16 ms·

Declassified photos from Tinian Island as the B-29 “Enola Gay” was being loaded

369 points by junto 12y ago

tonteldoos 12y ago
I wonder if any of the guys in the photos realised to what extent they were (helping) rewriting history that day...
- pwg 12y ago
  Given the secrecy surrounding the bombs, it is highly likely that not one of them had any idea what it was they were assembling/loading into the plane. All they likely knew was that it was "some kind of new, secret, bomb". It is questionable whether the "high ranking officials" referenced in the plane alignment photo caption even had much knowledge of just what this "new, secret, bomb" really was.
  - rjsw 12y ago
    At least one of them [1] knew exactly what it was, I would guess that the others were working for him and had a pretty good idea too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sterling_Parsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sterling_Parsons
    - marktangotango 12y ago
      I think most of them had an idea about atomic bombs back then, and what they were doing could end the war. Robert Heinlien was investigated by the FBI in the late 30's due to a description of atomic bombs in a story he'd written. So the idea was out there so to speack. What they were ignorant of, I'm pretty sure, was the actual magnitude of the destruction caused by the devices. My father was about 10 yrs old at the time, he was deeply effected by news reels at the time. The tragedy was horrific.
      - nwatson 12y ago
        The atomic bombs were not more devastating to Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were conventional bomb campaigns to other similar cities in Japan toward the end of World War II. The damage from atomic bombs did not stand out as extraordinary to the Japanese leadership at the time. What forced Japan to surrender was Russia's declaration of war. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di... " ... But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer. ..."
        mikeash 12y ago
        Now chart out the number of planes used in the attack and the potential rate of attacks once the production pipeline really got going. That's what made it remarkable. A thousand B-29s fly over your city and leave it a smoking ruin is Tuesday, but two B-29s fly over and do the same and that's something new and scary. Contrary to your statement that the attack was considered unremarkable, reports of the attack were initially disbelieved by the Japanese government because they knew of nothing that had occurred that could have caused such damage: "It was generally felt at Headquarters that nothing serious had taken place, that it was all a terrible rumor starting from a few sparks of truth." From http://www.abomb1.org/hiroshim/hiro_med.html#SUMMARY http://www.abomb1.org/hiroshim/hiro_med.html#SUMMARY The ultimate effect of the atomic bombings on the surrender compared to the Soviet intervention is highly debatable, of course, but it wasn't irrelevant just because it wasn't the most devastating attack of the war.
        ceejayoz 12y ago
        > Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer. That's like saying we'd treat a shooting incident where 500 people died the same as 500 individual murders.
- ewest 12y ago
  Just a day on the job as far as they were concerned. As with many things you might do, you only realize what you were doing was important (often) long after the fact.
- thathonkey 12y ago
  As far as we know, history can only be written the once. No rewrites.
  - tjradcliffe 12y ago
    We know a few other things too. For example, we know that anyone who confidently and bluntly asserts that "if X had been done Y would have happened" is not contributing to any useful discussion. People rarely know why they are doing what they are doing today, and certainly know almost nothing about why someone else did something half a century ago. We can point to things people said and did in the past and make informed judgements about the plausibility of various reasons they had for doing what they did, but again: anyone who asserts bluntly and with confidence that "Japan would have surrendered if..." or "Japan did surrender because..." isn't helping. Japan surrendered after Nagasaki was bombed. Some people think this shows that Hiroshima alone was not enough to convince the Japanese government that the new weapon would turn the tide of war against them. Russia declared war on Japan after Hiroshima was bombed. Some people think this was important to Japan's surrender, but would it have happened without the bomb? Japan had a history of fighting for every inch of territory. Some people think a conventional invasion would have resulted in a rapid conquest. Area bombing in Europe had a relatively small effect on the Axis war effort, and an awareness of this was growing within the Allied command. Within military circles there tends to be a feeling that if something isn't working the best thing is to do more of it. The bomb was more of it. Thus, the ineffectiveness of area bombing in Europe may have contributed to the decision to use the bomb in Japan. And so on... It is worth noting that war itself is almost always strongly motivated by counter-factuals. "If we just bomb the enemy they will surrender" (they don't: they become more dogged in defense until they demonstrably face total destruction). "If we engage in horrific acts of terrorism the enemy will run in fear!" (they don't: terrorist organizations that