Posted on 08/07/2015 4:56:59 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
I came over here to point that thread out to you, but you’ve already seen it, obviously.
Some of your excellent comments here should be posted over there, IMO.
That's what the Germans at Nuremberg said.
I wrote and saved the essay as a Word Perfect document. It’s on the PC in my home office. I paste/post it when I get home.
Excellent.
there is a very simple reason the Soviets came up with the theory that the bomb was intended to intimidate them.
It’s because that’s exactly what it did.
one expert in todays paper says the bomb weighs 400 lbs. Not quite right. But if that is true, what thoughts go through your head?
“Doubtless Baldwin is concerned & feeling guilty about the fact that our civilians never suffered “
That it an interesting observation. It doubtlessly drives a lot of leftist thinking.
My father-in-Law was 18 and in the Navy in 1945. He was sent to Marine Boot Camp with other Navy guys to train for the invasion of Japan. After Boot Camp he was put on a ship bound for Japan. After the first bomb was dropped the ship stopped where it was in the Pacific. It sat their until Japan surrendered. Then rerouted to Okinawa. He finished his duty as a Crane Operator on Okinawa.
To answer your question, YES. Little Boy was designed to go off at about 1300 feet above ground. It used a radar altimeter to determine the height above the surface. The antennae on the side were for the radar altimeter.
That Laurence and the Times kept their end of the bargain is amazing. Sure wouldn't happen today.
Baldwin did seem to be hyperventilating there. He should have taken a Valium and chilled out. Or, I guess in those days it would be a glass of scotch.
After the first bomb was dropped the ship stopped where it was in the Pacific. It sat their until Japan surrendered.
You're right, of course, about the NYT, given their more recent secret-spilling done with apparent complete impunity. However, since it was wartime and involved the ultimate weapon, it's not unlikely the government added a thick, heavy stick with that carrot (It's not the carrot and but or the stick).
Says here that Laurence was the only journalist to witness Trinity AND Nagasaki.
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/William_L._Laurence
Also:
In May 1940, Laurence published a front-page exclusive in the New York Times on successful attempts in isolating uranium-235 which were reported in Physical Review, and outlined many (somewhat hyperbolic) claims about the possible future of nuclear power.[3] He had assembled it in part out of his own fear that Nazi Germany was attempting to develop atomic energy, and had hoped the article would galvanize a U.S. effort. Though his article had no effect on the U.S. bomb program, it was passed to the Soviet mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky by his son, a professor of history at Yale University, and motivated Vernadsky to urge Soviet authorities to embark on their own atomic program and established one of the first commissions to formulate “a plan of measures which it would be necessary to realize in connection with the possibility of using intraatomic energy” (no full-scale atomic energy program began in the Soviet Union until after the war, however).[4]
In April 1945, Laurence was summoned to the secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico by General Leslie Groves to serve as the official historian[5] of the Manhattan Project. In this capacity he was also the author of many of the first official press releases about nuclear weapons, including some delivered by the Department of War and President Harry S. Truman. He was the only journalist present at the Trinity test in July 1945, and beforehand prepared statements to be delivered in case the test ended in a disaster which killed those involved. As part of his work related to the Project, he also interviewed the airmen who flew on the mission to drop the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Laurence himself flew aboard the B-29 The Great Artiste, which served as a blast instrumentation aircraft, for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Hibakusha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha
There is considerable discrimination in Japan against the hibakusha. It is frequently extended toward their children as well: socially as well as economically. “Not only hibakusha, but their children, are refused employment,” says Mr. Kito. “There are many among them who do not want it known that they are hibakusha.”
—Studs Terkel (1984), The Good War.[31]
Jacob Beser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Beser
Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, when it dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, Beser was a crewmember aboard Bockscar when “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki. He was the only person to have served as a strike crew member of both of the 1945 atomic bomb missions.[1]
Jacob Beser also:
When asked about his atomic bomb missions on numerous interviews, Beser made the following response:
For years I have been asked two questions. (1) Would you do it again? (2) Do you feel any guilt for having been a part of Hiroshima’s destruction?
One has to consider the context of the times in which decisions are made. Given the same set of circumstances as existed in 1945, I would not hesitate to take part in another similar mission.
No I feel no sorrow or remorse for whatever small role I played. That I should is crazy. I remember Pearl Harbor and all of the Japanese atrocities. I remember the shock to our nation that all of this brought. I don’t want to hear any discussion of morality. War, by its very nature, is immoral. Are you any more dead from an atomic bomb than from a conventional bomb?[6]
AND (if only our high school and colleges were this good today)
had a scientific understanding of the new weapons’ potential and destructiveness, as a result of his earlier high school and university education.
I'm not surprised some leftie reporter tried to get his Pulitzer revoked years later.
Apparently, he published an article denying that the black rain carried radiation, reasoning the radioactive cloud had drifted well away. He was wrong, but scientists knew next to nothing about radiation or radiation sickness at the time. I remember in something I've read in the last couple of months some in the military thought that if the strategic atomic bombing did not produce a surrender, future bombs should be used as tactical nukes on Kyushu, dropping 2 or 3 days before our troops would hit the beaches in Operation Olympic. That is how ignorant we were before the issue was studied in depth after the end of the war. Shoot, in 1953 my father in law was one of the soldiers shipped to Nevada to observe the firing of the Atomic Cannon with no protection. In later years he was sure he was exposed to more radiation than he should have, but fortunately he didn't develop sickness or ever have cancer.
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