What Eyewitnesses Remembered About the World's First Atomic Bomb Explosion in 1945 (politico.com) 27
Historian Garrett M. Graff describes his upcoming book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. "I assembled an oral history of the Manhattan Project, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in the Pacific, told through the voices of around 500 participants and witnesses of the events — including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer and political figures like President Harry Truman."
It was 80 years ago this week that physicists and 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program "gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion." In an except from his upcoming book, Graff publishes quotes from eyewitness: Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see...
As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule... Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied... The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant...
Edward Teller: We all were lying on the ground, supposedly with our backs turned to the explosion. But I had decided to disobey that instruction and instead looked straight at the bomb. I was wearing the welder's glasses that we had been given so that the light from the bomb would not damage our eyes. But because I wanted to face the explosion, I had decided to add some extra protection. I put on dark glasses under the welder's glasses, rubbed some ointment on my face to prevent sunburn from the radiation, and pulled on thick gloves to press the welding glasses to my face to prevent light from entering at the sides... We all listened anxiously as the broadcast of the final countdown started; but, for whatever reason, the transmission ended at minus five seconds...
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: My personal nightmare was knowing that if the bomb didn't go off or hang-fired, I, as head of the test, would have to go to the tower first and seek to find out what had gone wrong...
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead.
A few examples of how they remembered the explosion:
It was 80 years ago this week that physicists and 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program "gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion." In an except from his upcoming book, Graff publishes quotes from eyewitness: Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see...
As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule... Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied... The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant...
Edward Teller: We all were lying on the ground, supposedly with our backs turned to the explosion. But I had decided to disobey that instruction and instead looked straight at the bomb. I was wearing the welder's glasses that we had been given so that the light from the bomb would not damage our eyes. But because I wanted to face the explosion, I had decided to add some extra protection. I put on dark glasses under the welder's glasses, rubbed some ointment on my face to prevent sunburn from the radiation, and pulled on thick gloves to press the welding glasses to my face to prevent light from entering at the sides... We all listened anxiously as the broadcast of the final countdown started; but, for whatever reason, the transmission ended at minus five seconds...
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: My personal nightmare was knowing that if the bomb didn't go off or hang-fired, I, as head of the test, would have to go to the tower first and seek to find out what had gone wrong...
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead.
A few examples of how they remembered the explosion:
- William L. Laurence: There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one.
- Kenneth T. Bainbridge: I felt the heat on the back of my neck, disturbingly warm.
- George B. Kistiakowsky: I am sure that at the end of the world — in the last millisecond of the earth's existence — the last man will see what we have just seen.
- Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Oppenheimer's face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried.
- Norris Bradbury, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. I didn't. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.
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until we nuke the shit out of Russia and get to enjoy the fireworks again.
Are you headed to Russia to see the show?
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until we nuke the shit out of Russia and get to enjoy the fireworks again.
Are you headed to Russia to see the show?
or already there, perhaps?
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Funny)
Visit Russia [ocdn.eu].
Hamsters with hand grenades! (Score:2)
Or limpets with land minds? Or how about Pinocchio playing patty-cake with Putin? (Alliteration mania going for Funny?) Excuse me, but we aren't keeping up with our technologies... (Have I gotten far enough away from the AC vacuum yet?)
Small world syndrome, but I was just reading a couple of books where the topic of nuclear bombs came up. Especially interesting part where the creators of the A-bomb argued against the H-bomb as overkill. But the politicians overruled them. Of course.
Me? I think nuclear war w
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Me? I think nuclear war would be bad, but not a human extinction event.
I agree. The chances that we'd see a global thermonuclear war is quite slim. The threat of "mutually assured destruction" is real, or at least real enough, that it is unlikely any nation would start a nuclear war. Nobody can say it is impossible because given enough time and other variables many things are possible.
Most likely that we would blast ourselves back to the stone age without sufficient remaining resources for the survivors to rebuild advanced technologies.
