My Dad was aboard ship on the way to the Japanese mainland, and no more than a few days out when Mr. Truman dropped the bombs. Once ashore, he and his heavy equipment group were dispatched to Hiroshima. His group dug massive pits to bury the dead in the heart of the city. He would never talk about it. Sadly, like virtually every man in his unit, he succumbed to cancer and the government would never admit responsibility for the deaths of the plethora of Americans who died from their radiation exposure in Japan.
Unless he was a POW, this doesn't make a lot of sense. And if he was a POW, then it's the Japanese who were responsible for the radiation exposure of his unit.
My dad was aboard APA 188 attack transport in the south pacific when the bombs were dropped. He was a Navy Radioman 3C. He was going to be part of the invasion force - that wasn’t needed. The bomb saved his life. He passed away in September of 2022.
Interesting side note. Just after Truman assumed office in April 1945, one of his first Executive Orders was the minting of 500,000 Purple Heart medals in preparation for the Invasion of Japan. When Japan capitulated on the 14th of August, the medals were put into storage then issued out during the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars. As of 2000, 120,000 of the vintage WWII Purple Hearts are still being held by the Department of Defense.
I assume the American tax payer will eventually realize the return on investment after full utilization of the remaining balance of medals...it's truly amazing that they were not spent well before 2000🤔🤨
Another little known side note is that the gov't ordered 2 million body bags for the invasion, in part due to the high anticipation of Japanese deaths.
Interesting how this video said that America had a plethora of atomic bombs at their disposal. In other accounts I read in the past, America barely had enough materials for the bombs dropped on Japan and that it would be months before others would be ready. You cannot believe what you read and hear. Not even on this site. You just have to rely on your own common sense.
About 30 -35 yrs ago, I met an older gentleman living near Walla Walla, Wa. He had pictures on his walls of B-29's. He started to tell me about his time in the AAF during WW2. He said he was a member of the ground crew for the atomic bomb carrying B-29's on Tinian. He said that for Fatman, because of its size, they had to wheel it over an elevator built into the tarmac, lower it down below grade, wheel the plane over it, then raise the bomb out of the hole and into the plane's bomb bay. They were practicing doing that and taxiing with the bomb in place, and somebody screwed up and dropped the bomb on the tarmac, with the plane high-centered over it. They had to jack up the plane high enough to retrieve the bomb, and then lower the plane back down onto the tarmac. Crazy story if true.
This chimes with previous comments about the bomb falling on the tarmac and being damaged. A previous commentor said both of the nukes were supposed to have been dropped at the same time, and this accident delayed Fatman 2 days.
The hole they made in the tarmac to load the bomb known as the "bomb pit" is still there. I saw it when I was there doing an environmental study for the military back in 2009. Not much else left from WWII on Tinian though. Most of the runways are overgrown to drive a vehicle down much less land a plane on. I heard that the Air Force wants to re-activate it.
My father was stationed in the Philippines awaiting landing in Japan when the bombs were dropped. He then spent the next two years as the part of the occupation forces. He fell in love with the Japanese people and held them in the highest respect. He would never talk about what he saw or did there. I think it caused him deep emotional pain.
My Grandpa was in National Guard 1940, Mobilized, made E-6, then Combat Commission to Lt, served in Philippines wounded twice and Awarded Silver Star. Occupation of Japan til Fall 46. Stayed in ARMY retired Colonel O-6. One the reasons I joined in 1980 at 16yrs old, did 28yrs myself
Remember the almost 3000 solders and sailors that died at Perl Harbor due to Japans sneak attack. There were also many other causalities. Then there is the way they treated their POW's. Our guys were treated in the worst ways. You might also look up the Rape of Nanjing. I'm surprised China doesn't seek revenge even today.
@@chuckvarwig8062 Remember those 3,000+ soldiers and sailors well, and often, because FDR knew the Japs were going to attack a couple weeks before they did~
@@chuckvarwig8062 Oh, the Chinese DO seek revenge, even today. I'm told it's a regular thing for the Chinese to make large orders of Japanese goods, just to cancel them, and leave the Japanese in a lurch. North Korea has long been committing act of war on Japan, long after the cease fire with the South and it's allies.
@@chuckvarwig8062 they do, but their ways are lot more different... nation can be enslaved not only by weapons and physical cruelty, there are much smarter ways ...
Kyoto being passed over as a target because of "Cultural Significance" was the official reason that Secretary of War Henry Stimson persuaded Truman with. He said that Kyoto being destroyed would make reconciliation with Japan post-war almost impossible. The real reason that Stimson was so adamant in sparing the city was that he had visited Kyoto many times before the war, and had even honeymooned there with his wife. He was personally attached to the beautiful city and didn't want it destroyed.
@@shotgunsurgeon3849 stop insulting your own comment. The youtube comment section represents a significant part of the internet. Statements on youtube are no less true or false then in any other place. On the contrary. The crowsourcing power on this platform is not to be underestimated.
This is wrong. He did believe the City to be beautiful, but he clearly expressed at the time that using the bomb on Kyoto could make reconciliation impossible. He was a very savvy guy. There is plenty of evidence about this as his reason.
My dad was on a troop train on the way to San Francisco to board a troop ship to the far east when the Japanese surrendered. He'd been in the ETO since Feb of 43, what were the odds of his survival if we had to invade the home island? Casualty estimates for a beachhead were between 500,000 and 750,000 dead and wounded.
After the Soviet intervention Japan wasn't going to last until Nov 1 anyway. The counterposition of the bombings to the imagined cost of a phantom invasion is spurious: Washington knew a surrender our outright collapse would come, but wanted to expedite it to deny Moscow an occupation zone and a seat at a subsequent peace conference. It was about postwar geopolitics, not saving lives.
My Dad was in command of a submarine sailing from the secret US submarine base in Fremantle, Western Australia, to Japan, to attack Japanese shipping, on August 15, 1945. Their chance of survival was slim once inside the patrol area. Two days out of Fremantle they received an order to return to base, the Japanese had surrendered, and my Dad survived to tell the story!
My dad was in the USMC in WWII. He flat out told me that he didn't expect to survive the war. A slight risk each day multiplied by many, many days ... I had been born already but I'm happy I grew up having a dad.
The problem with a decapitation strike is that there needs to be command structure intact that can issue the order to surrender. In Imperial Japan, only the Emperor could issue such an order. If the Allies had killed the Emperor with an atomic bomb on Tokyo, you can bet an enraged population would have fought to the bitter end.
Based on the fact that another atom bomb was being assembled and with twelve more in the near term pipeline and who knows how many later on, the Japanese would definitely have been given the opportunity to fight to the bitter end. One bomb, one cloud, one city at a time, until nothing of significance was left. It is chilling to think how close it came to the near complete destruction of Japan. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. In spades.
Sounds like we had quite a few bombs. I don't see how a population, enraged or not, could stand up to an A bomb. But I will say this, I am very glad it didn't come to that!!! However, when you start a fight, torture, perform inhuman medical experiments on POWs & the Chinese, I would not lose sleep if we had to nuke the whole island, to put an end to these atrocities & the war. Its simple, if you keep killing my guys, I keep dropping bombs. "Are you done yet? No? OK, here's another nuke. Are you done now? No? Here's an early birthday present...it will unwrap itself." Thankfully, the Emperor loved his people. Hitler did not.
who would they fight? the amphibious landing was now off the table. fight to the last starved skeleton more like it. imagine the misery a whole nation starving at once ended only in a flash brighter than the sun the darkness and silence forever.
I’ll save you some time, there is no dark reason why the third wasn’t dropped… we dropped 2 and they surrendered before the third was built. It’s that simple lol
And yet the Indianapolis was sent back to the USA, alone, slow, radio silent, begging to be sunk. And it was sunk. Nobody was supposed to survive. It is highly likely that there was more than just the two bombs officially transported. Anyone who would know for sure is already dead. It is likely a secret that will be released in 2045.
@@soshieopath7142 Wrong, as this unexpectedly accurate scru-tub video stated, the 3rd was already being assembled on Tinian and was scheduled to be dropped on Aug, 19. It only lacked the addition of the plutonium core which was only held up by the US and the newly minted UN waiting to hear a response from the Japanese govt after the 2nd bomb had been dropped. The 3rd city was already targeted and there were more bombs in the early staging pipeline.
My mother was part of the Manhattan Project. I even have one of her mushroom cloud uniform patches! A few decades later I was a nuclear weapons courier. We used to joke about being a different kind of nuclear family.
@@TomSwift-wy1gx It's a team effort to transport a weapon, but one person has to sign for it, become responsible for the chain of custody to the next recipient and has to oversee the loading of the weapon and make sure it is secured properly. It's much more detailed than handling conventional ordnance. If anything happens to it you are responsible.
LIFE "Is Funny!" Dad's brother was on the Mighty Mo! at Armistice! I had family, friends, teachers, bosses, family Dr, and Neighbors All Involved from every angle of Birth of idea to Delivery. I GREW UP ground Zero! Hot and Cold War, next to all So Cal industry and Next to Rockwell Downey same streets and schools every home move. "I Have ZERO" FEAR of a Nuclear War or Weapons System.
Kokura, Japan was supposed to be the 2nd target instead of Nagasaki, but Kokura was spared because it 100% cloud cover, so they diverted to Nagasaki instead. Also, there was a little known conventional bombing raid on an industrial site in northern Japan that happened _after_ the Nagasaki bombing.
The last bomb run over Japan was August 14th 1945 and it was not small. It involved over 820 B-29s and over 180 fighter escorts, multiple cities were heavily bombed, and 2 cities were firebombed. By 12 noon on August 15th, after a last ditch coup d' etat failed at the Imperial Palace, Hirohito surrendered and addressed his people over the radio, calling for all Japanese to lay down their arms surrender to American forces.
Thank you for bringing that up. Thanks to our crap teaching of history, what most ppl didn't know is that the conventional bombing from B29s was ongoing, and it was brutal. Japan had little air defenses so basically it was a turkey shoot.
Among the 17 Japanese cities originally selected as A-Bomb candidates, all but 3 were rejected. This was because almost all of Japan's cities had already been totally leveled to ash piles by General Lemay's much more devastating fire bombing campaign. Consequently, the US would not be able to measure the effectiveness of the A-Bomb from battle damage assessment of the aftermath of the impending A-Bomb attacks. The three cities were chosen because they were among the few that had not yet been turned to ash piles.
