts? No. Studs, look. Number one, I got into the Air
> Corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I
> believed in and that's what I worked for. Number two, I'd had so much
> experience with airplanes. I'd had jobs where there was no particular
> direction about how you do it, and then of course I put this thing together
> with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive
> that I was to be self-supporting at all times.
>
> On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've
> made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29
> years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence, I didn't think there
> was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and
> people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing
> because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a
> lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have
> to invade [Japan].
>
> ST: Why did they drop the second one, the Bockscar [bomb] on Nagasaki?
>
> PT: 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.
>
> ST: What did General LeMay have in mind with the third one?
>
> PT: Nobody knows.
>
> ST: One big question. Since September 11, (2001) what are your thoughts?
> People talk about nukes, the hydrogen bomb.
>
> PT: Let's put it this way. I don't know any more about these terrorists
> than you do, I know nothing. When they bombed the Trade Center, I couldn't
> believe what was going on. We've fought many enemies at different times.
> But we knew who they were and where they were. These people, we don't know
> who they are or where they are. That's the point that bothers me. Because
> they're gonna strike again, I'll put money on it. And it's going to be
> damned dramatic. But they're gonna do it in their own sweet time. We've
> got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this
> business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five
> seconds on them.
>
> ST: What about the bomb? Einstein said the world has changed since the atom
> was split.
>
> PT: That's right. It has changed.
>
> ST: And Oppenheimer knew that.
>
> PT: Oppenheimer is dead. He did something for the world and people don't
> understand. And it is a free world.
>
> ST: One last thing, when you hear people say, "Let's nuke 'em," "Let's nuke
> these people," what do you think?
>
> PT: Oh, I wouldn't hesitate if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're
> gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn
> war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the
> newspapers would just cut out the shit: "You've killed so many civilians."
> That's their tough luck for being there.
>
> ST: By the way, I forgot to say Enola Gay was originally called number 82.
> How did your mother feel about having her name on it?
>
> PT: Well, I can only tell you what my dad said. My mother never changed her
> expression very much about anything, whether it was serious or light, but
> when she'd get tickled, her stomach would jiggle. My dad said to me that
> when the telephone in Miami rang, my mother was quiet first. Then, when it
> was announced on the radio, he said: "You should have seen the old gal's
> belly jiggle on that one."
>
>
>
> --------Isn't that a heck of a history lesson?---------
>

 

[racerdave]

Nice read Carbon. Thanks.

My dad was in WW2. He was on a LST in the Phillipines. His ship was hit by a kamaikaze. He was then on a hospital ship also hit by a kamikaze I believe. He died July 2010 at almost 93. He still would mention "we lost a lot of good boys" from that.

 

[54inches]

My grandfather took all of the aerial photographs of Hirosima and Nagasaki. He was scheduled to be on all of the tests drop and actual drops for both, but they decided that the least amount of people on the flights was best.

He was the last surviving member of that team.

He was also part of the videography team for the ground based sessions.

I have his .45 that he carried throughout the war.

 

[I am Carbon]

racerdave: your welcome. my Pop was in the army then. He was aboard ship with the invasion force heading for Japan when the bomb was droped.
glad to hear the you Dad made it through his ordeal.
54inches: Do you have any pics that your GrandPa took? Thats real cool that you have his 45 as well. I have an osaka rifle that Pop had from then

 

[54inches]

I do have quite a few. He traveled the world and I am lucky to have them.

 

[Kingwj]

I work with a man who observed 3 H-bomb tests in the Pacific. He's 81 years old and still works a 40 hour week as a millwright.

 

[I am Carbon]

I work with a man who observed 3 H-bomb tests in the Pacific. He's 81 years old and still works a 40 hour week as a millwright.

if you want a copy to share with him PM me ur email address

 

[sherwin]

What a great history lesson! May God Bless all those who serve and have served in our military and their families !!!

 

[xjwmx]

There's a book named "Surely You're Joking Dr. Feynman" by Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman that includes a lot of inside info on the Manhattan Project from while he was working on it as a graduate student. The book is hillarious for the most part, like Feynman perfects the art of speaking phony foreign languages and how to do it. He could also sniff out a trail like a bloodhound. He could get down on all fours and he could track you like a dog. Not joking.

He achieved some popular acknowledgment as a member of the panel that investigated the Challenger disaster. Some kind of experiment he demonstrated there in front of TV, I forget what. I remember him pointing out a bunch of bad flaws in the design and saying he wouldn't fly on it for anything...

 

[samplefool]

That is some good stuff. Good find OP.

