that was easy Namvet. germany did. the little boy was around long before we set off our fatman.

the manhatten project asshole. and BTY someone else on here just said "And fuck you crowley, you're an asshole." seems you have a fan club. and growing. you may be CROWned the board asshole soon.

__________________
Osama: no we can't !!!

"who invented the atomic bomb ????"


"the manhatten project asshole. and BTY someone else on here just said "And fuck you crowley, you're an asshole." "


--NAMBLAvet

Invention and Discovery: Atomic Bombs and Fission
Last changed April 1997
Leo Szilard and the Invention of the Atomic Bomb
It would be logical to assume that the discovery of fission preceded the invention of the atomic bomb. It would be normal also to expect that no single individual could really claim to be "the inventor", since the possibility sprang naturally from a physical process, and required the efforts of many thousands to bring it into existence. Many descriptions of the origin of atomic bombs can be found that logically and normally say exactly these things.

But they are not correct.

The idea of "invention" does not usually require the physical realization of the invented thing. This fact is clearly recognized by patent law, which does not require a working model in order to award a patent. It is common for inventions to require additional discoveries and developments before the actual thing can be made. In these cases, an invention may fairly have more than one inventor - the originator of the principle idea, and the individual who actually made the first workable model.

In the case of the atomic bomb there is clearly one man who is the originator of the idea. He was also the instigator of the project that led ultimately to the successful construction of the atomic bomb, and was a principal investigator in the early R&D both before and after the founding of the atomic bomb project - making a number of the key discoveries himself. By any normal standard this man is the inventor of the atomic bomb.

This man is Leo Szilard.

On September 12, 1932, within seven months of the discovery of the neutron, and more than six years before the discovery of fission, Leo Szilard conceived of the possibility of a controlled release of atomic power through a multiplying neutron chain reaction, and also realized that if such a reaction could be found, then a bomb could be built using it.

On July 4, 1934 Leo Szilard filed a patent application for the atomic bomb In his application, Szilard described not only the basic concept of using neutron induced chain reactions to create explosions, but also the key concept of the critical mass. The patent was awarded to him - making Leo Szilard the legally recognized inventor of the atomic bomb.

Szilard did not patent this prescient and tremendously important idea for personal gain. His motive was to protect the idea to prevent its harmful use, for he immediately attempted to turn the idea over to the British government for free so that it could be classified and protected under British secrecy laws.

On October 8, 1935 the British War Office rejected Szilard's offer, but a few months later in February 1936 he succeeded in getting the British Admiralty to accept the gift. Szilard's actions in attempting to restrict the availability of the atomic bomb, are also the earliest case of nuclear arms control. Later, when the possibility of a German atomic bomb had been shown to be nonexistent, Szilard campaigned vigorously against the use of the bomb, and went on to help found The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and The Council for a Livable World.

The Discovery of Fission
With the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in February 1932 a scientific gold rush ensued to discover what effects would be produced by bombarding different materials with this new particle. Over the next several years, teams of researchers in several countries (especially one headed by Enrico Fermi in Rome) bombarded every known element with neutrons and recorded scores, even hundreds, of new radioactive isotopes.

On May 10, 1934 Fermi's research group published a report on experiments with neutron bombardment of uranium. This was the first such investigation to be reported on. Several radioactive products are detected, but positive identifications were not made. Interpreting the results of neutron bombardment of uranium became known as the "Uranium Problem" since the large number of different radioactivities produced defied rational explanation. The dominant theory was that a number of transuranic elements never before seen were being produced, but the chemical behavior as well as the nuclear behavior of these substances were unexpected and confusing.

The first statement of the correct resolution of the Uranium Problem was published by German chemist Ida Noddack in September. Her letter in _Zeitshrift fur Angewandte Chemie_ argued that the anomalous radioactivities produced by neutron bombardment of uranium may be due to the atom splitting into smaller pieces. No notice of this suggestion was taken.

Fermi discovered the extremely important principle of neutron behavior called "moderation" on October 22, 1934. Moderation is the phenomenon of enhanced capture of low energy neutrons, as when they are slowed down by repeated collisions with light atoms.

December 1935, Chadwick won the Nobel Prize for discovery of the neutron.

In November-December 1938, the Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner correctly unravel the Uranium Problem. Hahn determines conclusively that one of the mysterious radioactivities is a previously known isotope of barium. Working with Meitner, they develop a theoretical interpretation of this demonstrated fact. On December 21, 1938 Hahn submits a paper to _Naturwissenschaften_ showing conclusive evidence of the production of radioactive barium from neutron irradiated uranium, i.e. evidence of fission.

In the first few weeks of January, word of the discovery traveled quickly in Europe.

January 13, 1939 - Otto Frisch observed fission directly by detecting fission fragments in an ionization chamber. With the assistance of William Arnold, he coins the term "fission".

By mid January Szilard heard about the discovery of fission from Eugene Wigner, and immediately realized that the fission fragments, due to their lower atomic weights, would have excess neutrons which must be shed. The multiplying neutron chain reaction that he had postulated had finally been discovered.

