Реферат: The Manhattan Project The Project To Create

The plan for the plutonium bomb was the idea of implosion. This would require a plutonium core to be crushed inward until it reached critical mass. This was much more complex than the idea of the gun mechanism. The final design for the plan was to create a plutonium core and have several explosive devices around the plutonium, they then all had

to be detonated at the exact same time to crush the plutonium. This was the idea of the bomb known as Fat Man which was eventually dropped on Nagasaki.

On April 12, 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt died of a stroke, while posing for a portrait. His Vice President, Harry S Truman became the thirty-third President of the United States. Truman knew nothing of the Manhattan Project, or of the 2 billion dollars invested in the project to create the first atomic bomb.

By April 30, 1945 the German leader, Aldof Hitler, committed suicide. Russian troops were already inside Berlin. The war in Europe was almost over. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 6, 1945. Germany was no longer a threat. The United States then turned all its attention to the Pacific.

In the Pacific war, Japan had become desperate. They had sent out the order to their soldiers to fight to the death. The use of kamikazes was ordered. These were pilots who flew planes loaded with explosives directly into American ships, killing the pilot and inflicting great damage on ships. But the most shocking of sacrifice occurred on the islands of Iwo Jima and. On Iwo Jima, Americans died by the thousands trying to root out Japanese who had dug themselves in to tunnels and caves. On Okinawa, the Japanese military command sent out the order to fight until

every last soldier was killed. Even civilians killed themselves before they

were captured. The civilians were told not to trust the American marines when they said that they wouldn t harm them. They were told that the only way that Americans could become marines was to kill their own parents. Okinawain civilians jumped of jagged cliffs to their deaths, rather than be captured by the enemy. Japan s intent was for the American public to be so outraged by the heavy American casualties, that President Truman would be forced to negotiate a peace that would leave Japan much like they were before the war.

Truman, Churchill, and Stalin had a conference in Potsdam, Germany, to decide the future of Europe and the ongoing war in Europe. Russia had mutually agreed with the United States to help defeat Japan in the Pacific. Stalin told Churchill and Truman that within a few months the Russian army would set off for Siberia and capture parts of northern Asia that were under Japanese control.

Early in the morning on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb ever detonated was exploded over the New Mexico desert. The test was nicknamed Trinity . The bomb was a plutonium device using the implosion method of detonation. The bomb was called, the Gadget . President Truman got word of the successful test the some day at Potsdam. Truman was clearly excited about the news and showed it at the

Potsdam conference. He became quite bold when negotiating the terms by which Europe would be divided up between England, Russia and the United

States. He informed Stalin that the United States had possessed a new weapon of unusual destructive force. At Potsdam, all three leaders had agreed to inform Japan that if they did not accept the allied request for a complete and unconditional surrender, they would suffer prompt and utter destruction. Japan s Prime Minister Baron Kantaro Suzuki responded to the warning by vowing to resolutely fight for the successful conclusion of the war.

On July 24 Truman officially released the bomb to the Air Force for use against Japan. The bomb was to be delivered on August 3 and used on August 6, had Japan not yet surrendered. Early, at 7:30 A.M., over Hiroshima in the plane holding Little Boy (the Engola Gay), the bomb was armed. At 8:16 A.M. Little Boy detonated 1900 feet over Hiroshima. Buildings and people near ground zero were completely vaporized by the million degree heat. People as far as 7 miles away, were blinded by the light. After the blast a fire storm started, thus oxygen was sparse in the area, thousands died of asphyxiation. This was the same effect of the conventional fire bombing over Tokyo, days earlier. Glass windows over 12 miles away were broken by a shock wave created by the blast. The destruction was unlike anything the world has seen before.

President Truman demanded that Japan surrender. The Air Force dropped leaflets over major Japanese cities calling for the people of Japan to petition the Emperor to end the war before another Hiroshima occurred. Three days later President Truman approved the use of a second atomic bomb. Around 11 A.M. on August 9, an Air Force plane dropped this bomb called Fat Man , over the city of Nagasaki. It s original target was the city of Kokura, but it was to cloudy to get an effective sight of the target.

More bombs were prepared, but Truman stopped the production. He said he couldn t kill all of those kids . It did not matter. Emperor Hirohito accepted the Potsdam Declaration, and made a radio address to his people and told them that he could not bear seeing his people suffer any more. (Beyer, Don E., Larsen, Rebecca)

The Decision

The decision to drop the atomic bomb over Japan was a controversial one. And in Harry Truman s own words, The hardest decision anyone has ever had to made. The most common question asked What if it had not been dropped? . In all likelihood, the result was a planned invasion of Japan. The Pentagon estimated the casualties of the planned invasion of Japan at 1,000,000.

A month before the Trinity test, the U.S. Air Force fire bombed the

Japanese capital of Tokyo using gelatin gasoline. The result of one single day of this kind of bombing was 100,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries. This number is almost the total amount of deaths that resulted from the Atomic explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the shock and horror that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed in seconds by one single bomb flew in by one single plane, that convinced Emperor Hirohito to order an unconditional surrender of Japan and it s armed forces.

Over 150,00 prisoners of war were being held in Japan. The Japanese military command sent out an order to all P.O.W. camps just weeks before Hiroshima, “If the American dogs invade, every prisoner in all the camps will be killed. Not a single bullet is to be used, they are all to be beheaded.”

The Japanese atrocities during the war, the possible deaths of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers in a proposed invasion, the thousands of casualties taken in the battle of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the thousands of Navy sailors killed by the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, all contributed to the decision to drop the first atomic bomb.