Posted on 08/07/2015 4:56:59 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Sorry, no idea, the drawing leaves out all reference to radar & electrical components.
My father's first cousin, a chemist, was drafted during WWII and posted to Oak Ridge, TN. For the rest of his life, he refused to say he had worked on the A-bomb, but there was nothing else going on at Oak Ridge. After the war, he spent the rest of his career teaching biochemistry to medical students.
Canada Ping!
“Um, mom - he wasn't making airplane wings - that was where they processed the uranium for the A-bombs.”
“No - he worked for Alcoa, making aluminum airplane wings.”
I'm not sure if I ever convinced her that he may have thought he was making parts for planes, but he wasn't.
The housing was off the base and in town. But the houses were all owned and managed by the government. Part of the reason was so “maintenance” workers could go in and check for burnt-out light bulbs, and then go through the house looking for any secret information or things that a worker might have brought home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Swtx3phmrM
Manhattan Project (by RUSH)
Great song that wraps up the history of the entire thing:
Imagine a time when it all began
In the dying days of a war
A weapon - that would settle the score
Whoever found it first
Would be sure to do their worst -
They always had before...
Imagine a man where it all began
A scientist pacing the floor
In each nation - always eager to explore
To build the best big stick
To turn the winning trick -
But this was something more...
The big bang - took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
the end was begun - it would hit everyone
When the chain reaction was done
The big shots - try to hold it back
Fools try to wish it away
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say
Imagine a place where it all began
They gathered from across the land
To work in the secrecy of the desert sand
All of the brightest boys
To play with the biggest toys -
More than they bargained for...
Imagine a man when it all began
The pilot of “Enola Gay”
Flying out of the shockwave on that August day
All the powers that be, and the course of history,
Would be changed for evermore...
It's amazing how long communists and their fellow-travellers clung to Soviet propaganda, and many still do despite the Venona disclosures and for a time opening of Soviet archives.
These daily threads since Roosevelt's death have revealed how the decision to drop the bombs was made and it had very little to do with the Russians. I would say, however, that some icing on the cake was that we really didn't need them in the Pacific war anymore.
Whatever one thinks about Harry Truman, what you saw was what you got. He told you what he thought straightaway. When I was growing up if the K.C. TV stations wanted a salty quote for the evening news all they had to do was go out to Independence and ask Harry for one.
That is amazing memorabilia. Thanks for posting!
Was Churchill correct? Did God ensure that the Allies had this awful killer before the Axis did?
1. Do we have evidence of God playing favorites?
The Bible is replete with dozens of examples of God ensuring victory to one side or another, too many to recount here. Indeed, the question is often sneeringly posed whether God even favors one sports team over another; but assuredly He often does, for His own purposes, and who can deny the omnipotent God that right?
2. If God is a God of love, as He claims, would He be complicit in the use of such a weapon of mass destruction?
Yes, He has often permitted mass death; moreover, He has even caused it, as He will surely do again during the Great Tribulation. Why? Precisely because of His love. He uses these events (1) to limit evil and (2) to direct the attention of His beloved humans to their mortality and their utter dependence on Him, so as to encourage as many as possible to do the best thing for themselves: to turn to Him in faith in His goodness and love for them.
3. Did God favor the Allies in this war?
It seems clear that He did, for at least two reasons.
a. Evidential: Far too many examples occurred of seeming divine intervention on the Allies' side, besides this one, to ignore.
b. Inferential: While sometimes God has permitted despots to succeed for a season to teach lessons (e.g., Pharaoh, Shalmeneser, Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, etc.), the scale of atrocities committed and promised by the Axis dwarfs any limited despotic success permitted by God previously. He did not permit their final victory, for His many good purposes, not least of which was the establishment immediately after the war of the reborn Israel.
War Department calls it a cosmic bomb.
Terminology is still being defined. Yesterday is was an automic bomb in Nimitz report. Today it is a cosmic bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_bomb_(phrase)
“Cosmic bomb” was another name for the atomic bomb. It was used for a short period of time in 1945 and 1946. The first New York Times story about the bombing of Hiroshima referred to “this terrible new weapon, which the War Department also calls the ‘Cosmic Bomb.’”[1] Another articles noted that “what the Army has called the ‘cosmic bomb’ was not regarded by those responsible for winning the war against Japan as the factor which, of itself, would give the war its finishing touch”,[2] and a headline reported “Secret War Nipped Reich Cosmic Bomb.”[3]
Thomas Pynchon uses the phrase several times in his 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow, which is set roughly in the period during which the term was current.