employ violence against civilians have a zero--yes, zero--rate of effectiveness in achieving their goals: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/792/why_terrorism_does_not_work.html http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/792/why_terr...) All we can say with anything remotely resembling certainty was that the bombs did drop and the war did end. We can make some informed guesses about why both sides decided the way they did. We can say virtually nothing with any certainty at all about what would have happened if any major decision had been different... except maybe one. What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? This is a counter-factual that people who are wont to make blunt, confident predictions about "what would have happened" had the Allies never destroyed Hiroshima or Nagasaki are generally surprisingly silent about, yet it is one of the few things that would plausibly (not certainly) have avoided the subsequent destruction of those cities.
Icybee 12y ago
I found out a few weeks ago they made a bunch of those bombs, minus the nuclear elements, for training. They even dropped some on Japanese targets and found they were fairly effective just from the explosive content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb
- mendort 12y ago
  They cost between 13k and 26k a piece in 2014 USD. That is truly amazing. EDIT: Even more amazing when you consider that they weighed about 10k pounds.
  - jonknee 12y ago
    It's amazing/depressing how cheap bombs are when they don't have to be smart.
    - bd_at_rivenhill 12y ago
      Actually, it's amazing how much they charge for bombs that are smart.
      - hollerith 12y ago
        Actually, most smart bombs (JDAMs) are just old, dumb bombs with a new "tail kit" containing a GPS and guidance electronics.
        mendort 12y ago
        A tail kit that costs almost 10 times as much as the bomb.
        hollerith 12y ago
        OK. (La Wik says the US Air Force is currently paying $27,000 per tail kit.)
nmridul 12y ago
Wondering why the staff are not wearing any protective clothing while handling nuclear devices ?
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  Nuclear bombs aren't very radioactive until they go critical, and at that point you've got bigger things to worry about. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Tickling_the_Dragons_Tail.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Tickling_...
- creativityhurts 12y ago
  I find it weird that most of them aren't wearing shirts at all.
  - patricksroberts 12y ago
    My grandfather was a mechanic in the Enola Gay's bomber group. He mentioned that his personal bar for heat and humidity are from some of the islands they setup airfields on in the Pacific. Considering he spent a fair amount of his career following that war in LA maintaining the B52 air wings I tend to wonder why more of them aren't wearing shirts.
  - tokenadult 12y ago
    Most of the local people on Tinian and the other northern Mariana islands historically haven't worn shirts, male or female, although standards of dress on those islands have of course westernized somewhat since Western colonization. The climate there is very suitable for going shirtless at many times of the year.
    - creativityhurts 12y ago
      Nice and reasonable explanation, thanks!
- privong 12y ago
  Most of the radioactivity danger from nuclear weapons and reactors relates to the byproducts of the fission process, rather than to the original fissile material.
symmetricsaurus 12y ago
Really intereresting photos. It is a bit unfortunate that many of the captions and the sequence of photos are inaccurate. There are many misses regarding which bomb was which and on which plane it was loaded and on which city it was felled. So, look at the pictures and ignore the captions and then read up on Wikipedia to understand the bigger picture.
vixin 12y ago
Implosion Sphere for Fat Man nearly assembled and about to be placed inside it's casing. "Its casing". Why do people have such a problem with it's and its?
- robmcm 12y ago
  Because it's the opposite of how you deal with possessives in other situations. ...inside Fat Man's casing... I assume you knew that though and were just being an ass.
  - Tenhundfeld 12y ago
    I think OP was just being an ass, but whether the behavior is opposite really depends on your frame of reference. The lack of apostrophe is consistent with how you deal with possessive pronouns: his, her/hers, our/ours, etc. No possessive pronouns have apostrophes, with one exception. And the apostrophe is consistent with how other contractions work. If you remember (and care) that its and it's are two separate words, then you should be able think your way through it. It's could legitimately be possessive or a contraction, but its can only be the possessive. Anyway, I agree with you that it's tricky enough that we shouldn't be assholes about it.
- sophacles 12y ago
  Because it's backwards of how apostrophes normally work. In all other cases, it is the right place to use an apostrophe: * ...about to be placed in Fat Man's casing. * ...about to be placed in the bomb's casing * ... about to be placed in its casing. One of those is not like the others.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    It helps to understand how it actually works. The s in its does not point towards possession, it is simply part of the word "its". My, His, Hers, Ours, Yours, Theirs, Its. Not Me's, He's, She's, Us's, Your's, Their's, It's. English is an easy language. Most languages use a lot more words than all that to convey all that. English speakers don't have to deal with the singular second person, with a separate objective noun for you/he/she, with neutrals (heck, barely at all with the feminine), and so on. So make an effort. Get its right :)