That is totally wrong. First, there were more then just three targets selected both from the target committee and in the signed order. So here you are wrong. Second, while they choose targets not yet raided, there were still many left. Japan is not as small as many seem to think.
My father was a US Marine on Okinawa, preparing for the invasion of Japan in August 1945.....All Marines on Okinawa had been issued new uniforms and new equipment for the Invasion of Japan. If it had not been for the Atomic bombs and Japan's surrender, there's a good chance my father would have been killed invading Japan I would have never been born! I'd like someone to calculate the number of Americans who would have been killed invading Japan, and then calculate the number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchilden of veterans who would have never been! I would wager it's a far greater number than those killed by the bombs. Any death is a tragedy.....and we should pray for the souls of those lost in the war on all sides!
From your perspective you wouldn't have been born if your dad had died in war. From my perspective, anyone intended to be born whether intended by God or by the natural forces of the universe, will be born no matter what mortal humans do. Just as when someone time is done on earth, nothing we do can overcome the intention of God or universe. Meaning you would've been born absolutely 💯 exactly the sane person you are today no matter which human was used to fulfill God or natures plan.
@@cargolaw I thought that also for a long time...actually, if my sources are correct, and I never believe anything these days....the US did have more atomic bombs available....
It was projected in war games that a invasion of mainland Japan would have cost 1 million American men. And that was if the invasion went well and as planned
Thanks doc for enlightening me yet again. I have learned 100s more in minutes of time by you instead of hours in schools that don't teach this. Love it@!!
One of my old bosses in my first contract company was a member of Dr. Edgerton's team during the 1940's during the development of testing equipment for the A-Bomb tests in Nevada. He was onsite for several of the tests in the early days before he moved to other projects for EG&G. His recollection was that other technicians and scientists said that several A-Bombs were being readied by the latter part of 1945, but there were concerns about the effectiveness of the weapons as well the aftereffects on personnel occupying areas that had been bombed. Many in the US military and civilian leadership also felt that A Bombs might have a detrimental effect on the local population, both physically and mentally. Being nuked wasn't exactly something that instills trust in the local population. A 3rd A-Bomb might have been a step too for too many in the Truman administration, but we won't ever really know as the war ended after the first two bombs.
This is an interesting perspective. It makes sense that they would worry about the effects of another bomb on US personnel ( as it was soldiers on occupation duty in Japan did suffer the effects of the bombs). The resentment factor I doubt. Keep in mind the firebombing of Tokyo killed a million ppl and in many ways was a lot more gruesome than the A bomb. I doubt that the emperor and Tojo would decide not to surrender if a 3rd bomb was used,and popular will quite honestly wouldn't change either, Japan was wiped out before the bomb.
Edgerton and EG&G did not get involved with the atomic bomb program until the third atomic test. I took a summer course at MIT with Dr. Edgerton in 1984. I had about a one-hour discussion with him about instrumenting and photographing atomic bomb tests. He said, "We (meaning EG&G) did not do anything with atomic bomb tests until the third test. The first test was secret and the military attempted to record it. For the second test, our cost was deemed to be too expensive - and they got little information from that test. From the third test onward, we triggered and instrumented all of the tests and did all of the high-speed photography."
@@buckhorncortez Those fellows' work was pivotal and is what gave Teller insight into how to construct the "super", because without the high-speed photography showing the tower guy cables catching fire from the burst of X-rays while still outside the fireball, it might have taken years for someone to realize they could be re-directed into the secondary fusion fuel.
I am 91 -Air Force Korean War Vet - I had 2 R&R - 2 Week Tours in Tokyo - I was amazed in that It Had No Damage - It was like NY City - In 1953 the people were gracious , fun loving - Some were Not - Now I know the Whole Story - Thankyou
My father is 90 and he was also an Air Force Korean War vet. He was based for a while in Japan also. He was a photographer, who took photos of the ground to ascertain where the troops and artillery (North Korean and Chinese) were.
@@cowboyofscience7611 God Bless Him - Korean War Vets Fought A war that was forgotten because it was To Close to WW3 - America Had - "HAD" IT WITH WAR ! - We Directed The Bombs - Without Your Father There Would Have Been No "Targets"- God Bless America -
Tokyo was hardly untouched. More people were killed in Tokyo by incendiary bombs than by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Maybe that had good progress rebuilding by the time you were there.
A third bomb was to be deployed via the B-29 called "Deming's Demons" from (I'm told by my Dad, a WWII Vet) Attu or another base close by. Japan should be very grateful that it wasn't deployed on Tokyo because the Japanese government would not have been around to sue for peace after we finished the subsequent bombing. We would have substantially reduced the Home Island population by half if we had bombed Tokyo. Japan did recover from the two bombs, but only after we helped them do so. So many of our troops were lost in both theatres that Truman did not have a choice to use as many bombs as needed to force the Japanese to surrender. Fifteen more bombs were in the pipeline to be used against the Western Pacific Nations if they acted up.
Oh you guys recovered Japan. You sold out people who helped you against the Brits when you started your country, but saved and rebuilt your enemies. Shameful.
Looks at piss ant Russia lol, the Texas economy is better. Japanese military back then, hmmm sided with Nazi's, big mistake And of course the people of Japan didn't want war at all
The spies? Yeah and talk about how they deliberately leaked the technical details to ensure that the US could not have a tyrannical monopoly on the weapon. It was a very deliberate treason on the part of multiple scientists.
Yeah there was a communist sympathizer working at Los Alamos. They didn't even have to figure out how to build their own bomb the schematics were stolen and handed to them.
My Father was in 3 back to back tests: Operation "Tumbler Snapper" we have him on documentary film. Foward trench/ special communications/ the bomb goes off,the shock wave blows over them, they dust themselves off, grab their clipboards, light up a cigarette and walk off towards the mushroom cloud. He died from multiple medical/ cardiovascular complications at the age of 52. My brother and I have various subliminal mutation. Except for the fact that my brothers thyroid system ever came on line, at middle school he was already 6ft 3 and 230lbs. They made him the football team's Center. T.M.G.
This was an excellent video. Love the entire Dark series. I never knew there was more than a possible 3rd bomb and I hadn't known how close the 3rd bomb was so ready and that possibly Tokyo was the target. Up until now, I thought Tokyo was off the list since the firebombing of it had been so successful. Every day I have so much great TH-cam content like the Dark series I wonder why I maintain my Netflix subscription. I rarely watch it anymore given such excellent TH-cam creators such as the Dark series and other TH-cam creators. Thank you. Keep it up!
@AlexPerez-gs3pi Yes, I watch that channel a lot too. As you mentioned, very good content. One of my many TH-cam channels I subscribed to. Again, why do I keep my Netflix subscription? TH-cam gets a lot of bad press but I find myself watching it almost exclusively now.
Me too. I have my laptop HDMi to my 60" big screen. TH-cam on Chrome browser better than smart TV app TH-cam because adblock eliminates all the TH-cam ads.
My late father had the good fortune to not turn 18 till 1946, but being a farm boy from the Pacific Northwest who wanted to go to college (and whose older brother had served in Europe) he joined up and served in the Occupation of Japan. They were offered a chance to visit Hiroshima at some point but he turned it down, thank goodness, and lived to be 88.
Tokyo was not going to be the next target for at least 2 major reasons. 1) Tokyo was already mostly ash and rubble from firebombing. The atomic bomb targets were supposed to be undamaged cities so that the effects of the bombs could be more easily measured. Eventually they might have started nuking cities that had already been firebombed, but not until they ran out of untouched cities. 2) They didn't want to kill the emperor or the Japanese government. The firebombing of Tokyo specifically avoided the royal palace for that reason as well. If the Japanese government was dead there would be no one to order their soldiers and the population of Japan to stand down.
Otoh without govt, no one to issue valid orders or allocations of munitions. The real reason govts are not valid targets is it's a good excuse to make their own arses safe. (From sovereign backed attackers).
@@germany2546 - Yeah, that's... not how things actually work in practice. Kill the emperor, who the people at the time viewed more like a Jesus figure, and you only ensure the local populace remains hostile forever.
@@germany2546 No. We had considerable experience to the contrary. There were two ways to get Japanese to vacate a bunker: several guys to pack a flamethrower (note only one flamethrower) in and burn everything. Find a relevant Japanese officer to relieve them of their post. Having the emperor order a stand down was the only realistic way to end the conflict. Ending him would have been the worst thing we could have done for our own objectives.
Love these, thanks for posting. History is not all fun and games and memes. It's dark stuff and I appreciate this narrator for just telling it like it is.
The proposed tempo of atomic weapons use on Japan was by the end of July 1945 expected to be: 3 in August, 3 in September-October and as many as 7 in December. This would have required the use of mixed use U235/Pu239 warheads which were in the works at Los Alamos. Therefore the numbers quoted in this video are basically correct as near as I can independently determine.
To read an article about the telephone conversation on August 13 referred to at 8:12, and also a re-typed version of the transcript itself, search for the titles "The USA had a Top Secret plan to make a new atomic bomb 'every ten days' in 1945" and "A phone call to chat about making a new A-bomb every ten days, and how to use them".
I met a guy from Oak Ridge TN about a year ago. I ask had his family lived there long. He said they moved there in 1943. When asked if he had family that worked on the bomb he said his Aunt was a Calutron Girl. He ask if I knew what that was. Of course I do. He said she had passed away in about 2005. But she had three daughters. I ask him to thank each of them for me and tell them what a huge contribution their mother had made to the program. I hope he remembered to do that when he returned home.
I'm 3rd generation working at oak ridge, lived in it and grew up there. My grandmother was in accounting at that time. I have actually worked on some of the equipment that was used to enrich the uranium, and that was around 70 years after they built the machinery. I'm now retired electrician/ instrumentation tech/ systems engineer.
According to a Japanese historian, the target of the 3rd bomb was to be at the Nakajima aircraft factory at the Nerima area in the NW of Tokyo, which was not really that densely populated. The factory is long gone.
The world planners would have dropped that bomb if they wanted to; their plans were to renovate HIroshima and Nagasaki from the very beginning of the war.
