Today is the 80th anniversary of the Trinity atomic bomb test
It was the test that forever changed the world and the course of human history.
The test took place at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945, at 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time. The test was originally scheduled for 4 a.m. but was delayed due to thunderstorm activity in the area. This test not only led to the end of the war in the Pacific but also ushered the world into the atomic age.
The Trinity Test was the first of its kind in human history. It was the culmination of work by hundreds of Americans and allied scientists working at sites across the country. Named the Manhattan Project and led by Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves and Doctor J. Robert Oppenheimer, this was a scientific and engineering effort on a scale never seen before. The project’s headquarters was at Los Alamos, N.M., but had other facilities to include Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash.
After a nationwide search, the location that became the Trinity Site proved ideal. It was scarcely populated desert terrain, already under government control with close proximity to Los Alamos, a mere four-hour drive to the north.
By chance, I was just talking last night to a friend about how Truman found out about the bomb. Long ago I had read that Truman wasn’t told anything about it until FDR died on April 12, 1945, and that even then he wasn’t fully briefed.
Later:
Truman journeyed to Berlin for the Potsdam Conference with Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He was there when he learned the Trinity test—the first atomic bomb—on July 16 had been successful. He hinted to Stalin that he was about to use a new kind of weapon against the Japanese. Though this was the first time the Soviets had been officially given information about the atomic bomb, Stalin was already aware of the bomb project—having learned about it through atomic espionage long before Truman did.
Astounding.
On July 25, 1945, Truman wrote this in his diary:
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.
I’ll add that in April 1945 on Truman’s first day as president he told the press:
Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.
In April 2025? I’m confused. Was it April 1945 and Truman said it or April 2025 and Trump said it? The names are only a couple of letters different
juvat
Probably saved my Dad’s life, and maybe my Father in Law too.
Juvat:
Typo. Fixed, thanks.
Probably saved my Dad’s life, and maybe my Father in Law too.
SHIREHOME:
Likewise my father and uncle, paratroopers in the same unit who would have jumped into Japan in the planned Allied invasion.
Instead they were part of the occupation forces and had a nice time in Japan. My father brought back books on Japanese architecture and the Tea Ceremony.
For one Christmas he gave me a real Japanese abacus and a book on its use, which also documented the epic 1946 contest between a black belt abacus user and an American private skilled on an electric calculator of that time. The abacus won four out of five rounds.
I tried to get good at the abacus but a lot of that is sheer muscle memory and constant practice. I was amazed at how much can be done on the abacus. Even cube roots!
Anyway. America’s final victory over Japan with two atom bombs had an astonishing result in the good relations between the two countries.
My father being an example. He named our two dogs, Ichi and Ni — One and Two in Japanese.
Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.
My sister’s late FiL was slated to go over. Company clerk for a construction brigade, but still at risk.
Truman save a lot of lives, including Japanese ones.
One might argue that America’s victories over Germany and Japan ruined American foreign policy from the Korean War through the Iraq War.
We kept expecting we could win those wars and everyone would be friends. Happy ending! We forgot that we first had to absolutely, positively level Germany and Japan to get that result.
The invasion of Japan called Operation Downfall would have cost the lives of:
“Depending on the scope and context, casualty estimates for American forces ranged from 220,000 to several million, and estimates of Japanese military and civilian casualties ran from the millions to the tens of millions.
If any idiot says we shouldn’t have dropped the bombs they are plain bloodthirsty and stupid. American troops saw what lengths the Japanese would go to in sacrificing themselves as my uncle did on Okinawa. The invasion would have been the most hellish of WWII.
Today, the Japanese don’t hate us and we don’t hate them so there is that. There are many Japanese who were glad we ended the war then and there, as they also could see what would have played out.
Yep, they were then able to build Disneyland.
Interesting culture…
huxley
Perhaps the recent leveling of Gaza will indicate to its inhabitants that going to war against Israel—with the wholehearted support of Gazan “civilians”—will not be to their benefit.
Perhaps.
My father and four uncles.
When I was in, 69-71, they told us they were still using Purple Heart medals ordered against the invasion. Heard not so long ago that we finally used them all up.
Can’t see warehouses full of the Things. But maybe referring to the potential production of contracts prepared for the enterprise.