black_ 12y ago
I see shirts were out of fashion back then.
yitchelle 12y ago
It strikes fear into me that these folks are loading a device that is design to kill thousands of lives, the madness in this thing call war.
- creativityhurts 12y ago
  Especially when you read things like "The device's alignment was checked over by eye and hand."
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Actually, the purpose of the bomb was to save many thousands more lives than it ended. An invasion of Japan would've cost an enormous number of lives. It would've also had a catastrophic effect on the civilian population, because they were being told that the American troops were there to enslave them. It has even been said that the propaganda being told to the Japanese civilians included the idea that the troops would kill and cannibalize their families. I'm not sure whether that latter part is true, but what is true is that the civilians were extremely incentivized to be as hostile as possible to any American invasion army, even to the extent of whole families committing suicide out of fear of being enslaved or tortured, as on Okinawa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. Human affairs are sometimes terrible, but they often take the least terrible path out of all terrible paths. This is evidenced by the fact that the cuban missile crisis didn't result in an all-out nuclear war, and also that these bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than Americans invading Japan, which would have been far more devastating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high. Depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties. I upvoted you because I agree that everyone should be terrified at the prospect of war, because war only happens when people aren't terrified of it.
  - shabda 12y ago
    While there are many people who subscribe to your view, there are an equal number who believe that Japan would have surrendered within months/weeks with no ground invasion. The allies had complete air and naval superiority and Russia had joined the the Japanese war theatre. If you have read the ethics of atomic bombings in any detail you are already aware of the details, so I would refrain from linking to wikipedia. To push your POV that the bombing was entirely necessary and entirely morally right is immoral. [Edit] As requested below: here are the detail about the military unneccesity of the atomic bombings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Militarily_unnecessary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings... There are other debates around this, but this discusses only if Japan would have speedily surrendered without the Atomic bombing.
dabeeeenster 12y ago
For those that have not read it, the Richard Rhodes book is one of the finest pieces of science/engineering writing I have read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1471111237 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp...
- easytiger 12y ago
  I'm in the midst of it. Quite long but the background stuff is one of the best overviews of 20th century physics you can read anywhere.
- tcopeland 12y ago
  He's written a couple of other books relating to the atomic bomb; both were included on the STRATCOM reading list: http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/search?keywords=rhodes http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/search?keywords=...
- vesche 12y ago
  Rhodes also wrote Dark Sun (The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb) which is a fantastic follow on read to The Making of the Atomic Bomb. http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412094444&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+sun http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...
RankingMember 12y ago
D'oh. Anyone know of a mirror of this? Site is down.
- junto 12y ago
  Courtesy of @symetricasaurus elsehwere in this thread: https://archive.today/94EKG https://archive.today/94EKG
qwerta 12y ago
There were amazing (and deadly) alternatives to a-bomb. Most interesting was Bat bomb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
- dirktheman 12y ago
  That's hilarious! Imagine sitting in the mess hall, overhearing two men discussing their day: "I'm working on a cunning plan. It involves bombs, strapped to bats. What are you working on?" "Oh, just a nuclear fission device. When it goes supercritical it's.. oh well, never mind. Tell me more about the bats!"
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    ... and then reporting them for flagrant breaches of security, as well as being quarantined yourself for knowing too much. Whee, wartime is fun!
  - azth 12y ago
    Yeah, destruction is hilarious.
agumonkey 12y ago
archived => https://archive.today/94EKG https://archive.today/94EKG
dirktheman 12y ago