 

[Mailman]

Bump: I thought this story was fascinating, my father served in WW2, fighting in the Philippines, right after the Japanese surrender he was sent to Japan to assist in overseeing their surrender and act as an occupying army.
Prior to this, his unit had been preparing for a beach landing for the invasion of the Japanese homeland. They had been prepared to lose an awful lot of soldiers during that invasion. My father used to speak of how surprised they were when they’d heard about some secret weapon that had been dropped on Japan and relieved they all were to hear the invasion was off.
@Travis Id just like to say how much I have been enjoying the sites new software, particularly the “ similar threads” section that shows up at the bottom of every page. It has opened up a whole new part of the forum for me, from some who are no longer around or have just been buried by time. I find I read as much of these old threads as I do new ones. Great update!

 

[Jim]

particularly the “ similar threads” section that shows up at the bottom of every page. It has opened up a whole new part of the forum for me, from some who are no longer around or have just been buried by time. I find I read as much of these old threads as I do new ones. Great update!

I agree. It doesn't do a very good job with "similar," but it does drag up some interesting reads.

 

[kshansen]

On this subject my wife has/had an aunt who had a bit different experience that day. See she was a kid riding a bus with her sister in Hiroshima that day her sister did not survive. Wife's uncle who married her was stationed in Japan I believe in the 1950/60's. Don't know much more than that.

 

[MaxPete]

Once again, Mark Felton - YouTube historian has a video on this very topic:

 

[MaxPete]

And yet another chapter in the sad, but fascinating story of the last days of WW-2....

....just imagine: a Canadian-built Lancaster could have dropped the A-bomb...

(there is always a Canadian angle )

 

[Grimly]

On this subject my wife has/had an aunt who had a bit different experience that day. See she was a kid riding a bus with her sister in Hiroshima that day her sister did not survive. Wife's uncle who married her was stationed in Japan I believe in the 1950/60's. Don't know much more than that.

Similarly, I encountered a Japanese businessman who'd been a kid at Hiroshima.
I was hitch-hiking through Belgium in 1984 when this guy gave me a lift. He'd probably told this story a hundred times to every hiker he'd picked up, but anyway...
He was a guy in his late 40s I suppose, and at the time of the bomb drop his school had been evacuated to a village in the surrounding hills, but not in direct sight of the city - it was over a ridge.
That morning, the sky lit up like a second dawn for a few seconds.

 

[40north]

It's a wonderful interview. Thanks! There were things I did not know.

Tibbitts, obviously, was an honorable man and loyal officer.

Groves, while Roosevelt was alive, in March of '45, told Rotbalt "the Bomb is for Russia.". At that time, of course, the Red Army was finishing off the European nazi armies (not all Germans by any means!) and the US was allied with Russia/USSR. https://archive.org/details/decisiontouseato00alpe (Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable was followed by dropshot and a series of subsequent plans to do first strike atomic attack on Russia. These continue. Of course one effect of the bombs on Japan was to accelerate the creation of Joe #1, an improved copy, thanks to Fuchs and the fellas on the Mesa...

Many people, experts, judge that Japan was defeated in the field in Manchuria by the Red Army, and that Tokyo regarded the atomic destruction as no different that any of the other dozens of fire-bombed cities of Japan. They were trying to surrender long before the nukes, and when the Reds massively defeated the Japanese Army it was over. That was a strong army, and the US feared it.

What Tibbitts and the fellas actually did was start the nuclear arms race and the cold war, which entertains us today. Rather than end a war, they began one... Pity that Wallace was dumped due to funny business at the '44 convention....eh? How did that happen?

What Groves did, what he said to Rotblat, evidences his involvement in a conspiracy of insubordination to presidential authority in wartime. Using the bombs on Russia was not Policy.

I note that Tibbitts in the interview with Studs, remarks that they planed to use the bomb "in Europe" Why did he not say "against the nazis" or "against the fascist"... was that because they planned to use it on Russia in Europe? Well, that was the plan "dropkick"...re the wiki above...

Anybody wants to talk about "first use"...that train left station in '45...

Sooo. Why did the bombs drop? Same as Dresden, to intimate and threaten the Red Army. Byrnes and Truman discussions are now mostly public. Their explicit and vocalized intent was to frighten and coerce the Soviets into compliant and subservient posture, and to destroy them ... ultimately to loot the resources of Eurasia. Oh, yes, they were originally designated test 2 and test 3, they wanted living test subject, other than the down-winders dying downwind of Trinity. Groves' racism toward the Slaves led him to say they'd never be able to build an atom bomb.

(he seems to have made there a small error, one of many, including insubordination)

All history ends, just a second ago... Later fellas. Tibbitts was a good sound man, but like many soldier, badly used.

Later fellas...

Joe 1

 

[GaryInVA]

That picture of Fatman looks like it is in the Bradbury museum in Los Alamos. I worked at LANL for 3 years and heard a story about the museum asking the lab if they had a model of the bombs in their inventory they could use for the museum. The had one stored in a warehouse. One of the employees at the lab had it loaded into his truck and stopped at the carwash to clean it off. There was a picture of him spraying it off on his desk. He added a caption "Only in Los Alamos can you see an A Bomb at the car wash".