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Beginning of the Manhattan Project
The Begining December 1938 German physicists had learned how to split a Uranium atom. This spread wide fear due to the fact that the Nazi’s could find a way to produce a bomb that could cause mass destruction. These scientist were Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman. -
Albert Einstein Warning
Albert's warningAugust 2nd 1939 Albert Einstein warns president Franklin Delano Roosevelt the danger Uranium atoms can produce. Albert Einstein fled from the nazi’s party weeks later came to united states to help us prepare a nuclear war. -
National Defense Research Committee
National ArchiveIn June of 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Committee "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare." Much of this work was done under the strictest secrecy. -
OSRD
OSRDIn June of 1941 The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) superseded the committee structure. OSRD projects gave the United States and Allied troops more powerful and more accurate bombs, more reliable detonators, lighter and more accurate weapons, safer and more effective medical treatments, and more versatile vehicles. -
Plutonium Factories Part 1
Plutonium The plutonium production facilities at the Hanford Engineer Works took shape with the same wartime urgency as did the uranium facilities at Oak Ridge. In February 1943, Colonel Matthias returned to the location he had helped select the previous December and set up a temporary headquarters. In late March, Matthias received his assignment. The three water-cooled production reactor (piles), designated by the letters B, D, and F, would be built about six miles on the south of the Columbia River. -
Plutonium Factories Part 2
Plutonium FactoriesThe four chemical separation plants would be built in pairs at two sites nearly ten miles south of the piles. A facility to produce slugs and perform tests would be approximately twenty miles southeast of the separation plants near Richland. Temporary quarters for construction workers would be put up at the Hanford town site, while permanent facilities for other personnel would be located down the road in Richland, safely removed from the production and separation plants. -
Plutonium making
The MakingThe chemists' job was to purify the uranium-235 and plutonium, reduce them to metals, and process the tamper material. Only highly purified uranium and plutonium would be safe from predetonation. Fortunately, purification standards for uranium were relatively modest, and the chemical division was able to focus its effort on the lesser known plutonium and make substantial progress on a multi-step precipitation process by summer 1944. -
Atomic Bomb Test Run
Trinity Test The first atomic bomb was detonated at 5:30 am on July 16, 1945 at a site of the alamogordo air base 120 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A ball of fire rose rapidly followed by a mushroom cloud extending to 40,000 feet in the air.The bomb generated an explosive power equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). -
Hiroshima
Hiroshima bombingAugust 6th, 1945 the US Air Force detonated the first atomic bomb used on people ever. This bomb weighed approximately 2400 pounds and created an explosion of 1.2 million tons 1.1 million of it was mostly TNT. The bombing drop was made by the famously known plane the Enola Gay. The name the U.S gave this bomb was little boy, which makes this ironic because of how big they were. -
Nagasaki
Fat Man bombThree days later on August 9, 1945, The United states dropped a plutonium implosion type bomb on the city of Nagasaki,Japan. The bomb was known as “Fat Man”. The resulting explosion had a blast yield of 21 kilotons of TNT. The Atomic bomb killed about 37,000 people and injured another 60,000 people. Roughly half the deaths occurred instantly. During the following months, Large amounts of people died from burns, radiation, and other injuries. -
Navy Capt. William S. Parsons. (Primary Source).
ArchiveOne of the men instrumental in the development of the bomb, Navy Capt. William S. Parsons, flew along on the mission in order to arm the bomb away from friendly territory and avoid endangering American lives. The bombing mission was a success, and a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Within a week, Japan sued for peace. Captain Parsons was awarded the Silver Star. -
Tsutomu Yamguchi
The Survivor On August 9, 1945, the B-29 bomber “Bockscar” sliced through the clouds above the Japanese city of Nagasaki and unleashed a 22-kiloton plutonium bomb known as “Fat Man.” The blinding white light that followed was sickeningly familiar to Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an engineer who just three days before had been severely injured in the atomic attack at Hiroshima. The 29-year-old naval engineer was on a three-month-long business trip for his employer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. -
Surrender
Surrender Japan surrendered on 15 August, obviously as a result of the bombs, it was generally believed, and for a few months Americans and their allies could tell themselves that though the bombs had been terrible, they had obviated the need for an invasion of Japan. This had been scheduled for December 1945, and in it many hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen would have been killed and wounded. But very soon doubts arose in many quarters. -
U.S.S. Missouri Surrender Ceremony
Video surrenderSurrenderThe surrender ceremony took place aboard the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Gen. MacArthur is shown signing the document while recently liberated Gen. Jonathan Wainwright looks on. The Japanese delegation is shown lined up at attention before the two generals. -
Total Cost
Bomb costThe cost all the way through October 1 1945 cost 1.845 billion, equivalent to less than 9 days of wartime spending, and rose to 2.91 billion once the AEC assumed control in 1947. 90% of the cost was for building plants and producing fissionable materials, and 10% of producing and developing the actual weapon. A total of 4 bombs were produced by the end of 1945 costing roughly 500 million for each bomb.