It always amazes me how seemingly careless they were with these nuclear devices back then. To know that such a devestating bomb was handled by a sultry, shirtless youngster, in a shed on a small island in the Pacific... It reminds me of the Slotin Incident (http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/ http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/) where dr. Louis Slotin accidently slipped the screwdriver he used to separate two plutonium/uranium hemispheres: "Immediately, all eight scientists in the room felt a wave of heat accompanied by a blue glow as the plutonium sphere vomited an invisible burst of gamma and neutron radiation into the room. As the lab's Geiger counter clicked hysterically, Louis used his bare hand to push the upper plutonium hemisphere off and onto the floor, which terminated the supercritical reaction moments after it began." Big oopsie. However gruesome the goal of these bombs, the rate of advancement in such a short timespan is nothing short of amazing. From the very first successful test (Trinity) to bombing Hiroshima: just 21 days. They were great days for science, but a shame to mankind that it had to come this far.
- cpwright 12y ago
  Ignoring the nuclear device aspect of it, I would think that these days anyone spraying any kind of sealant or paint these days in a commercial setting would have PPE to avoid breathing the stuff in.
  - junto 12y ago
    As well as the health and safety aspect I imagine that during times of war, your personal long term health outlook pales in comparison to the short-medium term survival possibilities. Hence, I imagine that many servicemen and women didn't see themselves as having a long life span. Maybe not consciously, but certainly subconsciously.
- AJ007 12y ago
  There have been a lot of very close calls. Including recently.
- thefreeman 12y ago
  That is amazing. I have had a lot of oh shit moments in my days, but none gets close to dropping the plutonium onto the uranium and nearly detonating a nuclear payload.
jcfrei 12y ago
Cached version - though some pictures are still missing: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aKemgW6roesJ:www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ch http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aKemgW6...
lutusp 12y ago
There are a number of errors in the photo captions, so for the record: 1. The "Little Boy" device, cylindrical in shape, was a U-235 gun-type device that was so simple in its design that it was dropped -- on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 -- without having been tested first. The U-235 was extraordinarily expensive to produce, taking up a large percentage of the Manhattan Project budget and several years. Two independent programs using different methods were designed to produce sufficient U-235, which needs to be separated from the much more abundant and non-fissioning U-238 isotope. The expense of extracting U-235 is the reason that only one such bomb was used, and only a few were ever built. 2. The "Fat Man" bomb design used an isotope of plutonium (Pu-239) that was bred in fission reactors in Hanford, WA and Oak Ridge, TN over a relatively short time and at much lower cost. This bomb was tested at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, in advance of its use on Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) because its implosion design was much more complex than the uranium bomb. 3. All modern fission weapons, and the trigger devices in fusion weapons, are design descendants of the Pu-239 "Fat Man" device that was dropped on nagasaki.
pseudometa 12y ago
Here is a mirror for the site: https://archive.today/94EKG https://archive.today/94EKG
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks. We changed the url from http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm because the latter is down.
  - junto 12y ago
    I feel a bit bad for being the cause of their site suspension. Thanks for changing the URL.
BuildTheRobots 12y ago
Looks like HN has blown the sites quota out of the water... though as it redirects to http://www.alternatewars.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi http://www.alternatewars.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi you've gotta wonder what the cgi is written in.
- scott_karana 12y ago
  Remember that for Shellshock, it doesn't matter what language the CGI is written in, depending on how your server is configured to pass on environment variables... :-)
- shangxiao 12y ago
  People are probably already scanning it ;)
LiveTheDream 12y ago
Cache that has most of the images: http://web.archive.org/web/20140930151228/http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20140930151228/http://www.alterna... (Original site exceeded its traffic quota and was suspended)
kghose 12y ago
Wikipedia has Fat Man over Nagasaki and Little boy over Hiroshima. This archive has it the other way. Which is correct?
eltoozero 12y ago
For anyone truly interested in Little Boy and Fat Man, do yourself a favor and pick up Atom Bombs by John Coster-Mullen. It's self-published, and he's a great fellow; he'll email you and offer to sign your copy, as well as answer any questions you've got. http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside-Little/dp/B0006S2AJ0 http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside-Little/dp/B00... This next year is the 70th anniversary of the Trinity test, which is open to the public once a year: http://www.wsmr.army.mil/PAO/Trinity/Pages/default.aspx http://www.wsmr.army.mil/PAO/Trinity/Pages/default.aspx Edit: He's also the guy who deduced the most probable internal configuration of Little Boy, and built an inert 1:1 scale model which was presented to and signed by the living members of the 509th Bomb Wing.