Why invade and occupy? At that cost? Because the European Usual–let’em up easy–(see Versailles) hadn’t worked. Youtube has the orientation films for the occupation forces. Your Job In Germany–see the twelve minute one. And Our Job In Japan.
However you put it, it was that we can’t let these people be the people they’ve been up to this point. Not again. No matter the cost.
I was a grad student working at Los Alamos National Lab in 1985 when they held a 40th anniversary event. I got to hear Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe speak, and other old timers who’s names I’ve forgotten.
An interesting tid bit is that Truman was a regular member of Sam Rayburn’s Friday afternoon whiskey club. You had to be a “made” member of Congress and a very big shot, to be invited. They knew, near the end of his term, that FDR was a very sick man and likely to die during his 4th term. So, they conspired to replace FDR’s vice president, Henry Wallace, a Communist and someone they despised, with Truman, who they respected, at the Democratic convention. Lucky for all of us.
huxley @8:12pm,
was the 1946 contest between a mechanical calculator and an abacus? The Internet says the first all electric calculator wasn’t available until over a decade later. I remember seeing mechanical adding machines in my youth. I don’t think I saw an electric calculator until the mid to late ’70s.
TommyJay,
That’s amazing!
I got to hear Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe speak
Wow.
— Huxley
I actually think the overwhelming victory in WWII had several negative subsequent effects on America. For ex, an overconfidence in technocratic management based on their success in marshaling the entire economy for a total war in WW II. ‘If we could do it in the war, why not now?’ Etc.
I actually think the problem in the ‘little wars’ since is that World War II was waged the way a Jacksonian population (which is the American majority) thinks of war. You don’t do it at all unless you absolutely have to, and then if you have to you go for the throat with no holding back.
The trouble, of course, is that most wars are more like Iraq and Vietnam, before WW II and after. Limited goals, careful calculation, gray motivations. The nuclear bomb made it 100 times worse, once the USSR had it too.
After WW II, a lot of people assumed that having the nuclear bomb meant that America was safe. Nobody would dare challenge it, and of course it would take 20 years or more to duplicate. Which was nonsense, of course. Between the Russians’ quite capable scientists and their espionage effort, it took four years.
Then it was proxy war, espionage, economic war, move and counter move and careful soulless calculation, year after year, decade after decade. You can’t refuse to play or the enemy advances and gains territory, but you have to carefully modulate your counter-move because nuclear war is Game Over.
Jacksonian America loatheshalf-measure wars. The trouble is that the world has been one big forever war since 1945, and that doesn’t show any sign of changing any time soon.
Right after 911, there were a number of people demanding things like ‘bomb Mecca’. To his lasting credit, Bush the Younger refused to listen to that nonsense. If we had done it, it would have set the world on fire. To his discredit, he let the Democrats redefine what America could do as lies.
Trump promised no more forever wars. Putin, among others, has educated him somewhat on that point, I think. No matter how much we hate it, the forever wars are going to keep on going for quite some time yet.
Regarding Truman, we should keep in mind that the FDR Administration, at the high levels, was deeply rooted in the northeastern establishment and very patrician in attitude, for all the populism of FDR’s policy. I suspect that a lot of them longed to have Wallace back.
(FDR was a sharp political operator, though, and he knew Wallace was a liability.)
They thought of Truman, I’m pretty sure, as a ‘hick from the sticks’. A successful local politician, yes, but from Missouri, and tainted to some degree by association with the Pendergast Machine. I suspect he was held in disregard.
So, it isn’t surprising, to me, that he would be kept out of the loop until he became the loop.
I went to New Mexico State University (formerly NMA&M) in the 1960s and Trinity site was just north of us. A tour was conducted once a year.
As one of the Jewraelis banging our heads against the wall after 4 decades of Oslo-indoctrination has “queered” and neutered our military brass – to the point where they cannot bring themselves to finish the job in Gaza – the following comments leapt out at me…. Thanks, guy, you saved me writing – just need to connect the dots….
Huxley:
We kept expecting we could win those wars and everyone would be friends. Happy ending! We forgot that we first had to absolutely, positively level Germany and Japan to get that result.
———————————————-
Gringo:
Perhaps the recent leveling of Gaza will indicate to its inhabitants that going to war against Israel—with the wholehearted support of Gazan “civilians”—will not be to their benefit.