The term rapidly fell into disuse as applied to weaponry, soon yielding to “atomic bomb”
Sobering Awareness of Power
It was obvious that officials at the highest levels made the important decision to release news of the atomic bomb because of the psychological effect it may have in forcing Japan to surrender. However, there are some officials who feel privately it might have been well to keep this completely secret. Their opinion can be summed up in the comment by one spokesman: “Why bother with the psychological warfare against an enemy that already is beaten and hasn’t sense enough to quit and save herself from utter doom?”
BECAUSE THEY WERE DEFEATED BUT HADN’T SURRENDERED.
BECAUSE THEY WERE DEFEATED BUT HADN’T SURRENDERED.
But I didn't really understand warp drive until Scotty explained it to me.
One of the reasons people understood the concept of the atomic bomb was that Radium was very much in the news in prior years.
The new technology of luminescent watches and the “radium girls” were in the news. A paint called Undark and used for military watches so military was very aware of Radium in everyday life. Marie Currie was in every science text book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium
Uranium had no large scale application in the late 19th century and therefore no large uranium mines existed. In the beginning the only larger source for uranium ore was the silver mines at Joachimsthal (now Jáchymov) in the Austrian Empire.[14] The uranium ore was only a by-product of the mining activities. After the isolation of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie from uranium ore from Joachimsthal several scientists started to isolate radium in small quantities. Later small companies purchased mine tailings from Joachimsthal mines and started isolating radium. In 1904 the Austrian government took over the ownership of the mines and stopped exporting raw ore. For some time the radium availability was low.[27]
The amounts of radium produced were and are always relatively small; for example, in 1918, 13.6 g of radium were produced in the United States.[29] In 1954, the total worldwide supply of purified radium amounted to about 5 pounds (2.3 kg),[30] and it is still in this range today, while the annual production of pure radium compounds is only about 100 g in total today.[31
Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, nuclear panels, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. A typical self-luminous watch that uses radium paint contains around 1 microgram of radium.[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
From 1917 to 1926, U.S. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, was engaged in the extraction and purification of radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints, which were marketed under the brand name “Undark”. As a defense contractor, U.S. Radium was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military.
In one article today it mentions the last public statistic on uranium production is 1941.
Some interesting things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining
Until World War II uranium mining was done primarily for the radium content.
. The Manhattan Project initially purchased uranium ore from the Belgian Congo
American uranium ores mined in Colorado were mixed ores of vanadium and uranium, but because of wartime secrecy, the Manhattan Project would publicly admit only to purchasing the vanadium, and did not pay the uranium miners for the uranium content. In a much later lawsuit, many miners were able to reclaim lost profits from the U.S. government.
Intensive exploration for uranium started after the end of World War II as a result of the military and civilian demand for uranium. There were three separate periods of uranium exploration or “booms.” These were from 1956 to 1960, 1967 to 1971, and from 1976 to 1982[citation
It looks like the Ruusians are still mad about it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3321916/posts
More on uranium. It was a pigment? (yellowcake)
http://www.handspiral.com/Uranium.htm
These pieces are very rare. I have a very limited supply of uranium oxide (U.), and I do not know if I will ever be able to get any more. While they are slightly radioactive, the uranium in these glazes is trapped in the glaze
http://science.howstuffworks.com/uranium-mining1.htm
the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which allowed uranium mining in the United States as long as the finished product ended up in government hands [source: Atomic Energy Commission].
“Uranium went from being a weed to a weapon,” said Michael Amundson, a historian, professor and expert on the Atomic Age. “Instead of serving as this useless pigment, it became a strategic element of the war.”
That’s rich - Russians talking about war crimes.
The comment by Enola Gay’s tailgunner “Sir, are we splitting atoms today?” shows that the concept was not totally unknown. And I recall Laurence’s article several years ago about a block of urnaium providing far greater energy than coal being used to power submarines and ships.
“Sir, are we splitting atoms today?”
“I have always been interested in physics and chemistry,” Handl said, adding he just wanted to “see if it’s possible to split atoms at home.”
Another perspective on splitting atoms at home
http://www.mrjam.org/2012/03/how-to-split-atoms-at-home.html
“We want to split an atom as a kind of home science project. We have loads of atoms around the house which we’re not really using.”
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