That's doubtful. Ever since the printing press there's been ample capability to have information written down and spread widely. On top of that is the widespread use of so many tools for fab
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Insightful)
They have Tsar Bomba.
1) No they don't. They dropped it. It's gone.
2) That's not a weapon, it's a demonstration.
What is the US going to do?
Same thing the Russians'll do in a nuclear war. Sit and wait for the reentry vehicles to hit after our birds pass each other in space like ships in the night.
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Wait a minute... I thought that Trump's Golden Dome was going to save us from nuclear attack?
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Beyond that- I'd talk to a therapist about how you seem unable to read anything without intrusive thoughts about him.
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Re:Can't wait (Score:4, Informative)
grandfather was an eyewitness (Score:3)
Once years ago at a family gathering, some of us were on the roof seeing if we could spot Mir going overhead.
While we were waiting, grandfather, who had a draft deferment during WWII due to being in the defense industry, told a story whereby his foreman told the team that something special was about to happen. They all went to the roof and he directed them to look east. Grandfather said that about a half hour later there was a brilliant flash on the horizon. Nothing was said about what it was, but later he pieced together that it must have been the first test in New Mexico.
No idea if this is true, but it's a neat story.
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Unlikely that random foreman knew about the highly classified test.
Relief (Score:3)
oppenheimer's reaction (Score:4, Informative)
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There's an interesting debate about the Bhagavad Gita in that some of the stories in there apparently describe effects that are in line with a nuclear or even thermo-nuclear explosion and that therefore Oppenheimer would have "known" about the bomb.
I guess after Otto Hahn was able to split Uranium atoms, physicists started to realize the orders of magnitude of power that this could deliver.
The 1930s were wild. In a sense, we're approaching the same social, political and technological climate again. God kno
People who actually are from India (Score:2)
I talked to about this quote have no idea what Dr. Oppenheimer was speaking about.
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I talked to about this quote have no idea what Dr. Oppenheimer was speaking about.
I suspect that is because of a selection bias. I've met people from India also and they were not like what demographic studies would imply as "average". If they left India for work or an education in some English speaking nation like UK, Australia, or USA then that puts them in the narrow portion of the demography of English speaking as only 10% of the Indian population speak English as a first, second, or third language. Speaking English likely makes them not just educated, male, young, and urban, but a
A creepy story (Score:3)
This story prompted a memory of reading about men - with their eyes closed and facing away from a nuclear blast - seeing x-ray type images of their own hands. I did a quick search and found this: [dailymail.co.uk]
"We put our hands over our eyes and they counted down over the tannoy. There was a sharp flash, and I could see the bones in my hands like an X-ray. Then the sound and the wind, and they told us to turn and face it."
In similar reports, I've read of men seeing the spines of those in front of them, through closed eyes and with hands in front of their faces.
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This story prompted a memory of reading about men - with their eyes closed and facing away from a nuclear blast - seeing x-ray type images of their own hands. I did a quick search and found this: [dailymail.co.uk]
The Daily Mail part should have been your first warning*. Imagine yourself in that position: facing away from the blast with hands covering your eyes. Now, where is the light passing through your hands into your eyes coming from?
In similar reports, I've read of men seeing the spines of those in front of them, through closed eyes and with hands in front of their faces.
You can also find reports of soldiers hearing the fabled "Garand ping" during firefights or the sound of bullets whizzing by their ears. Human memory is notoriously unreliable even without our propensity for telling tall tales.
* I'll concede that Mail Online is slightly closer to ac
Two excellent books (Score:2)
Are by Don A. Farrell: "Tinian and the Bomb" (2018) and "Atomic Bomb Island" (2021). Farrell lives on Tinian and spent years doing research on the Manhattan Project.
Ehem, Louis Slotin Was There : ) (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The real eyewitnesses (Score:1)
Here you can find some accounts of several real eyewitnesses: https://atomicarchive.com/reso... [atomicarchive.com]
I knew Philip Morrison, who was there (Score:2)
This was decades later, and while his spoke only sparingly of his times working on the Manhatten project, here are his recollections of what he saw:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]