The third bomb was to have the Demon Core, which was being used in experiments at the time. It has quite a history since it wasn't used to destroy a third Japanese city. A video of its story will be interesting to this channel's fans.
In an August 2002 interview with Studs Terkel published in the British Guardian newspaper, Paul Tibbetts recalled something similar: "Unknown to anybody else--I knew it, but nobody else knew--there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got a phone call from General Curtis LeMay. He said, 'You got another one of those damn things?' I said, 'Yessir.' He said, 'Where is it?' I said, 'Over in Utah.' He said, 'Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it.' I said, 'Yessir.' I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Trinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over."
Not sure where this comes from, but does anyone think the US military did not plan for more than two atomic bombs??? They had a schedule for every bomb they could make for months ahead? Of course they did. The general running the entire effort of bombing Japan would not have been out of the loop, not knowing what bombs would be ready and when. The strangest part of this is that the bomb was in Utah. What facility was it at that it was just sitting around collecting dust?
@@rickcollins1825 good question. I was thinking of the bomb’s core components when Tibbets said that. I’m seeing on the Wendover historical site that they made a lot of the Fat Man casings there in Utah. And that the third plutonium bomb shell (after the Alamogordo and the Nagasaki bomb) was readied to be flown out to California. The plutonium package was put together at Los Alamos and flown by a Lt William A King - eventually for Tinian I presume. From the site: “During or shortly after the bombing of Nagasaki, Colonel Paul Tibbetts under orders by General Cutis LeMay, dispatched Lt. Col. Classen, the deputy group commander, in the unnamed victor 94 and crew B-6 in Jabit III, together with their ground crews, to Wendover AAFB to stage for the possibility of transporting further Fat Man [Model 1561] bomb assemblies to Tinian. At Los Alamos, the second plutonium core for the third bomb had been fabricated and was ready for shipment to Tinian by special courier Lt. William A. King on a C-54 cargo aircraft of the 509th CG. These shipments were halted by orders from Washington to hold all shipment of atomic bomb components to Tinian, due to the impending surrender of the Japanese.” Can post the link if you wish. Hopefully it doesn’t get dumped by youtube.
All that I read in the 1960s and 1970s is that there was not enough fissile materiapl for any past those first two. Refining the U-235 and Plutonium was a LONG and slow orocess. They may have had the parts for another bom, but from what info was out 20 years later, there was no muclear material ready to put in it.
The primary target for the second bomb ("Fat Man") was actually Kokura. Unable to visually site the target due to smoke, the bomber flew to the secondary target, which was Nagasaki.
Cloud cover prevented Kokura from being bombed. Nagasaki also had some clouds but they dropped the bomb anyway. Incidentally missing the target the bomb fell into a ravine and did not do the amount of damage the Hiroshima bomb caused.
@@douglashogg4848 "Fell into a ravine"??? It was dropped over Urakami valley (bit of a difference!). But yes it was off-target and resulted in less destruction than was intended. It's an eerie place (ground zero, there) - I visited around 2001.
One thing I did not put together until recently is the fact that the Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") was never tested prior to its use.The Trinity test was of the type of bomb used on Nagasaki ("Fat Man"), which was an implosion type weapon using a plutonium core, while the Hiroshima bomb was a gun type with a uranium core. It was felt that the latter would definitely work, while they were less confident about the implosion bomb. It's hard to believe that an untested weapon was used on Hiroshima. What if it had failed?
If it failed, we had many more waiting. For months before we dropped the first bomb, the us was ready and waiting to nuke every enemy nations capital city within 48 hours, if Britain fell.
The Manhattan Project scientists, the greatest collection of brainpower ever assembled, were certain the gun bomb with U235 would work. Uranium enrichment is a painstaking process and there was no point in wasting what little they had on a test. The gun bomb doesn’t have a core, it has a U235 bullet fired into a U235 target. Oppenheimer almost resigned when it was discovered that a gun assembly wouldn’t work for plutonium.
I helped (as a volunteer) with the final reunion of the 509th Composite Group. It was held in Wendover, Utah over Labor Day in 2001. Col. Tibbetts didn't attend as he was at the reunion for the USS Indianapolis. Wendover was where the 509th trained. You can see the bomb pit where the practice bombs were loaded. The airbase is being restored.
You and the men you served with accomplished more than we can comprehend. Much love and respect on behalf of a generation undeserving of your sacrifice. It pains me to see what we’ve become, but there is hope we can regain or honor and dignity
@@mrmagoo8956 I'm sorry if you got the impression I was a member of the 509th I am not. I was just a volunteer for the reunion twenty plus years ago. I agree with you that those men deserves all of our love and respect for all that their generation accomplished!
My father was in the Photographic and Spectrographic group at Trinity. At 3:01 is his jeep with a white insulated box for keeping film safe. He also took still and movie aerial footage of the crater, and had a framed photo on our basement wall. It was a strange childhood.
I don't think Trinity made any crater. It was an air burst from a tower. It's only fallout would have been from the bomb's atomic material that was drawn into the atmosphere. But, this wasn't enough to be noticed. To have measurable fallout from a single bomb the bomb has to be ground burst so debris and soil are drawn into the bomb's mushroom cloud where it gets coated with the bomb's atomic material. The atomic material is then deposited on the ground when the debris and soil return to the ground. The first known incidence of atomic bomb fallout came after one of the tests in the Pacific. Shortly after the test a Japanese fishing trawler in the area was covered with dust. But it was only after the crew got sick that the connection was made between the dust and atomic fallout.
My father was in the Navy and part of the occupation force that went into Tokyo after Japan surrendered. His description of the devastation from the firebombing was chilling. He had seen the ruthlessness of the Japanese in battle--he never had any regrets that the U.S. had firebombed, then nuked Japan to end the war. He said that any attempt to invade Japan to defeat it would likely have cost millions of lives on both sides.
Don’t invade it then. Stay home and dont blocade them in 1941. Easy. Same happening now for Russia and China. The US keeps pushing and provoking, until…
There were projections about probable number of casualties and they were very, very high. They also made the assumption that virtually everyone in Japan would have been involved.
@@LeonAust I think they were realistic and that an invasion of Japan by a ground force would have been the worst battle ever fought, in terms of casualties on both sides. We have all seen the stories of Japanese soldiers who either did not get the news of the surrender or who, having heard of the surrender, decided to fight on. These soldiers and other people could have held out for many months or even years and their tenacity is to be admired by those who believe in self-sacrifice.
One reason Japan surrendered was that the US relaxed its demand for unconditional surrender. Through intermediaries Japan negotiated the deal to allow the emperor to escape prosecution for war crimes and to serve as figurehead monarch of postwar Japan. The US may have agreed to do this to avoid the prospect of Russian boots all over Korea and Japan.
Tom Bower's books, "Blind Eye to Murder" [post-war cover-up of widespread, generalised atrocities in Europe, done mostly by Nazis] and another, "Paperclip Conspiracy", examined selection of those guilty of war crimes but not prosecuted, being deemed useful to the USA.
@@EllieMaes-Grandad Informed estimates place the number of Germans in the future West Germany who were guilty of WWII war crimes and thus might have been prosecuted by the occupying powers at 500,000 or more. If 500 were tried each month, the trials would not yet be over.
I don't think the U.S. agreed before the occupation to exempt the emperor from war crimes charges. But, we did lessen our demand for unconditional surrender by not demanding Hirohito's abdication. Several of the defendants at the Tokyo trials implicated Hirohito, but MacArthur saw to it that they changed their testimony so as to make him look innocent (which we now know he clearly was not). For some reason MacArthur felt we would have been unable to control the Japanese population if we had removed the emperor.
Exactly. There was a shortage of Uranium and Plutonium. There weren't dozens of atomic bombs ready to be dropped. I know because my dad was at Los Alamos and worked on the first bomb.
@@bobvog7123I know because that’s very common knowledge and was said in the 2023, 2nd highest grossing movie “Oppenheimer” based on the project manager of the manhattan project. Oh and my dad was Oppenheimer.
I once heard an old Chinese war veteran say: "No one at war wants peace more than the soldiers on the ground. It's only the politicians that want conflict."
@@Zac_Frost Except nowadays it's because of hundreds of thousands of Muslim fanatics who believe in a religion which states that all non-Muslims shall be eliminated from the face of the Earth. If they don't believe this, they are by very definition not Muslim.
I was always under the impression from my research that after the detonation of Fat Man we didn't have the capability of building a third bomb at that time. That we would have basically had to start from scratch. Always fun to learn something new and that we not only had the capability and materials for a 3rd bomb, but many more after that. This has got me hyped up to see Oppenheimer this summer. I can't wait to see how Nolan recreates the Trinity explosion.
@@coopandcarter It's not just the ore. After you dig that up you then have to purify it and separate the isotopes to get the fissile material. And the ratio is nuts, it's like for every 1000000 non-fissile isotopes you get one fissile isotope. You can watch other videos about the making of the atomic bomb and getting the uranium for Fat Man. They are highly informative.
Historian here. Sources vary somewhat, but in general the third bomb was not fully ready nor assembled to be used, and Japan surrendered before it was assembled. It would have been another 2 months ( roughly) for a 4th bomb ( or subsequent bombs) to be ready for use. When Truman informed Stalin of the successful Trinity test, Stalin already knew due to espionage. Soviet entry in the war on Japan probably had little effect, it would have taken time to mobilize Soviet forces to travel across Russia to even begin to engage Japan. The Japanese had no idea how many atomic bombs the US had to use on them, and they had no countermeasures to prevent further bombings, as none of their aircraft could fly high enough to attack the B 29's, nor could any anti-aircraft fire reach them. The one great moment of US military wisdom was in not attacking Tokyo with an atomic bomb, nor harming Emperor Hirohito. Not knowing how many bombs were available, and not being able to stop their use, surrender was in the best interest of Japan, which allowed them to preserve their cultural legacy, against the potential of extermination by atomic weapons or direct invasion. This saved millions of soldiers and civilians, from any side, from dying.
And I believe the Japanese were weighing their surrender to whom. They wisely chose the US terms of surrender even though it was to the Allied Powers as a whole. Stalin's conditions would have been horrific to Japan.
Even with this logic, the Army wanted to keep fighting. The Emperor overruled them in an extraordinary moment since he was usually more of a figure head.
