The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113248 Message #2407011
Posted By: robomatic
06-Aug-08 - 05:42 PM
Thread Name: BS: Good Ole Harry Truman
Subject: RE: BS: Good Ole Harry Truman
Ascribing the decision to A-Bomb Japan to a 'narrow-minded' President Truman is simply to be unaware of the facts, as well as unacquanted with Harry Truman.
Whether or not one agrees with the decision, it was thoroughly vetted, and a lot of thought by a lot of people was put to it. An entire aircraft wing (wing as in multiple planes) was developed to carry it. Japan was being bombed to rubble by thousand plane raids; the only cities not being bombed were those reserved for the A-Bomb.
The first bomb was the Uranium bomb. This did not need to be tested in New Mexico because the physicists knew it would work.
This is the 63rd anniversary of the second bomb, which was the Plutonium implosion bomb. It was a more-or-less identical copy of the Trinity device with the addition of a bomb casing around it.
There were the makings for a third bomb, but after the effects of the first two explosions were determined, the US Government took civil control of the nuclear core back from the military and had it returned.
It should be emphasized that these atomic weapons were the explosive equivalent each of a two-thousand bomber raid over a city. What was just over the time horizon, fortunately after the War, was the development of new weapons that were a thousand times yet more powerful.
They were horrible horrible devices. They ended the war and there has never been another war like it since.