Perhaps.
———————————————
Richard Aubrey:
Why invade and occupy? At that cost? Because the European Usual–let’em up easy–(see Versailles) hadn’t worked. Youtube has the orientation films for the occupation forces. Your Job In Germany–see the twelve minute one. And Our Job In Japan.
However you put it, it was that we can’t let these people be the people they’ve been up to this point. Not again. No matter the cost.
———————————————
Indeed.
However, I do not think the secular Jewraeli elite has the will or clarity. The Israeli press has already reported on arguments between dithering Oslo-era generals and rank-and-file soldiers (and Parliamentarians) that want to press on…
I also do not think that Islam can be reformed from without.
The West has managed to contain and moderate Islam with firm deterrence and self-confident promotion of our culture. There are many in the Muslim world who did not like colonial control, but have positive memories of Ataturk’s modernisation of Turkey and a more cosmopolitan, liberal Levant.
But no Marshall plan will work in this case – such meddling only inflames fundamental talk about Dar el Islam elsewhere. The reforms must come from within these societies.
Well low intensity conflicts like malaya and cyprus and aden were harder to win than traditional wars part of the reason that india was given up along with so called palestine territory
Japan surrendered because every other node had been hit, but it wasnt obvious at the time the strategic bombing survey was loaded with those technocrats like mcnamamara galbraith nitze the last who seemingly was sensible in the arms control with the committee on the common danger but ultimately reverted with the whole dobrynin episode in the 80s
Belief is the calculus they didnt consider sufficiently like when degaulle reopened the indochina wars
Stalin and Beria the Soviet spymaster thought it American propaganda.
Eventually what they had was passed to Soviet physicists and they thought it was a possibility.
“…Truman save a lot of lives, including Japanese ones.”
I’d say especially Japanese ones. The Japanese had a plan to mobilize the entire civilian population, even though they didn’t have the ability to properly arm them. An invasion would have seen mass kamikaze style attacks by barely-armed civilians against Allied forces, which would have led to mass massacres of those civilians.
The third alternative was “Bomb-and-blockade” – just keep doing what they were already doing, until Japan collapsed due to mass starvation.
Either one of these would have killed more Japanese than the bombs did.
Stalin exterminated more Russians than did Hitler’s invading army.
This was of no consequence to those “Americans” that spied for Stalin.
Just goes to show that communists are truly evil and dangerous people.
It’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if the USA had not given copious quantities of military equipment to Russia which greatly improved their ability to repel the German invasion.
John Tyler
Speculation is that immense amounts of German combat resources would have been available to be used against the Western allies.
I never heard a good word about Truman from my grandpa, who was a staunch Republican. Except when he gave the order to drop the bomb. My grandpa approved of that.
In 1960I worked for an officer who was Truman’s Navval attaché. He told me several stories about the “old man.”
I remember especially the one about how Truman got fed up with Stalin’s stalling tactics at Potsdam. He apparently told Stalin he was leaving because he had work to do in D.C., and to call him when Stalin was ready to do some negotiating. That broke the logjam and Stalin quit stalling.
Truman liked to play poker and would play low stakes games with his staff. My old boss loved the man. His stories certainly changed my view of Truman.
I agree that WWII and the atom bomb played a big role in our future conflicts. The use of force was always calculated so as not to trigger a bigger conflict. I blame a lot of it on faulty intelligence. For decades we were told about the
USS’s vaunted industrial power and economic strides. We were told we were falling behind.
Then, unbelievably, the Iron Curtain fell. The truth was revealed. I read a story written by two adventurous fellows who rode bicycles from Moscow to Vladivostok. What they found, except for Moscow, was basically a Third World country. So much for the quality of our intelligence.
WWII was supposed to put an end to nations invading one another. And democracies bought into the idea. The authoritarians didn’t. And they probably never will.
For that reason, democratic nations must always be prepared to defend and defeat authoritarian aggressors.
RTF…”was the 1946 contest between a mechanical calculator and an abacus? The Internet says the first all electric calculator wasn’t available until over a decade later”
There were mechanical calculators powered by electric motors…the logic performing the arithmetic was all mechanical, but the motor spared the operator the effort of repeatedly pulling the level. I mentioned early calculators in this post:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/73968.html
J.J.