No, there would have been a 4th bomb in a few weeks, at most. At that point, the US could produce about 1 bomb every 10 days or so. If Japan had not surrendered, there would have been an invasion of Kyushu (the southernmost island of Japan itself) by November 1, 1945. The big question would have been whether to continue using the limited number of bombs on Japanese cities or save them up to use as tactical weapons on during the invasion. Given the limited understanding of radiation at that time, the US Army was planning to send troops through irradiated zones within hours or a day or two of the bombing, which would have exposed them to significant radiation.
Your summation omitted one very important aspect here. There is a reason Russia had not declared war on Japan at even this very late stage. Russia and Japan still had lines of communication going to help be an intermediary in negotiating the end of the war. Russia thru back channels knew full well what our successful Trinity test meant to that end. Russia declared war on Japan to ensure a seat at the table and for a piece of the spoils of war, which being just under the wire they got. Once Japan saw Russia jump ship, their last chance of working out any deals to end the war in their favor, quickly faded, and the rest is history.
The answer is simple they didn’t want to accidentally kill the emperor who could order Japan to surrender unconditionally whereas if he didn’t do that the whole nation would’ve been resisting for up to 10 years.
Yes, they would have resisted and fought with swords if they ran out of bullets but not for 10 years. It was estimated it would cost between 300- and 500.000 US soldiers their lives if they would have conventionally attacked mainland Japan.
Both Bockscar & Strange Cargo were supposed to conduct a simultaneous attack on Japan. During preflight Strange Cargo dropped it's payload (FATMAN) onto the apron. It had to get picked up and evaluated to make sure it was still good to go. My late grandpa, John Hubaney was the crew chief ground crew assigned to that project.
They attacked in 3 ship formations. Once carried the bomb, one was loaded with electronic and photographic equipment and another one flew interference in case of enemy fighters. These (code named Silverplate) B-29’s had all of their defensive gun turrets removed except for the tail gun to improve range and speed. Strange Cargo was supposed to drop the Kokura / Nagasaki implosion weapon. However they decided it was too time consuming to move the cameras and electronics from Strange Cargo to Bock’s Car. Instead they swapped crews. Strange Cargo’ crew flew Bock’s Car and dropped the bomb. Bock’s Car’s normal crew flew Strange Cargo on that mission. Strange Cargo was the only airplane that flew both Atomic Missions.
@@davidforbes7772 No, the Enola Gay dropped the bomb. Strange Cargo was outfitted with electronic and photographic equipment to to record the blast on both missions.
There was a B-29 pilot who lived in Omaha. While I lived and worked there, 1978 to 1987, he completed research into something that came about, because he had harbored a long standing GRUDGE about being ordered to make a conventional bombing raid on Tokyo, on the 14th of August, 1945. His research (in Japan, with help from Japanese Archivists) found documents that indicated, that as a result of that raid, the "lights went out" at the Imperial Palace. When the lights went out there was a group of "militants" who were going to try to over power the guards, kidnap Hirohito and not allow him to make the surrender speech. Instead of that happening, the Palace guards intercepted the militants and Hirohito went on to announce the surrender then next day (Aug. 15,1945) After years of carrying a long ANGER at having been sent on a bombing mission, which COULD have resulted in his death...and which he and others in the crew thought worthless...(There was news that the announcement of the surrender was forthcoming!) this man found that THAT BOMBING RAID had an important part in helping to end the war. This was sort of a LOCAL NEWS item, I'm sure it's in the microfilms of the Omaha World Herald, but it's one of those "interesting facts" of the "for the lack of a nail, a horse was lost" chain of events that involved many factors...and that at least ONE person, didn't understand THEIR IMPORTANCE until 30 years after the event! (Go Bless that MAN for doing that work, and documenting it publicly. It's an important lesson for all!)
We would likely still be screwing around with the dynamic *today* if he had been killed. Japan is like a bees nest. Industrial creatures in full command of loyalty... Might not be that big of a nest, but I wouldn't just poke sticks at it. Someone would have had to finish them off or something methinks... It wouldn't have gone well at all.
This was actually documented to some extent on some history show. I can't remember which, but it covered the attempt to both kidnap Hirohito and steal the record that was to be played the following morning to announce the surrender. I also sadly can't remember if the bombing raid was mentioned or to what extent, but I do remember there being some aspect that foiled the kidnappers plans, so it seems likely that the raid was it. I hope this research brought that brave hero some peace.
Sorry to disagree but that account doesn't sound like an actual soldier of the time. That period was VERY anti-Japanese, (racist if you will), and the guys I met later on told me how wonderful it was to smell burning flesh inside the airplane as they cruised over the burning cities at night. Grudge...? Naw, they had written themselves off until the victory. Back then, it was a total war effort; total commitment.
@@Pimp-Master You're basing that on the opinions of a small group of people. Everybody has their own perspective of historical events that they witnessed or participated in.
Even as a former enemy and an uneasy ally, it is horrible to contemplate the destruction of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku with a dozen atomic bombs. Thank God Emperor Hirohito called for unconditional surrender.
Fortunately a 3rd bomb was not required. The loss of life caused by the first 2 was a colossal tragedy. Both the result of Japanese policy and how the Japanese military fought the war. Together with the refusal to surrender. The Japanese military leadership with the emperors approval had long since put pride about the suffering of the Japanese people. The fire bombing killed more Japanese civilians than the Bombs. The number of Japanese civilians who were killed or committed suicide on Okinawa should give an estimation of the horrific cost on the Japanese population an invasion of the home islands would been. Ultimately the bombs saved other Japanese lives as well as allied lives. Even after 2 bombs. The Japanese government was split and only surrendered with the Emperor vote to break the deadlock. Fortunately he chose to side with the acceptance of the surrender.
After the only two exisitng A-bombs had been dropped, archival records show a third bomb was under assembly at Tinian in the Mariana Islands where the Enola Gay and Bockscar had flown from, with the main plutonium core still to be to be shipped from the U.S. "Dozens" appears to be a wild farbrication.
@@jaybee9269 Source for either claim? Japan was starving to death and surrendered once the Soviets started invading the "Sacred" Home Islands - which conquest are held by Russia to this day.
@@thomaslinton5765 >> I don’t have one handy. But Groves and Oppenheimer planned for many bombs. Japan had their own atomic bomb program (little known) and their experts thought there was only one bomb ready. They did not understand how lavish we were with funds, personnel and material.
Actually there were projections at that time that showed the war with Japan would have lasted 4 to 5 more years with 1 million dead allied forces , and 5 million Japanese dead .
Would they have made it through the winter of '45-'46 though? The USN had crippled Japanese merchant shipping. No fuel nor food was coming in. At best some small fishing vessels were bringing in fish but not enough to feed the army let alone the whole nation.
No, there was no real projections, it was mere conjectures. The numbers got frequently changed. Yet it was true that they did expected lot of resistance, specially after the events in Iwo Jima. Clearly, they will not have any help from partisans, like they did when they were fighting Germany and Italy. On the other side, there was a lot of pressure to use the bombs, as eventually some people may have to justify the huge amount of resources invested in that project. It would be hard if at the end, it wasn't used to actually aid the war effort in any tangible way.
@@weredrgn Are you aware that the Navy had been predicting casualties prior to every invasion? And that every one of those predictions underestimated the casualties? Add in the Japanese fanaticism, 1 million American casualties may well have been an underestimate.
Great video. I can only hope that we know that these weapons should never ever be used again on anyone, especially what we have now sitting in silos in many countries around the world. If we learn anything from history it's the short term and long term damage nuclear weapons do.
Millions of dead soldiers from WWI, WWII and other battlefields and other fields of war through history teach that there are lots of deaths from "conventional" weapons. If it saves our soldiers' lives, it is worth using. All of the Allied dead soldiers who would have resulted from a conventional invasion of Japan lived to appreciate that the A-bombs saved their lives. War is hell... don't sneak attack us at Pearl Harbor or elsewhere if you don't want to learn that up front and personally!
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side. We’s comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y’know was kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin’; sometimes the shark go away . . . sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then . . . aah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, in spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and they . . . rip you to pieces. Know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men; they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up ‘n down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, she swung in low and he saw us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
Funny thing about Quint, he was a Canadian citizen. And the tax laws at the time were he had to fly back to Canada every three days , stay overnight to avoid us taxes. So there is that. Thanks for retelling his speech.
My father in law (USN WWII) was on a destroyer escort in the Pacific in this timeframe. My brother's father in law (USMC WWII) was on a troop carrier that was also staged for the invasion. Fortunately they both made it back home but if we had not used the bombs they may not have. I feel fortunate to have heard both their stories first hand and will never forget them or those men. We miss you Brownie & Norm. Thanks to all now serving, those who have, and those who will in the future. FLY NAVY!!!
My dad was also in the South Pacific. I’ve often wondered if I would even be here now. RIP daddy. Thanks to you and all in you generation. The greatest generation in history.
@@SteveWray WOW.I didn't know that.A home invasion of Japan would've had mass casualties on both Russian and american sides.GOOD thing US had those A-bombs ready to use.
My second cousin joined the navy at 17 I believe, and was killed on the USS Indianapolis when it was hit with 2 torpedoes after dropping off critical parts for the bomb, to be used on Hiroshima
I lived in Pahrump Nevada in 1989. The test site was a primary employment option at the time. Essentially many of the residents of Pahrump worked out on the test site. In 1989-94 I knew so many people that had cancer it was unbelievable. Just a fact. One of the jobs the civilian sector did was cover the hole from a test blast with heaven equipment. They would announce a test in the town part and when it went off you could visibly see the ripple come across the desert valley from the back of no name cafe. Great times. Unbelievable
I live in Pahrump now for over years, went to a (EPA?) meeting about the ground water contained by the old tests was heading south -and tests shown it to contain trouble for towns.I was There to "Suggest" using (by wells) that the water could be used to grow Alge. then the Alge (as desil fuel) could make electric (as that shouldn.t be radioactive) but EVEN if it, they then had a small amount to deal with. Some liked my thought, others (because I didn't have a company) dismissed me So I chose a Company name, some "GOT IT" & simled at the Company name... "Solent Green" Last movie Edward G Robetson made, Heston tried to make a statement that he hoped would become as famous as he said in ape planet ( Get your stinking hands off me...) by saying in this movie "Solent Green.it's PEOPLE..." great movrie 1974. I still get (15 years later?) US Govermant doucuments addressed "SOYLENT GREEN, LLC" & under that "ATT (name witheld to protect the... Guilty.)
