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The day the world changed forever: 75 years ago the first atomic bomb was detonated at dawn during a top-secret US-led nuclear test in the New Mexico desert resulting in a blast so powerful, it could have been seen from Mars
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] - 'Trinity' was the code name for the secret operation that tested the nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert before it was dropped on Japan in 1945
- J Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project and physicist who designed the bomb was not confident the test would work
- Engineers and scientists involved in the project waged bets on whether the blast would incinerate the entire planet or be a complete dud
- Army devised contingency plans for the worse case scenario that involved death, damage to surrounding communities and evacuation of nearby residents
- The detonation was four times larger than the expected maximum and was visible as far away as Amarillo, Texas, 280 miles away
- Army lied to the public, issuing a fake cover story that the blast was the result of an accidental magazine explosion on base
- Ash rained on the surrounding landscape for days afterward
- Upon its staggering success Oppenheimer said: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds;' the test director said: 'Now we are all sons of b***ches'
- The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three weeks later, leading to Japan's unconditional surrender and the end of WWII
Posted by: Skidmark 2020-07-17 |