369 points by junto 12y ago

tonteldoos 12y ago

I wonder if any of the guys in the photos realised to what extent they were (helping) rewriting history that day...

pwg 12y ago
Given the secrecy surrounding the bombs, it is highly likely that not one of them had any idea what it was they were assembling/loading into the plane. All they likely knew was that it was "some kind of new, secret, bomb". It is questionable whether the "high ranking officials" referenced in the plane alignment photo caption even had much knowledge of just what this "new, secret, bomb" really was.
- rjsw 12y ago
  At least one of them [1] knew exactly what it was, I would guess that the others were working for him and had a pretty good idea too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sterling_Parsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sterling_Parsons
  - marktangotango 12y ago
    I think most of them had an idea about atomic bombs back then, and what they were doing could end the war. Robert Heinlien was investigated by the FBI in the late 30's due to a description of atomic bombs in a story he'd written. So the idea was out there so to speack. What they were ignorant of, I'm pretty sure, was the actual magnitude of the destruction caused by the devices. My father was about 10 yrs old at the time, he was deeply effected by news reels at the time. The tragedy was horrific.
    - nwatson 12y ago
      The atomic bombs were not more devastating to Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were conventional bomb campaigns to other similar cities in Japan toward the end of World War II. The damage from atomic bombs did not stand out as extraordinary to the Japanese leadership at the time. What forced Japan to surrender was Russia's declaration of war. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di... " ... But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer. ..."
      - mikeash 12y ago
        Now chart out the number of planes used in the attack and the potential rate of attacks once the production pipeline really got going. That's what made it remarkable. A thousand B-29s fly over your city and leave it a smoking ruin is Tuesday, but two B-29s fly over and do the same and that's something new and scary. Contrary to your statement that the attack was considered unremarkable, reports of the attack were initially disbelieved by the Japanese government because they knew of nothing that had occurred that could have caused such damage: "It was generally felt at Headquarters that nothing serious had taken place, that it was all a terrible rumor starting from a few sparks of truth." From http://www.abomb1.org/hiroshim/hiro_med.html#SUMMARY http://www.abomb1.org/hiroshim/hiro_med.html#SUMMARY The ultimate effect of the atomic bombings on the surrender compared to the Soviet intervention is highly debatable, of course, but it wasn't irrelevant just because it wasn't the most devastating attack of the war.
      - ceejayoz 12y ago
        > Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer. That's like saying we'd treat a shooting incident where 500 people died the same as 500 individual murders.
ewest 12y ago
Just a day on the job as far as they were concerned. As with many things you might do, you only realize what you were doing was important (often) long after the fact.
thathonkey 12y ago
As far as we know, history can only be written the once. No rewrites.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  We know a few other things too. For example, we know that anyone who confidently and bluntly asserts that "if X had been done Y would have happened" is not contributing to any useful discussion. People rarely know why they are doing what they are doing today, and certainly know almost nothing about why someone else did something half a century ago. We can point to things people said and did in the past and make informed judgements about the plausibility of various reasons they had for doing what they did, but again: anyone who asserts bluntly and with confidence that "Japan would have surrendered if..." or "Japan did surrender because..." isn't helping. Japan surrendered after Nagasaki was bombed. Some people think this shows that Hiroshima alone was not enough to convince the Japanese government that the new weapon would turn the tide of war against them. Russia declared war on Japan after Hiroshima was bombed. Some people think this was important to Japan's surrender, but would it have happened without the bomb? Japan had a history of fighting for every inch of territory. Some people think a conventional invasion would have resulted in a rapid conquest. Area bombing in Europe had a relatively small effect on the Axis war effort, and an awareness of this was growing within the Allied command. Within military circles there tends to be a feeling that if something isn't working the best thing is to do more of it. The bomb was more of it. Thus, the ineffectiveness of area bombing in Europe may have contributed to the decision to use the bomb in Japan. And so on... It is worth noting that war itself is almost always strongly motivated by counter-factuals. "If we just bomb the enemy they will surrender" (they don't: they become more dogged in defense until they demonstrably face total destruction). "If we engage in horrific acts of terrorism the enemy will run in fear!" (they don't: terrorist organizations that employ violence against civilians have a zero--yes, zero--rate of effectiveness in achieving their goals: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/792/why_terrorism_does_not_work.html http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/792/why_terr...) All we can say with anything remotely resembling certainty was that the bombs did drop and the war did end. We can make some informed guesses about why both sides decided the way they did. We can say virtually nothing with any certainty at all about what would have happened if any major decision had been different... except maybe one. What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? This is a counter-factual that people who are wont to make blunt, confident predictions about "what would have happened" had the Allies never destroyed Hiroshima or Nagasaki are generally surprisingly silent about, yet it is one of the few things that would plausibly (not certainly) have avoided the subsequent destruction of those cities.