January 26, 1939 - Niels Bohr publicly announces the discovery of fission at an annual theoretical physics conference at George Washington University in Washington, DC. This announcement was the principal revelation of fission in the United States.

January 29, 1939 - Robert Oppenheimer hears about the discovery of fission, within a few minutes he realized that excess neutrons must be emitted, and that it might be possible to build a bomb.

February 5, 1939 - Niels Bohr gained a crucial insight into the principles of fission - that U-235 and U-238 must have different fission properties, that U-238 could be fissioned by fast neutrons but not slow ones, and that U-235 accounted for observed slow fission in uranium.

At this point there were too many uncertainties about fission to see clearly whether or how self-sustaining chain reactions could arise. Key uncertainties were:

The number of neutrons emitted per fission, and
The cross sections for fission and absorption at different energies for the uranium isotopes.
For a chain reaction there would need to be both a sufficient excess of neutrons produced, and the ratio between fission to absorption averaged over the neutron energies present would need to be sufficiently large.

The different properties of U-235 and U-238 were essential to understand in determining the feasibility of an atomic bomb, or of any atomic power at all. The only uranium available for study was the isotope mixture of natural uranium, in which U-235 comprised only 0.71%.

March, 1939 - Fermi and Herbert Anderson determine that there are about two neutrons produced for every one consumed in fission.

June, 1939 - Fermi and Szilard submit a paper to _Physical Review_ describing sub-critical neutron multiplication in a lattice of uranium oxide in water, but it is clear that natural uranium and water cannot make a self-sustaining reaction. This paper is the first experimental evidence of neutron multiplication.

July 3, 1939 - Szilard writes to Fermi describing the idea of using a uranium lattice in carbon (graphite) to create a chain reaction. This is the first proposal of the graphite moderated reactor concept.

August 31, 1939 - Bohr and John A. Wheeler publish a theoretical analysis of fission. This theory implies U-235 is more fissile than U-238, and that the undiscovered element 94-239 is also very fissile. These implications are not immediately recognized.

September 1, 1939 - Germany invades Poland, beginning World War 2.

why didn't Germany detonate one????? saving it for Hitlers birthday?????

__________________
Osama: no we can't !!!

just cause everyone hates crowley Nam, dont mean your facts are straight. 1 that was a fat man they tested in june 1945. 2. they didnt have TWO projects going simultaniously. 3. we never tasted the little boy, { germany did. }. 4. the little boy was more powerfull. the little boy was a GERMAN bomb.

Take it from Jebes, Nammy...

When he's not editing for Turkey Tracker magazine, he's watching the History Channel.

sure. thats yer source of learned knowledge there, not mine. i thought you were ready to turn a new leaf? what happened with that?

The Hiroshima Myth
by John V. Denson
by John V. Denson


DIGG THIS

Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the "patriotic" political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.

The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for The New York Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book immediately after the war entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy ". . . was perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war . . . . Unconditional surrender was an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler, probably lengthened the war, costs us lives, and helped to lead to the present aborted peace."

The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all of history dating back to 660 B.C. The Japanese religion added the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their Emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes trial. The Emperor, Hirohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question is posed, "Why then were the bombs dropped?"

The author Alperovitz gives us the answer in great detail which can only be summarized here, but he states, "We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book The Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that ‘On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo – they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.’" It is documented by Alperovitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman. Alperovitz further points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their Emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945. This proclamation made a final demand upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or suffer drastic consequences.

Another startling fact about the military connection to the dropping of the bomb is the lack of knowledge on the part of General MacArthur about the existence of the bomb and whether it was to be dropped. Alperovitz states "MacArthur knew nothing about advance planning for the atomic bomb’s use until almost the last minute. Nor was he personally in the chain of command in this connection; the order came straight from Washington. Indeed, the War Department waited until five days before the bombing of Hiroshima even to notify MacArthur – the commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific – of the existence of the atomic bomb."

Alperovitz makes it very clear that the main person Truman was listening to while he ignored all of this civilian and military advice, was James Byrnes, the man who virtually controlled Truman at the beginning of his administration. Byrnes was one of the most experienced political figures in Washington, having served for over thirty years in both the House and the Senate. He had also served as a United States Supreme Court Justice, and at the request of President Roosevelt, he resigned that position and accepted the role in the Roosevelt administration of managing the domestic economy. Byrnes went to the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and then was given the responsibility to get Congress and the American people to accept the agreements made at Yalta.