There was not "unbelievable" levels of cancer in the people who worked at the test site unless you feel that the prevalence of cancer in the general population today is also "unbelievable".
@@stargazer7644 In a small town of Pahrump Nv. In 1989 there was a number of people with cancer as well as many other diseases. Many of those people worked at the test site. It’s just an observation. I also herd a lot of first hand testimonies from the ones who worked out there as well. Maybe it was linked to the sands of the desert or maybe it was something else. It depends what and where you worked. It may have been the result of Nuclear testing. In those days they’re would announce the tests and you could see the ripple of the blast across the sands. ??
@@rickbrickles1410 40 percent of the general population develops cancer today. They don't work at a nuclear test site. It doesn't have anything to do with desert sand either. Lots of people (including me) have lived in the desert and survived to tell the tale. Yes, lots of people get cancer. If you live long enough, something is going to kill you. There was no horrible increase of diseases linked to early nuclear weapons testing.
I spoke with a B-29 navigator while touring a B-29 and he seemed real legit. Said he was on crew number 10 planned to drop a bomb on Japan. He said there were 12 crews in training.
I know of another navigator who was to fly on the third mission to drop another bomb. He rarely spoke of anything about that time. The one thing he did impress on me was that he was acquainted with the crews of the two earlier bombings. He told of the great toll on every crew member once the massive destruction was fully known. They struggled mightily. May they all rest in peace and may humanity mature enough to forever end the cruel barbarity of war.
I grew up with the bombs. My late father was a photo technician with the 509th at Wendover, Tinian and Roswell. He had a large album full of photos. I asked him if he got to leave Tinian after the war was over. He said they didn't leave until 1946. They thought the peace process might break down and they had a 3rd bomb ready to go. He said he saw it. Most of the photos he took on the island were taken after the war because they didn't have much else to do. Even though my brother and I were both in the Air Force, dad was the last to receive a ribbon. Surviving members of the 509th were given the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with V device. The flag on dad's casket was folded by the SAC Honor Guard. Years later, dad's grandson (my nephew) had a photo taken of himself holding dad's great-granddaughter with the Enola Gay in the background. She will understand what it is all about when she is older.
Truman said the decision to drop the bombs and start an atomic era of warfare was the most difficult decision of his political career.And you can certainly understand that sentiment after watching the footage of the devastation caused by Fatman and Littleboy.
@@temptempy1360 You'll note Truman left the political arena after his presidency and retired. I'd believe he was being more honest than those always vying for influence.
@@Aim54Delta I am inclined to agree with you. Truman was the "accidental President" because although FDR looked pale and ill. no one thought that he would die so quickly and propel Truman into a Presidency for which he was poorly prepared. He was not aware of the atomic bombs when FDR died. But he turned out to be an excellent Presdient and he made the tough decisions that had to be made.
I went to parochial school with the bombardier's daughter, some 32 years after the war. I don't recall which city they targeted. He had nightmares at least twice a week, and then there's the cancers. The daughter also told us descriptions of the attack. Words do no justice....
There is absolutely no research paper (unless it's American propaganda) done on either Hiroshima or Nagasaki that shows a significant increase in cancers in the next decades.
And if there had been no bombs, you probably wouldn't have known the bombadier's daughter as the bombadier would likely have been killed in the bombing campaign. BTW, I doubt very much that the daughter knew much about her father's mental state. I knew lots of WW2 veterans-- many of whom had seen terrible things-- and they kept their experiences to themselves.
@@FactCheckerGuy It's true that nearly all WWII Vets kept the stuff to themselves. However, their household had a fairly good idea of the ordeal he was going through. Twice a week waking up the Entire house with his screams, yelling stuff, etc. No, not as well as he himself did. I'm pretty sure he never went to therapy to talk. What do you say? "Yeah doc, I have this nightmares several nights a week. Why? I dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima. No-- The Bomb." I don't even know if a hundred therapy hours, or a thousand, could help. What pill helps with the memories and nightmares? I've seen a little combat, and yes I've had minor issues, especially compared to.....basically taking a city off the map. At the same time, I'm glad he survived and I got to be friends with her; as you pointed out, had they not dropped the bomb, he probably would've died doing bombing runs. Her last name is "Van--" something. I don't remember the rest. Google can tell you I'm sure
There was an attempted coup in Japan when certain elements in the military heard that the Emperor had recorded a surrender message. Some of the Emperor’s advisors had been counseling surrender for months.
After reading a lot about WWII recently one of the disconnects with the history of it is this notion of a clean war or that bombing was able to be done tactically. The reality is that with the technology that existed then, despite the myth of things like the Norden Bombsight, most bombing to be effective required massive bombing just to hit the target. The British early on kind of rejected that, Harris, the head of their strategic air command, rejected that early, it is why the British bombed at night. And it pretty much was done in retaliation for the blitz and there was a strain of let's kill German civilians too I just read a short book by Malcolm Gladwell that talked about the idea of tactical bombing and where it came from. In the 1930s a group of Air Corps ppl created what became the Air Force War college. They were proponents of targeted bombing, their idea was with the modern technology it was possible to bomb let's say a factory ,and that was the goal, to minimize civilian deaths. They became the nucleus of US air power, and with things like the Norden bomb sight they felt they could do that. It is why the US did daytime bombing of Germany, even though they took huge losses to do so. The problem? The technology didn't work and accuracy was all over the place, they were lucky if 10% of the bombs hit the target. When the US got close enough to Japan to start bombing it, the person in charge was one of those who created the dogma of tactical bombing. They tried it and it failed, it was the same thing. In the end Le May replaced him and he was the opposite, he felt only mass bombings would achieve the goals. He took it one step further with the firebombing, that quite frankly targeted civilians to 'break their will'. In the end civilians were going to be killed whatever the intent. To get enough bombs on a factory or whatnot required mass bombings,as crude as it was,inefficient. To get enough bombs on a factory might take hundreds or thousands of bombs being dropped, most of which would be wide of the target and kill civilians. One thing tht targeting civilians showed was it didn't work to break the enemies will, it just pisses off the population. In England the blitz didn't work, the only time morale broke was when the V1 and V2 s started hitting, mostly because it worked so differently. So people see the A bomb and say 'thst is immoral' bc they believe tactical bombing worked ,when it didn't. The a bomb worked bc the Japanese saw a weapon that could literally destroy the country where it couldn't be rebuilt,Hirohito realized that. Japan's cities were already rubble,but they knew that could be rebuilt. With today's technology it is possible to do targeted bombing. In the book an air force officer said you could be sitting in the living room of a house, and they could hit an upstairs bedroom, kill the person there, and you would be untouched. This is relatively new, in the gulf war we used B52s to carpet bomb Iraq in the early 90s. I am not saying targeting civilians is great policy, in other words, I am saying that in WWII it didn't matter,that tactical bombing took the same toll on civilians in that era as carpet bombing.
You said that the British bombed Germany as a retaliation for the Blitz. You must have read some typical Allied-sourced story-telling. The facts show that the Germans did not start bombing the opponent as a strategic move. They had bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam, but those were tactical events, connected to the battle on the ground, as it happened from day to day. The British started to bomb Germany since the defeat of France in May 1940. Hitler was quite adamant about preventing an escalation of bombing each other. When a German raid on the London docks caused some stray bombs to hit civilian houses as well, Churchill had his casus belli to launch a raid on Berlin the next night. Talk about the so-called Blitz has been emanating from stories of the time, in which the Germans obviously were marked as the igniters of the war, so, they also started the bombing raids on cities for no other reason than to hit the opponent with whatever means available. It is wartime propaganda. Hitler could not oppose the sentiment among his staff to retaliate, whereas he felt that this was the wrong way to deal with the conflict. He'd rather settled for a peace with Britain and France, but they declared war on Germany, due to the Polish issue. Bombing Britain was not on his mind then. The course of the war may have changed that, but stating that the British wanted to retaliate because of the Blitz, is in denial of the actual facts.
Some collateral damage is expected, eg like those who starve in sieges thats a their side issue. You still have to be able to point to a valid target and say "using tools available we destroyed _this_ valid target". It doesnt deny civilian casualty happens but it cant be the target or wanton slaughter of random innocent humans. One reason v1, v2 was so terrible is there was no agency or careful accuracy to avoid innocents
Norden bombsight...what a lie. It would have been wonderful if the thing worked as hyped, but sadly for the guys involved, it didn't. I believe the stragegy was to send over 1000 planes that would only release bombs on radio command after the lead plane did so. So much for precision.
@@Guido_XL It was retaliation when a German Heinkel plane unintentionally dropped a few bombs on London. However Churchill (the warmonger) had obviously anticipated this as wellington bombers were already prepared and bombed Berlin the very next night. this was followed by the Blitz.
I had often wondered what would have happened if the surrender of Japan had not happened when it did. You have given me that answer and I greatly appreciate that! Love your series and am an avid fan!
Imperial Japanese navy and airforce were almost destroyed and the Allies could have bombed Japanese military bases, runaways, naval docks from the sea...with total blockade, Japan would be thrown back to stone age and would have to surrender to later become the 2nd largest economy in the World..
@@ameyas7726 The targets they hit were of military value. That is why they were selected. Not only that, but the Army Air Force dropped leaflets ahead of time warning the citizens of those cities to evacuate and they listed 6 cities which were in that category. That was certainly a lot more than what they did to warn us at Pearl Harbor. I have sympathy only for the children, but it couldn't be helped. It had to come to an end sooner than later. They knew it was over long before they finally surrendered.
There are histories of what was going on in Japan at the time: Look for the book about Hirohito: He went through 4 cabinets, until there were only two military left in the cabinet, and they both voted against unconditional surrender, but Hirohito voted as he always did... for peace, for his people, and the human race. The Military would never let him surrender. Find that - note: Although this was revealed in the 1960s, it was hidden, and no mention of it here....Kyoto was taken off the list, and Tokyo was taken off even earlier. Find out why....