Icybee 12y ago

I found out a few weeks ago they made a bunch of those bombs, minus the nuclear elements, for training. They even dropped some on Japanese targets and found they were fairly effective just from the explosive content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb

mendort 12y ago
They cost between 13k and 26k a piece in 2014 USD. That is truly amazing. EDIT: Even more amazing when you consider that they weighed about 10k pounds.
- jonknee 12y ago
  It's amazing/depressing how cheap bombs are when they don't have to be smart.
  - bd_at_rivenhill 12y ago
    Actually, it's amazing how much they charge for bombs that are smart.
    - hollerith 12y ago
      Actually, most smart bombs (JDAMs) are just old, dumb bombs with a new "tail kit" containing a GPS and guidance electronics.
      - mendort 12y ago
        A tail kit that costs almost 10 times as much as the bomb.
        hollerith 12y ago
        OK. (La Wik says the US Air Force is currently paying $27,000 per tail kit.)

nmridul 12y ago

Wondering why the staff are not wearing any protective clothing while handling nuclear devices ?

ceejayoz 12y ago
Nuclear bombs aren't very radioactive until they go critical, and at that point you've got bigger things to worry about. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Tickling_the_Dragons_Tail.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Tickling_...
creativityhurts 12y ago
I find it weird that most of them aren't wearing shirts at all.
- patricksroberts 12y ago
  My grandfather was a mechanic in the Enola Gay's bomber group. He mentioned that his personal bar for heat and humidity are from some of the islands they setup airfields on in the Pacific. Considering he spent a fair amount of his career following that war in LA maintaining the B52 air wings I tend to wonder why more of them aren't wearing shirts.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Most of the local people on Tinian and the other northern Mariana islands historically haven't worn shirts, male or female, although standards of dress on those islands have of course westernized somewhat since Western colonization. The climate there is very suitable for going shirtless at many times of the year.
  - creativityhurts 12y ago
    Nice and reasonable explanation, thanks!
privong 12y ago
Most of the radioactivity danger from nuclear weapons and reactors relates to the byproducts of the fission process, rather than to the original fissile material.

symmetricsaurus 12y ago

Really intereresting photos. It is a bit unfortunate that many of the captions and the sequence of photos are inaccurate. There are many misses regarding which bomb was which and on which plane it was loaded and on which city it was felled. So, look at the pictures and ignore the captions and then read up on Wikipedia to understand the bigger picture.

vixin 12y ago

Implosion Sphere for Fat Man nearly assembled and about to be placed inside it's casing. "Its casing". Why do people have such a problem with it's and its?

robmcm 12y ago
Because it's the opposite of how you deal with possessives in other situations. ...inside Fat Man's casing... I assume you knew that though and were just being an ass.
- Tenhundfeld 12y ago
  I think OP was just being an ass, but whether the behavior is opposite really depends on your frame of reference. The lack of apostrophe is consistent with how you deal with possessive pronouns: his, her/hers, our/ours, etc. No possessive pronouns have apostrophes, with one exception. And the apostrophe is consistent with how other contractions work. If you remember (and care) that its and it's are two separate words, then you should be able think your way through it. It's could legitimately be possessive or a contraction, but its can only be the possessive. Anyway, I agree with you that it's tricky enough that we shouldn't be assholes about it.
sophacles 12y ago
Because it's backwards of how apostrophes normally work. In all other cases, it is the right place to use an apostrophe: * ...about to be placed in Fat Man's casing. * ...about to be placed in the bomb's casing * ... about to be placed in its casing. One of those is not like the others.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  It helps to understand how it actually works. The s in its does not point towards possession, it is simply part of the word "its". My, His, Hers, Ours, Yours, Theirs, Its. Not Me's, He's, She's, Us's, Your's, Their's, It's. English is an easy language. Most languages use a lot more words than all that to convey all that. English speakers don't have to deal with the singular second person, with a separate objective noun for you/he/she, with neutrals (heck, barely at all with the feminine), and so on. So make an effort. Get its right :)

black_ 12y ago

I see shirts were out of fashion back then.

