Charles Sweeney
| Charles W. Sweeney |
|---|
| Rank | Major General |
| Unit | 509th Composite Group |
| Commands held | 393rd Bombardment Squadron 102nd Tactical Fighter Wing |
| Battles/wars | World War II Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki |
In July 1945 the United States had produced enough fuel for three complete bombs—“Gadget” (plutonium), “Little Boy” (uranium), and “Fat Man” (plutonium)— with almost enough plutonium left over for a fourth.
On August 13, 1945—four days after the bombing of Nagasaki—two military officials had a phone conversation about how many more bombs to detonate over Japan and when. According to the declassified conversation, there was a third bomb set to be dropped on August 19th.
Destroying the Base at Pearl Harbor Would Mean Japan Controlled the Pacific. Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would drive the United States out of isolation and into World War II, a conflict that would end with Japan's surrender after the devastating nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation atomic bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass or a combination of these benefits.
The Japanese were warned before the bomb was dropped. After the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, which called on the Japanese to surrender, leaflets warned of “prompt and utter destruction” unless Japan heeded that order.
“We have found fallout debris 12 kilometers to the southeast of the A-bomb explosion hypocenter, around Great Torii Gate, Miyajima island, and also some 30 kilometers to the northeast,” he says. That's because the blast at Hiroshima was kept in by the surrounding mountains.
The uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 had an explosive yield equal to 15,000 tonnes of TNT. It razed and burnt around 70 per cent of all buildings and caused an estimated 140,000 deaths by the end of 1945, along with increased rates of cancer and chronic disease among the survivors.
Death is highly likely and radiation poisoning is almost certain if one is caught in the open with no terrain or building masking effects within a radius of 0–3 km from a 1 megaton airburst, and the 50% chance of death from the blast extends out to ~8 km from the same 1 megaton atmospheric explosion.
It thrust the world into the atomic age, changing warfare and geopolitical relations forever. Less than a month later, the U.S. dropped two nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan—further proving it was now possible to obliterate large swaths of land and kill masses of people in seconds.
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing 210,000 people—children, women, and men. President Truman authorized the use of the atom bombs in an effort to bring about Japan's surrender in the Second World War.
Two more were detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946, and some 120 were produced between 1947 and 1949, when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. The Fat Man was retired in 1950.
| Fat Man |
|---|
| Designer | Los Alamos Laboratory |
| Produced | 1945–1949 |
| No. built | 120 |
| Specifications |
The accepted wisdom in the United States for the last 75 years has been that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later was the only way to end the World War II without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps millions of Japanese lives.
The most powerful nuclear weapon in the current US arsenal is the B83 aircraft bomb, which has a maximum yield of 1.2 megatons (1,200 kilotons), said Kile. "The destructive impact of modern thermonuclear weapons is difficult to calculate.
Hiroshima Today. In 1958, the population of Hiroshima reached 410,000, finally exceeding what it was before the war. In 1980, Hiroshima became Japan's tenth "government ordinance designated city." At present, it is a major urban center, home to about 1.12 million.