When Truman became a senator in 1935, Byrnes immediately became his friend and mentor and remained close to Truman until Truman became president. Truman never forgot this and immediately called on Byrnes to be his number-two man in the new administration. Byrnes had expected to be named the vice presidential candidate to replace Wallace and had been disappointed when Truman had been named, yet he and Truman remained very close. Byrnes had also been very close to Roosevelt, while Truman was kept in the dark by Roosevelt most of the time he served as vice president. Truman asked Byrnes immediately, in April, to become his Secretary of State but they delayed the official appointment until July 3, 1945, so as not to offend the incumbent. Byrnes had also accepted a position on the interim committee which had control over the policy regarding the atom bomb, and therefore, in April, 1945 became Truman’s main foreign policy advisor, and especially the advisor on the use of the atomic bomb. It was Byrnes who encouraged Truman to postpone the Potsdam Conference and his meeting with Stalin until they could know, at the conference, if the atomic bomb was successfully tested. While at the Potsdam Conference the experiments proved successful and Truman advised Stalin that a new massively destructive weapon was now available to America, which Byrnes hoped would make Stalin back off from any excessive demands or activity in the post-war period.

Truman secretly gave the orders on July 25, 1945 that the bombs would be dropped in August while he was to be in route back to America. On July 26, he issued the Potsdam Proclamation, or ultimatum, to Japan to surrender, leaving in place the unconditional surrender policy, thereby causing both Truman and Byrnes to believe that the terms would not be accepted by Japan.

The conclusion drawn unmistakably from the evidence presented, is that Byrnes is the man who convinced Truman to keep the unconditional surrender policy and not accept Japan’s surrender so that the bombs could actually be dropped thereby demonstrating to the Russians that America had a new forceful leader in place, a "new sheriff in Dodge" who, unlike Roosevelt, was going to be tough with the Russians on foreign policy and that the Russians needed to "back off" during what would become known as the "Cold War." A secondary reason was that Congress would now be told about why they had made the secret appropriation to a Manhattan Project and the huge expenditure would be justified by showing that not only did the bombs work but that they would bring the war to an end, make the Russians back off and enable America to become the most powerful military force in the world.

If the surrender by the Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July of 1945 and the Emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was after the bombing, this would have kept Russia out of the war. Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering the war. Russia’s entry into the war for six days allowed them to gain tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key areas of Asia. The Japanese were deathly afraid of Communism and if the Potsdam Proclamation had indicated that America would accept the conditional surrender allowing the Emperor to remain in place and informed the Japanese that Russia would enter the war if they did not surrender, then this would surely have assured a quick Japanese surrender.

The second question that Alperovitz answers in the last half of the book is how and why the Hiroshima myth was created. The story of the myth begins with the person of James B. Conant, the President of Harvard University, who was a prominent scientist, having initially made his mark as a chemist working on poison gas during World War I. During World War II, he was chairman of the National Defense Research Committee from the summer of 1941 until the end of the war and he was one of the central figures overseeing the Manhattan Project. Conant became concerned about his future academic career, as well as his positions in private industry, because various people began to speak out concerning why the bombs were dropped. On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publically quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a "toy and they wanted to try it out . . . ." He further stated, "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it." Albert Einstein, one of the world’s foremost scientists, who was also an important person connected with the development of the atomic bomb, responded and his words were headlined in The New York Times "Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb." The story reported that Einstein stated that "A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb." In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.

Probably the person closest to Truman, from the military standpoint, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, and there was much talk that he also deplored the use of the bomb and had strongly advised Truman not to use it, but advised rather to revise the unconditional surrender policy so that the Japanese could surrender and keep the Emperor. Leahy’s views were later reported by Hanson Baldwin in an interview that Leahy "thought the business of recognizing the continuation of the Emperor was a detail which should have been solved easily." Leahy’s secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, reported that Leahy told her on the day the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, "Dorothy, we will regret this day. The United States will suffer, for war is not to be waged on women and children." Another important naval voice, the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that "The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war." In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war." It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was "It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime." Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to "succumb" to Byrnes.

James Conant came to the conclusion that some important person in the administration must go public to show that the dropping of the bombs was a military necessity, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, so he approached Harvey Bundy and his son, McGeorge Bundy. It was agreed by them that the most important person to create this myth was Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. It was decided that Stimson would write a long article to be widely circulated in a prominent national magazine. This article was revised repeatedly by McGeorge Bundy and Conant before it was published in Harper’s magazine in February of 1947. The long article became the subject of a front-page article and editorial in The New York Times and in the editorial it was stated "There can be no doubt that the president and Mr. Stimson are right when they mention that the bomb caused the Japanese to surrender." Later, in 1959, President Truman specifically endorsed this conclusion, including the idea that it saved the lives of a million American soldiers. This myth has been renewed annually by the news media and various political leaders ever since.

It is very pertinent that, in the memoirs of Henry Stimson entitled On Active Service in Peace and War, he states, "Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such."

To bring this matter more into focus from the human tragedy standpoint, I recommend the reading of a book entitled Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6, September 30, 1945, by Michiko Hachiya. He was a survivor of Hiroshima and kept a daily diary about the women, children and old men that he treated on a daily basis in the hospital. The doctor was badly injured himself but recovered enough to help others and his account of the personal tragedies of innocent civilians who were either badly burned or died as a result of the bombing puts the moral issue into a clear perspective for all of us to consider.

Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear, and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we are destined for extermination.

August 2, 2006