yitchelle 12y ago

It strikes fear into me that these folks are loading a device that is design to kill thousands of lives, the madness in this thing call war.

creativityhurts 12y ago
Especially when you read things like "The device's alignment was checked over by eye and hand."
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Actually, the purpose of the bomb was to save many thousands more lives than it ended. An invasion of Japan would've cost an enormous number of lives. It would've also had a catastrophic effect on the civilian population, because they were being told that the American troops were there to enslave them. It has even been said that the propaganda being told to the Japanese civilians included the idea that the troops would kill and cannibalize their families. I'm not sure whether that latter part is true, but what is true is that the civilians were extremely incentivized to be as hostile as possible to any American invasion army, even to the extent of whole families committing suicide out of fear of being enslaved or tortured, as on Okinawa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. Human affairs are sometimes terrible, but they often take the least terrible path out of all terrible paths. This is evidenced by the fact that the cuban missile crisis didn't result in an all-out nuclear war, and also that these bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than Americans invading Japan, which would have been far more devastating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high. Depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties. I upvoted you because I agree that everyone should be terrified at the prospect of war, because war only happens when people aren't terrified of it.
- shabda 12y ago
  While there are many people who subscribe to your view, there are an equal number who believe that Japan would have surrendered within months/weeks with no ground invasion. The allies had complete air and naval superiority and Russia had joined the the Japanese war theatre. If you have read the ethics of atomic bombings in any detail you are already aware of the details, so I would refrain from linking to wikipedia. To push your POV that the bombing was entirely necessary and entirely morally right is immoral. [Edit] As requested below: here are the detail about the military unneccesity of the atomic bombings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Militarily_unnecessary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings... There are other debates around this, but this discusses only if Japan would have speedily surrendered without the Atomic bombing.

dabeeeenster 12y ago

For those that have not read it, the Richard Rhodes book is one of the finest pieces of science/engineering writing I have read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1471111237 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp...

easytiger 12y ago
I'm in the midst of it. Quite long but the background stuff is one of the best overviews of 20th century physics you can read anywhere.
tcopeland 12y ago
He's written a couple of other books relating to the atomic bomb; both were included on the STRATCOM reading list: http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/search?keywords=rhodes http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/search?keywords=...
vesche 12y ago
Rhodes also wrote Dark Sun (The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb) which is a fantastic follow on read to The Making of the Atomic Bomb. http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412094444&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+sun http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/06848...

RankingMember 12y ago

D'oh. Anyone know of a mirror of this? Site is down.

junto 12y ago
Courtesy of @symetricasaurus elsehwere in this thread: https://archive.today/94EKG https://archive.today/94EKG

qwerta 12y ago

There were amazing (and deadly) alternatives to a-bomb. Most interesting was Bat bomb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

dirktheman 12y ago
That's hilarious! Imagine sitting in the mess hall, overhearing two men discussing their day: "I'm working on a cunning plan. It involves bombs, strapped to bats. What are you working on?" "Oh, just a nuclear fission device. When it goes supercritical it's.. oh well, never mind. Tell me more about the bats!"
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  ... and then reporting them for flagrant breaches of security, as well as being quarantined yourself for knowing too much. Whee, wartime is fun!
- azth 12y ago
  Yeah, destruction is hilarious.

