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N0KFQ > TODAY 16.07.10 17:49l 61 Lines 2777 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jul 16
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From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@WW
Jul 16, 1945:
Atom bomb successfully tested
On this day in 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the Manhattan Project
comes to an explosive end as the first atom bomb is successfully
tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Plans for the creation of a uranium bomb by the Allies were
established as early as 1939, when Italian emigre physicist
Enrico Fermi met with U.S. Navy department officials at Columbia
University to discuss the use of fissionable materials for
military purposes. That same year, Albert Einstein wrote to
President Franklin Roosevelt supporting the theory that an
uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction had great potential as a
basis for a weapon of mass destruction. In February 1940, the
federal government granted a total of $6,000 for research. But
in early 1942, with the United States now at war with the Axis
powers, and fear mounting that Germany was working on its own
uranium bomb, the War Department took a more active interest,
and limits on resources for the project were removed.
Brigadier-General Leslie R. Groves, himself an engineer, was now
in complete charge of a project to assemble the greatest minds
in science and discover how to harness the power of the atom as
a means of bringing the war to a decisive end. The Manhattan
Project (so-called because of where the research began) would
wind its way through many locations during the early period of
theoretical exploration, most importantly, the University of
Chicago, where Enrico Fermi successfully set off the first
fission chain reaction. But the Project took final form in the
desert of New Mexico, where, in 1943, Robert J. Oppenheimer
began directing Project Y at a laboratory at Los Alamos, along
with such minds as Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Fermi. Here
theory and practice came together, as the problems of achieving
critical mass-a nuclear explosion-and the construction of a
deliverable bomb were worked out.
Finally, on the morning of July 16, in the New Mexico desert 120
miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated.
The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves
10,000 yards away to observe as the first mushroom cloud of
searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated
the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. The tower
on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized.
The question now became-on whom was the bomb to be dropped?
Germany was the original target, but the Germans had already
surrendered. The only belligerent remaining was Japan.
A footnote: The original $6,000 budget for the Manhattan Project
finally ballooned to a total cost of $2 billion.
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