I heard stories from academics who had attended a conference in Moscow in the 1970s.
1. Big Brother was there. A Russian who was visiting foreign conference attendees in their hotel room got a nasty phone call in the hotel room. Shaken, he left, ASAP.
2. But Big Brother couldn’t be everywhere all the time. Some Russians initiated conversations with them on the street, and when asked about Big Brother, replied that BB couldn’t see all things all the time.
3. Even in Moscow, the crown jewel of the Soviet empire, the backwardness of the Soviet economy was evident. One Cold Warrior—Army Reserve—said that he no longer feared them, having seen their backward economy up close.
I recall Matthias Rust’s adventure of flying a small plane into the Soviet Union in the 1980s, able to elude Soviet air controls.
Your story about your Truman-disliking grandfather reminds me of a cousin of mine. His other grandmother, like your grandfather, was a staunch Republican. Knowing this, my cousin would work his grandmother up, getting her to fume about “that Roosevelt.”
so the question of belief and will, both intellectual and monetary, why the Brits gave ups everything from Bombay to the former Palestine mandate, Egypr came next with Nasser, Kenya with the Mau Mau, which the Brits prevailed, Malaya was a rare example because of General Templar but also there was less of a sanctuary specially after Sukarno was deposed, Aden was given up, but Oman was held up to a point, of course the French experience in Algeria and ours in Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan and later in Chechnya for a time,
but the a bomb was the great equalizer
that was employed to end conflicts, the likelyhood it would ever be employed as a defensive measure would be be very unlikely, in the future,
Re: Abacus vs electric calculator
Rufus, David Foster:
I was going with what I had read on the web. What “electric calculator” exactly meant in 1946, I’m not sure:
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The Abacus vs. the Electric Calculator (Nov 12, 1946): Why did the latter lose?
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/31/the-abacus-vs-the-electric-calculator-nov-12-1946-why-did-the-latter-lose
___________________________________
The above link is interesting and includes a dependably funny story about Richard Feynman taking on a Japanese abacus.
It turned out that the more complicated the calculation was, the better Feynman did. He mopped the floor with the abacus on cube roots!
Anyway. Out of nostalgia last night I decided to order the same style abacus of my youth, and the same book I used to learn the abacus. Only $24! I’ll check what the book says about the abacus v. calculator challenge.
I still have my lime-green Pickett slide rule and the last great scientific HP calculator, HP-50g. I’m a sentimental guy.
I am reminded of the fire-control computers of the period. They solved the equation and machined out the graph. So you’d input the range and it would give you the elevation by feeling the curve; that is, there was a spring-loaded armature that slid along the machined-out solution graph attached to a gauge that gave the operator a result in degrees.
There were two fundamentally different atomic bomb designs: the uranium bomb and the plutonium bomb. Why two? Because while each type worked theoretically, each involved a unique industrial super-project and enormous amounts of electrical power to practically build, and nobody wanted to “bet the farm” on only one approach.
The functioning of the uranium bomb was comparatively simple: a cylindrical slug of uranium was shot down a gun barrel by artillery-type explosives, into a larger mass of uranium with a slug-shaped hole in it, instantly creating a critical mass, which triggered a chain reaction. This configuration’s functioning could be mathematically modeled fairly accurately.
The plutonium bomb was quite different, having a grapefruit-sized sphere of plutonium inside a larger multifaceted sphere of high explosives, precisely shaped to compress the plutonium sphere into a critical mass when triggered. The precise design and triggering of this configuration was much less well understood, so it was the one tested on July 16, 1945.
The uranium bomb was dubbed “Little Boy” given its slimmer shape, and was considered to be pretty much a sure thing, so it was first “tested” on Hiroshima. Indeed, it worked.
The first non-test use of the plutonium bomb, dubbed “Fat Man” due to its more spherical shape, was on Nagasaki a few days later. It worked too.
@Boobah:I am reminded of the fire-control computers of the period. They solved the equation and machined out the graph.
People used to calculate definite integrals by carefully drawing a graph and then cutting it out of the sheet of paper and weighing it.
Boobah…there were also mechanical analog computers that could be reprogrammed (with wrench and screwdriver) to handle a whole variety of problems. A group at Marshall University (W Virginia) has revived them for educational purposes.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57194.html