agumonkey 12y ago

archived => https://archive.today/94EKG https://archive.today/94EKG

dirktheman 12y ago

It always amazes me how seemingly careless they were with these nuclear devices back then. To know that such a devestating bomb was handled by a sultry, shirtless youngster, in a shed on a small island in the Pacific... It reminds me of the Slotin Incident (http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/ http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/) where dr. Louis Slotin accidently slipped the screwdriver he used to separate two plutonium/uranium hemispheres: "Immediately, all eight scientists in the room felt a wave of heat accompanied by a blue glow as the plutonium sphere vomited an invisible burst of gamma and neutron radiation into the room. As the lab's Geiger counter clicked hysterically, Louis used his bare hand to push the upper plutonium hemisphere off and onto the floor, which terminated the supercritical reaction moments after it began." Big oopsie. However gruesome the goal of these bombs, the rate of advancement in such a short timespan is nothing short of amazing. From the very first successful test (Trinity) to bombing Hiroshima: just 21 days. They were great days for science, but a shame to mankind that it had to come this far.

cpwright 12y ago
Ignoring the nuclear device aspect of it, I would think that these days anyone spraying any kind of sealant or paint these days in a commercial setting would have PPE to avoid breathing the stuff in.
- junto 12y ago
  As well as the health and safety aspect I imagine that during times of war, your personal long term health outlook pales in comparison to the short-medium term survival possibilities. Hence, I imagine that many servicemen and women didn't see themselves as having a long life span. Maybe not consciously, but certainly subconsciously.
AJ007 12y ago
There have been a lot of very close calls. Including recently.
thefreeman 12y ago
That is amazing. I have had a lot of oh shit moments in my days, but none gets close to dropping the plutonium onto the uranium and nearly detonating a nuclear payload.

jcfrei 12y ago

Cached version - though some pictures are still missing: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aKemgW6roesJ:www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ch http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aKemgW6...

lutusp 12y ago

There are a number of errors in the photo captions, so for the record: 1. The "Little Boy" device, cylindrical in shape, was a U-235 gun-type device that was so simple in its design that it was dropped -- on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 -- without having been tested first. The U-235 was extraordinarily expensive to produce, taking up a large percentage of the Manhattan Project budget and several years. Two independent programs using different methods were designed to produce sufficient U-235, which needs to be separated from the much more abundant and non-fissioning U-238 isotope. The expense of extracting U-235 is the reason that only one such bomb was used, and only a few were ever built. 2. The "Fat Man" bomb design used an isotope of plutonium (Pu-239) that was bred in fission reactors in Hanford, WA and Oak Ridge, TN over a relatively short time and at much lower cost. This bomb was tested at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, in advance of its use on Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) because its implosion design was much more complex than the uranium bomb. 3. All modern fission weapons, and the trigger devices in fusion weapons, are design descendants of the Pu-239 "Fat Man" device that was dropped on nagasaki.

pseudometa 12y ago

Here is a mirror for the site: https://archive.today/94EKG https://archive.today/94EKG

dang 12y ago
Thanks. We changed the url from http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm because the latter is down.
- junto 12y ago
  I feel a bit bad for being the cause of their site suspension. Thanks for changing the URL.

BuildTheRobots 12y ago

Looks like HN has blown the sites quota out of the water... though as it redirects to http://www.alternatewars.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi http://www.alternatewars.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi you've gotta wonder what the cgi is written in.

scott_karana 12y ago
Remember that for Shellshock, it doesn't matter what language the CGI is written in, depending on how your server is configured to pass on environment variables... :-)
shangxiao 12y ago
People are probably already scanning it ;)

LiveTheDream 12y ago

Cache that has most of the images: http://web.archive.org/web/20140930151228/http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20140930151228/http://www.alterna... (Original site exceeded its traffic quota and was suspended)

kghose 12y ago

Wikipedia has Fat Man over Nagasaki and Little boy over Hiroshima. This archive has it the other way. Which is correct?

eltoozero 12y ago

For anyone truly interested in Little Boy and Fat Man, do yourself a favor and pick up Atom Bombs by John Coster-Mullen. It's self-published, and he's a great fellow; he'll email you and offer to sign your copy, as well as answer any questions you've got. http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside-Little/dp/B0006S2AJ0 http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside-Little/dp/B00... This next year is the 70th anniversary of the Trinity test, which is open to the public once a year: http://www.wsmr.army.mil/PAO/Trinity/Pages/default.aspx http://www.wsmr.army.mil/PAO/Trinity/Pages/default.aspx Edit: He's also the guy who deduced the most probable internal configuration of Little Boy, and built an inert 1:1 scale model which was presented to and signed by the living members of the 509th Bomb Wing.