Another 18-24 months of combat, allied casualties on the order of 1 million and ten times as many dead Japanese. The meat grinder of Okinawa was seen as a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan. Half the civilian population of Okinawa was killed during the invasion. The casualties incurred in an invasion of Japan would have been horrible. As awful as they were those two atomic bombs saved at least an order of magnitude more casualties than had they not been dropped.
These are the type of historical videos worth watching for educational purposes. I actually discovered info here i hadn't heard before. Research never ends for the enquirers.
My grandfather's unit got sent into Hiroshima 5 days after it was nuked to help give aid to survivors. I have a photo of him with a group of children he found and rescued. His unit never knew about the radiation and they were given no protection. Unfortunately, the bombs were a necessary evil to end the war before millions more were to be killed in a massive invasion into the Japan mainland.
While the USA's Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge were moving fast to build more A-Bombs, I believe it is well documented that after the first 2 bombs were dropped on Japan, additional bombs would not become available for at least several weeks.
The core and initiator for a third bomb were in California for shipment to Tinian when Truman notified Stimson that no more atomic bombs would be used. The bomb casings, explosive lenses, and x-units were on-site at Tinian for assembly when the core and initiator arrived.
@buckhorncortez: The famous Demon Core was being used in experiments, and was about to be sent out for the 3rd atomic bomb over Japan. It has an interesting history after that cancellation.
Another thing was the people that worked on the Manhattan Project most likely all died at a young age as well. I can imagine most of them had cancer from being exposed to such radioactive materials without proper protection. We see the old footage of people handling uranium with gloves and lab coats treating it like a cold virus. I think many of them were smart enough to know it would kill them but made the sacrifice to win the war at all costs.
No they were well aware of the hazards. Scientists like Richard Feynman lived normal lives. Thousands of people worked at the Oak Ridge TN and Hanford WA production facilities. Significant radiation exposures only happened due to occasional accidents. The most hazardous stuff is being cleaned up at a cost of $4 billion a year.
As a high school student, I toured Caltech. At that time, there was a nuclear reactor in the basement of a building attached to a dormitory and classrooms. The professor, whose name escapes me, had radiation burns all over his hands, and operated the reactor manually. He requested a dime, and several of us, myself included, offered him dimes. He put the dimes on a petri glass which he lowered into the reactor with a cotton cord. When the dimes were pulled out after a few seconds, they were highly radioactive. Within a few minutes, the radioactivity declined and he handed the dimes back. Radioactive silver has a very short life, but I don't know about the other metals in a dime. There still was little concern about radioactivity 16 years after the atomic bombs were dropped in Japan.
Among other things, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki certainly sent a message to the Soviet Union. That message was, "We'd better get some nuclear weapons of our own."
That was already I'm the works.... the Russians were in the middle of The Manhattan Project as well as Bletchley Park due to Left Wing sympathizers.... traitors.... same ones running our governments today...
Naively, it is astonishing that project which employed “thousands of people,” and “dozens of sites,” could be kept top secret. Kudos to the security team who made that possible.
Security ???? My Father was part of the greater Project. He was prospecting for Uranium in the 4 Corners area. The guys pumping Gasoline in the little desert towns knew that the Geologists like Dad who were scrambling over the sides of the Rattlesnake infested mountain sides were -- quote -- " Looking for Uranium for the Atom Bomb..." The Air Force Officer in charge of co-ordinating with the men in the "field" could not tell the Airbase Commander what he was doing. So he would drive off base on a 24 hour pass. Then be arrested a week later when he returned. He would be allowed to make 1 phone call to Washington DC and the Commander would be ordered to give him another 24 hour pass!!!😂😂😂
"The Pacific War" by Iain Toll explains that the Japanese refused to capitulate after the first bomb. They assumed the US only had one bomb, so concluded that they could continue to resist. The second bomb shook their confidence that we did not have more. Thus, the second bomb was necessary to get them to capitulate. The reason a third was not dropped was because it was unnecessary.
The Japanese knew exactly what the bomb was the day after Hiroshima. They knew what fissile material was used, the approximate weight of material and had a decent idea of the design. They, too, were working on the bomb
Japanese scientists were aware of the possibility of atom bombs based on U235. But it was also believed by both the Germans and Japanese that separating enough U235 from natural uranium was an insurmountable problem (plus the Japanese did not have access to uranium ore). Even if the US had found a way to get enough for one bomb, making another would take a very long time. They had no idea about plutonium (except as a possible theory - it was not discovered until 1940 and 1941 at Berkeley, and kept secret). When a second bomb followed three days after the first, they knew that the US atomic technology eclipsed their knowledge.
This is known to be true as we have a lot of detail about the Japanese discussions. Their belief was based on the known difficulty of trying to extract U235 from uranium, which was viewed as nearly impossible. The correctly surmised that a U235 bomb was a one off thing -- it would take many months to make another. But they knew nothing about plutonium, which was far easier to make and actually more fissile that U235.
The narrator's assertion that Stalin wished Truman luck in dropping the atomic bomb is incorrect, as Truman never explicitly mentioned it was an atomic bomb. Furthermore, Stalin never admitted to knowing it was an atomic bomb, despite being aware of its existence.
There was already a 3rd bomb and there would have been a 4th in a few weeks, at most. There was a capacity to produce a bomb about every 10 days, indefinitely.
there are distinct night & day differences between the A bomb & H bomb although the early Gun type A bombs were never manufactured and stored for use after the initial attack on Hiroshima, Even the Nagasaki attack wasn’t a gun type bomb but rather an implosion type detonation on to a man made plutonium core design, vs the gun type- which is basically a detonation charge shot (like a gun) at an enriched natural uranium core…..the first 2 a bombs were fission type bombs where as all hydrogen bombs are fusion type reactions. I could go more in depth but not in a comment section lol 😆
The H bomb basically uses a fission bomb to create the temperature and pressure to initiate a fusion reaction. In theory if they could start the fusion reaction with lasers for example, an H bomb would put out very little radiation. Catch is of course they can't, so it still uses a fission bomb which makes it dirty.
My Dad was training a squadron of TBMs in preparation for the invasion of Japan on the day they surrendered. He had been rotated out of combat(CVL-25) in order to be CAG aboard the Boxer. He said they were in the middle of a glide/bomb practice attack, when the word came over the radio. Without the atomic strikes, it is questionable whether he would have survived the war.
@@irregularhunter0586 thats exactly what would have happened if the nukes were not dropped. We were planning to invade Japan and our land forces would have suffered tremendous loses. think about this, we went from total war to total peace in less than 4 days.
@@jameshollen9723 "Interesting" (maybe "sobering" would be a better adjective) about the plans for the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands: The War Department (now the DoD) anticipated so many casualties that they had a huge number of Purple Hearts made for the killed and wounded US troops. They made so many that almost every single one that's been given out since then has come from that original stock. And they've still got about half of them left. Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Lebanon and all the rest-the killed and wounded in all those conflicts are about half the number they were expecting if we had to invade.
The template design of the A-Bomb came from England, including work completed by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in Febuary 1940. The British team at Los Alamos was headed by Australian physicist, Sir Mark Oliphant. Think that’s Oliphant, the guy with narrow rimmed glasses working with the dials? Oppenheimer had met Oliphant earlier, to be convinced by Oliphant physics theory could be put into practice. Canada played a role too, by providing plutonium and building a prototype reactor. The US was needed because of the size and expense of the project. Movies don’t mention all the countries involved.
Like Germany, where Einstein was born, raised, and taught? How on earth does this matter? I bet some of the people responsible for the engineering marvel of the atomic bomb also vacationed in Japan at one time in their lives, so are we to acknowledge Japan's contribution to the Atomic Bomb as such? LOL
Yes, that certainly is Sir Mark Oliphant at the 7:49 point of this video. He went on to serve as the Governor of South Australia and lived to the ripe old age 99.
Not mentioned was the massive fire bombing that followed both nuclear bombs. That attack by more than 700 B -29 bombers sealed the deal. Japan got the message loud and clear that the bombing would continue until there wasn't anything or anyone left in Japan. The nukes followed by the fire bombing and then the attacks by the Russians brought the war home to Hirohito. Japan could not endure any more. Hirohito was not a hero for issuing the order to "endure the endurable and bear the unbearable". It was profound fear and realization of the extent of the devastation that was coming.
I heard that Kyoto was designated for the third shot but that McArthur pleaded with Truman to spare the city. (I have no idea how reliable that source was) There wouldn't have been much point in dropping the A-bomb on Tokyo as there wasn't much left of it. Besides, we would want a fairly clean target so as to get a good bomb damage assessment, particularly given how new this weapon was.
No. Kyoto was taken off the target list at the very beginning because Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, had visited Kyoto and knew that it was the old capital and a culturally significant city. Leslie Groves argued with Stimson over this and kept pressing Stimson to include Kyoto on the target list. Stimson finally went to Harry Truman and got Truman to exclude it from the list, at which point Groves dropped the issue. McArthur had nothing to do with what cities were on the target list.
Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah had worked in Japan in the 1920s and spoke Japanese, the only senator who knew Japan personally. He persuaded Truman and Stimpson that destroying Kyoto would just make it harder for Japan to surrender out of outrage. He had also pressured FDR to open the door to Jewish refugees from Europe.
The video seems to tell it as though there was NO japanese condition for surrender, but I recall seeing another video that details the allies DID accept japan's conditional surrender (the condition being that japan WOULD maintain the emperor). I can imagine, many would accept that condition, as it could be argued as a cultural point, of no military value).
Regarding the war in Europe, I think Gen. Patton was keen to continue east and fight the Russians, all the way to Moscow. I think he may even have told Truman that but Truman declined. In hindsight, given what Russia is doing now, I think Patton had the right idea.
The Soviets would have kicked our butts. The Wehrmacht was the greatest army ever assembled. And the Soviets beat them in almost 4 years of fighting, and at a cost of 12 millon soldiers. June '41 to May '45. We lost 400,000 in both theaters. Stalin lost many entire divisions in the East, and kept sending full replacements. They killed almost all the 7 million German soldiers killed in the war. The US was only a tiny part of the European theater. The Russians would have gotten to Berlin by April 1945 with or without the US and UK in the West. Most US dead in WWII in Europe were fighting Grmermans in Italy, a minor theater in the war. Stalin, I understand, really wanted to continue on, to France and take all of Europe. Only the A-bomb stopped jim. Had he known how small the US/UK forces were, he could have taken Europe without batting an eye. Only the A-bomb prevented that. The Cold War may have started with the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and his people saved Europe.
