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August 6, 2005
The Greatest Scientific Gamble in History
Zenpundit has posted President Truman's announcement of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, along with a number of links on the 60th anniversary of the event. One of the most interesting things about the Little Boy bomb that destroyed Hiroshima is that it was never tested before it was used: it was considered so simple that testing was redundant. (The Trinity test was of Fat Man, the bomb used to destroy Nagasaki three days later.) Those three weapons, the two bombs used on Japan and the one for the Trinity test, were the entire US stockpile, and it is my understanding that it would have been six months before another weapon was ready to be used. Had Japan not surrendered, Operation Olympic - the invasion of mainland Japan - would have been necessary, and very probably more people would have died than were killed in the two atomic bombings.
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Comments
Hey Jeff,
First, thanks for the link !
I believe that you are correct that Fat Man was the last in the stockpile at the time but that the production schedule allowed for two new bombs to have been ready for use by mid-late September and then roughly one a month thereafter but accelerating the number in 1946.
Given the American capacity to launch massive 1000 plane firebomb raids in the interim between atomic bombings, very little in terms of structures would have been left standing in Japan had the war continued.
Despite these facts, the surrender itself was a close thing. The Japanese Cabinet deadlocked on surrender after Hiroshima, rendering moot the argument made by the Franck Committee at the time and subsequent critics that a " demonstration" test should have been made to impress the Japanese into surrender. I'm hard-pressed to think of a more impressive and deadly demonstration than the Hiroshima bombing itself.
Posted by: mark safranski at August 6, 2005 11:00 PM