@stevegarcia3731 soviets had an amped up factory, but did they have supply? Us was already making next generation bombers. After a brutal war, I question if soviets army would revolt. Fighting for the country is different than fighting for conquest. Your point is well taken.
@@EdwardEmmick Good points. With the Soviets, Stalin did like Putin is doing in Ukraine now - just throwing bodies at "the enemy." Gen. Franz Halder made the plans for Hitler for Operation Barbarrossa and then managed the invasion for more than a year, shoulder to shoulder with Hitler. In his diary, he was astounded that yhe Germans would wipe out an entire division or army, and in days or weeks Stalin would have an entire replacement in place. Many times. The Russians went because Stalin sent them, and none of them thought to revolt. The German invaders had given them all kinds of reasons to go fight, if they were ordered to go. And I would add that they didn't train them worth a shit, so they were mincemeat for the German top divisions, i almost all cases. And they had chased the Germans all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin at Stalin's orders, and if he told them to march to the Atlantic, they would have, in a heartbeat.
I was born before the dropping of either bomb (so I'm old) and I remember hearing several times that the production of the bomb and the production of the plane cost about the same.
@@richardrobertson1331 Your need to watch the language very carefully, "The conventional firebombing of Japan used greater expenditure than the production and delivery of the atomic bomb!" In terms of damage, the conventional firebombing took out a Hiroshima every three days, the combined damage of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was just a little more than the MARCH 9 firebombing of Tokyo, the firebombing continued for more than 3 months going past the bombing of Nagasaki.
I'd need you to cite a source and see the numbers for myself. We knew how to build bombers, the B-29 was just bigger(by far). Oak Ridge, TN was a city built to provide materials to build atomic bombs. a city was built to build a bomb in NM and at Hanford in WA. The AAF built a huge plant in Nebraska with support housing I'm sure. The Hanford bomb was the 1st one dropped.
Yep, they envisioned an atomic bomb long before the Manhattan project ( the British) and turned over their work to Los Alamos. One of the ironies is after WWII the US denied the British access to the design of the bomb&most specifically the process to extract u235&,,plutonium, the British developed all that on their own after WWII.
@@njlauren Not true. Every physicist who heard the announcement of fission proven by Hahn and Strassmann in 1939 knew the potential of the discovery. In fact within a week of Luis Alvarez telling Oppenheimer about the fission discovery in January of 1939, Philip Morrison relates this anecdote. That he walked into Oppenheimer’s office and saw on the blackboard, “a drawing - a very bad drawing, an execrable drawing - of a bomb.” The reason the U.S. refused to give the British detail of the atomic bomb has to do with Britain's agreement with France that they would share military information. When the U.S. asked Britain if they would share the atomic information with the French the answer was "yes" they would be obligated to do that because of the agreement. The United States felt that violated the Quebec agreement signed between the U.S. and Britain, and declined to provide the information. There's always more than one side to a story - should you choose to find the whole story and not just the information that supports your point-of-view.
Truman DIDN'T have "dozens" of atomic bombs at his disposal. He had exactly ONE more Plutonium core (the so-called "demon core") which hadn't been incorporated into a third weapon yet, and it was still in Los Alamos.
@@danielmcneil6342 It's documented in many places that Groves informed Stimson that a third bomb would be available for use after August 20. The bomb casings, explosive lenses, and x-units were on Tinian for assembly of a plutonium bomb waiting for the core and initiator. The core and initiator were in California for shipment to Tinian when Truman told Stimson that no more atomic bombs would be used. Oakridge and Hanford had production schedules with one uranium core to be available in September and two plutonium cores.
@@danielmcneil6342 No pun intended, I'm sure.Thankfully, two were sufficient to get their attention. The Army Air Force had burned scores of cites on the home islands to ashes but they just would not quit the fight. My daughter's maternal grandfather fought on Iwo, and the Marines had to kill nearly every Japanese soldier on that speck of rock. Many millions would have died in a ground invasion, so it really was an act of a merciful god that allowed us to perfect the bomb just in time to stop the carnage.
So, per your comment - a core would be available in September. Which would have to be shipped across the Pacific to Tinian. And then assembled. How long would that take? Weeks. What did my comment say? Weeks.
@@danielmcneil6342 I don't think I was disputing what you'd said. Just pointing out that we'd bombed the Japanese mercilessly and they still wouldn't quit. I don't doubt that is why our government insisted on an unconditional surrender that would allow the US to create an entirely new government, lest the militarists stay in control of the nation and retain an aggressive mentality. Sort of like what we did with Russia after the USSR imploded. We should have tried to create a real democracy there, and eradicate the idea they are destined to rule Europe. Now look what our inattention has allowed.
My grandfather was in China fighting along the Burma road when the bombs were dropped. They were preparing to go to mainland Japan when the bombs were dropped
One of my father's friends was a high level scientist on the Manhattan Project. I remember him saying that the most tightly held secret of the war, was that we had only built 3 bombs. One was used for the Trinity test. The other two were dropped on Japan. He said that it would have taken at least a year to complete another bomb.
With reference to the Manhattan Project I think that the many scientists who had emigrated to America deserve at least a passing mention. I have no doubt that their input was as vital as anyone's.
@@dy6682 Please do not misunderstand me: I find the development of these weapons utterly contemptible and have no love whatsoever for the people that did it. My reference was to the constant self-backslapping claims I hear from Americans that America did this all by itself. No it did not; a large proportion of the engineers and scientists who did this were immigrants. I was simply putting the record straight.
@@malectric Most Americans are descendants of immigrants. That is who we are, a nation of immigrants. E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. The Army sent my dad to fight the nation his parents came from and he was more than happy to do so. He grew up an American, no question about it. That is how it used to work. But the leadership and decision making for the Manhattan Project came from the US Government. Those skilled scientists could not have done it without the full support of the US behind them. And obtw most of my uncles and my dad were in the Army during WWII and my mother was part of the Manhattan Project I take your comments as a direct personal insult. You might also ponder that Japan had a viable nuclear weapons program during WWII, one that one of our B-29s set back badly. They missed their target and unbeknownst to them their bombs obliterated an important Japanese nuclear lab. They were going to put nuclear weapons on Kamikaze aircraft to bomb the US fleet when we tried to invade. Their effort was advanced enough that it was a real threat, though we knew nothing of it until the mid 1980s when the Japanese declassified some material nobody knew about . I was active duty at the time and when the Japanese released this information we all kind of stood there with our mouths agape. We never knew. Now we do.
@@philsalvatore3902 You mistook me. I was pointing out that without those clever immigrants, the project might not have been successfully completed, especially given the timeframe.
Don’t forget the British were also heavily involved in the manhattan project. There were also plans for the British to release one in Japan as well. Also I was not aware there were that many bombs
@@douglashogg4848 interesting. I’ve heard otherwise. I read somewhere that there were many British scientists involved in the design process, were they shut out after ?
@@redblade8160 pay attention. I mentioned that I had heard a conflicting description of what happened. All I was doing there was asking specifically what he meant
I read D. M. Giangreco's book "Hell To Pay" which quotes and references primary sources on the lead up to dropping two bombs but not a third and why. The invasion planners wanted to use nukes tactically during Operation Olympic (Invasion of Kyushu) in the Fall of '45 which was the first part of Operation Downfall rather than continue to incinerate more cities.
Giangreco's book agrees with a number of other histories of the Manhattan Project that a core and initiator for a third bomb were available and that Groves informed Stimson that a third bomb could be available after August 20, 1945. The use of a third bomb was canceled by Truman and General George Marshall had asked Groves how many bombs would be available for the planned November 1, 1945 invasion of Kyushu. Marshall wanted to change using the atomic bombs from strategic use to tactical with as many as three used for Kyushu.
@@buckhorncortez IMO it's not that Giangreco agrees so much with some histories as much as he sets the record straight that anyone who uses US military intelligence documentation gathered prior to the occupation of Japan are basing their position on fatally conservative estimates of the capabilities of the Japanese military to resist the Operation Downfall landings in '45 and '46. All the pre-August '45 estimates were based on air reconnaissance and Magic intercepts. We missed several vitally important developments: 1) much of the Army of Manchuria was in Japan, not in Korea or on Formosa; 2) they had 1M tons of high grade aviation fuel specifically saved since January '45 for kamikaze attacks; 3) they had approximately 20k pilots available about half of which could fly at night or dusk; 4) they had something short of 20k planes available; 5) there were hundreds of small dispersed air fields; 6) they had inadvertently discovered that US radars could not detect wood and fabric planes until they were very close; 7) US proximity fuses could not detect wood and fabric planes at all; 8) they had hundreds of water-borne suicide boats, small subs and manned torpedoes. Military intelligence had missed Pearl Harbor (maybe understandable) and the Ardennes Offensive build-up plus we had deceived the Germans' military intelligence with Operation Fortitude that covered for Operation Overlord. Military intelligence is what it is: just an educated guess. But basing a position that the bombs should not have been dropped on pre-occupation military intelligence is revisionism and is tantamount to outright fraud.
@@curtislowe4577 The MAGIC and ULTRA communications declassified in the 1990s provide documentation that Japan was not going to surrender prior to the use of the atomic bombs, and that Russia's entry into the war was anticipated. "140 Days To Hiroshima" is one book that provides a documented inside look at the Japanese government at that time. Also, Richard Frank's book, "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire" uses much of the same ULTRA and MAGIC information to provide a narrative from a Japanese and U.S. military standpoint.
The 3rd bomb was the demon core... they where using it for testing to know how much material they needed to make a bomb.. so they had it available... but just not the bomb casing and mechanics ... so they had to build it only.... that is why such a short time before it was ready... remember that Pu has to be refine by weights per atom... one by one... so that takes months to do at the time with the tech they had... but the demon core was available... I hope this explains some of your question about the 3rd bomb
@@robrocco5420 No. Plutonium is made by separating plutonium chemically from uranium. You're conflating plutonium production with the production of U235. U235 has to be separated from U238 and is literally collected atom by atom. The uranium separation facilities at Oak Ridge used thermal diffusion to enrich the uranium from 0.07 U235 to 0.92 percent. It was then sent to the gaseous diffusion plant where it was enriched to about 23% and finally to the Calutrons where it was electromagnetically separated and enriched to "bomb grade" uranium over 80% U235. The bomb casings, x-units, and explosive lenses were already on Tinian and only needed the initiator and core to be assembled. It took about two days to assemble an implosion bomb at that time.
I worked at Hanford, collecting historical records of nuke tests, and didn't know about the third bomb. Not sure why that story wasn't more widely reported. It was no secret we intended to keep nuking Japan until they surrendered.
I refuse to accept that America did anything wrong or should feel any remorse. The blind allegiance to a narcissistic regime is solely responsible. I am young enough (76) that I have no animosity toward the Japanese but Hirohito alone brought this upon his men, women and children
I have to take serious issue with this. The US did not have the ability to produce another plutonium device and deliver it to Tinian before late September or early October. With Nagasaki we had "shot our wad" until then. Allowing the enemy to believe otherwise was another matter. This has been so widely known that this video is click bait.
It isn't click bait. The key to the atomic bomb is the core with the fissionable product, and they had a third one at Los Alamos. They had the bomb cases at Tinian,and to fly the core there,and assemble it, wouldn't take all that long. We had no more assembled bombs after nakasaki, but we had one that just needed finally assembly.
Not true. Groves told Stimson that another atomic bomb could be ready for use any time after August 20, 1945. The core and initiator had been sent to California for shipment to Tinian. The bomb casings, explosive lenses, x-units etc. were already on Tinian and could have been assembled into a bomb within two days once the core and initiator arrived.
@@buckhorncortez As I recall, in an interview decades later, Tibbets - the Hiroshima pilot - said that there was critical material in Utah at the time and was being flown to California for transhipment to Tinian. But by the time the plane got to CA, the war was over.
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My Dad was aboard ship on the way to the Japanese mainland, and no more than a few days out when Mr. Truman dropped the bombs. Once ashore, he and his heavy equipment group were dispatched to Hiroshima. His group dug massive pits to bury the dead in the heart of the city. He would never talk about it. Sadly, like virtually every man in his unit, he succumbed to cancer and the government would never admit responsibility for the deaths of the plethora of Americans who died from their radiation exposure in Japan.
That's a sad story. Forgive my curiosity, but how long after the war did your dad die?
Amazing story kendon.
Just goes to show how often the truth is covered up (About American deaths from radiation in this case)
Unless he was a POW, this doesn't make a lot of sense. And if he was a POW, then it's the Japanese who were responsible for the radiation exposure of his unit.
My dad was aboard APA 188 attack transport in the south pacific when the bombs were dropped. He was a Navy Radioman 3C. He was going to be part of the invasion force - that wasn’t needed. The bomb saved his life. He passed away in September of 2022.
How old was your dad and what year did he pass away?
Interesting side note. Just after Truman assumed office in April 1945, one of his first Executive Orders was the minting of 500,000 Purple Heart medals in preparation for the Invasion of Japan. When Japan capitulated on the 14th of August, the medals were put into storage then issued out during the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars. As of 2000, 120,000 of the vintage WWII Purple Hearts are still being held by the Department of Defense.
I assume the American tax payer will eventually realize the return on investment after full utilization of the remaining balance of medals...it's truly amazing that they were not spent well before 2000🤔🤨
@@waris4thewealthy549 I'm sure we'll find out by next year
Another little known side note is that the gov't ordered 2 million body bags for the invasion, in part due to the high anticipation of Japanese deaths.
Interesting information. Thank you!
Interesting how this video said that America had a plethora of atomic bombs at their disposal. In other accounts I read in the past, America barely had enough materials for the bombs dropped on Japan and that it would be months before others would be ready. You cannot believe what you read and hear. Not even on this site. You just have to rely on your own common sense.
About 30 -35 yrs ago, I met an older gentleman living near Walla Walla, Wa. He had pictures on his walls of B-29's. He started to tell me about his time in the AAF during WW2. He said he was a member of the ground crew for the atomic bomb carrying B-29's on Tinian. He said that for Fatman, because of its size, they had to wheel it over an elevator built into the tarmac, lower it down below grade, wheel the plane over it, then raise the bomb out of the hole and into the plane's bomb bay. They were practicing doing that and taxiing with the bomb in place, and somebody screwed up and dropped the bomb on the tarmac, with the plane high-centered over it. They had to jack up the plane high enough to retrieve the bomb, and then lower the plane back down onto the tarmac. Crazy story if true.
This chimes with previous comments about the bomb falling on the tarmac and being damaged. A previous commentor said both of the nukes were supposed to have been dropped at the same time, and this accident delayed Fatman 2 days.
Incorrect
@@paulgodden4974
The hole they made in the tarmac to load the bomb known as the "bomb pit" is still there. I saw it when I was there doing an environmental study for the military back in 2009. Not much else left from WWII on Tinian though. Most of the runways are overgrown to drive a vehicle down much less land a plane on. I heard that the Air Force wants to re-activate it.
Huh?
OMG
My father was stationed in the Philippines awaiting landing in Japan when the bombs were dropped. He then spent the next two years as the part of the occupation forces. He fell in love with the Japanese people and held them in the highest respect. He would never talk about what he saw or did there. I think it caused him deep emotional pain.
My Grandpa was in National Guard 1940, Mobilized, made E-6, then Combat Commission to Lt, served in Philippines wounded twice and Awarded Silver Star. Occupation of Japan til Fall 46. Stayed in ARMY retired Colonel O-6. One the reasons I joined in 1980 at 16yrs old, did 28yrs myself
Remember the almost 3000 solders and sailors that died at Perl Harbor due to Japans sneak attack. There were also many other causalities. Then there is the way they treated their POW's. Our guys were treated in the worst ways. You might also look up the Rape of Nanjing. I'm surprised China doesn't seek revenge even today.
@@chuckvarwig8062 Remember those 3,000+ soldiers and sailors well, and often, because FDR knew the Japs were going to attack a couple weeks before they did~
@@chuckvarwig8062 Oh, the Chinese DO seek revenge, even today. I'm told it's a regular thing for the Chinese to make large orders of Japanese goods, just to cancel them, and leave the Japanese in a lurch. North Korea has long been committing act of war on Japan, long after the cease fire with the South and it's allies.
@@chuckvarwig8062 they do, but their ways are lot more different... nation can be enslaved not only by weapons and physical cruelty, there are much smarter ways ...
Kyoto being passed over as a target because of "Cultural Significance" was the official reason that Secretary of War Henry Stimson persuaded Truman with. He said that Kyoto being destroyed would make reconciliation with Japan post-war almost impossible.
The real reason that Stimson was so adamant in sparing the city was that he had visited Kyoto many times before the war, and had even honeymooned there with his wife. He was personally attached to the beautiful city and didn't want it destroyed.
Congrats on seeing Oppenheimer then making this comment like you’re some sort of scholar.
@@stevewalton5698 I haven't seen Oppenheimer actually. And if you're looking for scholars, TH-cam comments are the wrong place.
@@shotgunsurgeon3849 stop insulting your own comment. The youtube comment section represents a significant part of the internet. Statements on youtube are no less true or false then in any other place. On the contrary. The crowsourcing power on this platform is not to be underestimated.
Those two reasons are not really different reasons.
This is wrong. He did believe the City to be beautiful, but he clearly expressed at the time that using the bomb on Kyoto could make reconciliation impossible. He was a very savvy guy. There is plenty of evidence about this as his reason.
My dad was on a troop train on the way to San Francisco to board a troop ship to the far east when the Japanese surrendered. He'd been in the ETO since Feb of 43, what were the odds of his survival if we had to invade the home island? Casualty estimates for a beachhead were between 500,000 and 750,000 dead and wounded.
After the Soviet intervention Japan wasn't going to last until Nov 1 anyway. The counterposition of the bombings to the imagined cost of a phantom invasion is spurious: Washington knew a surrender our outright collapse would come, but wanted to expedite it to deny Moscow an occupation zone and a seat at a subsequent peace conference. It was about postwar geopolitics, not saving lives.
My Dad was in command of a submarine sailing from the secret US submarine base in Fremantle, Western Australia, to Japan, to attack Japanese shipping, on August 15, 1945.
Their chance of survival was slim once inside the patrol area.
Two days out of Fremantle they received an order to return to base, the Japanese had surrendered, and my Dad survived to tell the story!
My dad was in the USMC in WWII. He flat out told me that he didn't expect to survive the war. A slight risk each day multiplied by many, many days ...
I had been born already but I'm happy I grew up having a dad.
Glad you made it. Glimer Man. 👍@@GilmerJohn
The problem with a decapitation strike is that there needs to be command structure intact that can issue the order to surrender. In Imperial Japan, only the Emperor could issue such an order. If the Allies had killed the Emperor with an atomic bomb on Tokyo, you can bet an enraged population would have fought to the bitter end.
...THAT'S THE TRUTH-!!!
Based on the fact that another atom bomb was being assembled and with twelve more in the near term pipeline and who knows how many later on, the Japanese would definitely have been given the opportunity to fight to the bitter end. One bomb, one cloud, one city at a time, until nothing of significance was left. It is chilling to think how close it came to the near complete destruction of Japan. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. In spades.
Sounds like we had quite a few bombs. I don't see how a population, enraged or not, could stand up to an A bomb. But I will say this, I am very glad it didn't come to that!!! However, when you start a fight, torture, perform inhuman medical experiments on POWs & the Chinese, I would not lose sleep if we had to nuke the whole island, to put an end to these atrocities & the war. Its simple, if you keep killing my guys, I keep dropping bombs. "Are you done yet? No? OK, here's another nuke. Are you done now? No? Here's an early birthday present...it will unwrap itself." Thankfully, the Emperor loved his people. Hitler did not.
who would they fight? the amphibious landing was now off the table. fight to the last starved skeleton more like it. imagine the misery a whole nation starving at once ended only in a flash brighter than the sun the darkness and silence forever.
The Yanks should have killed the Emperor . He was a war criminal.
I’ll save you some time, there is no dark reason why the third wasn’t dropped… we dropped 2 and they surrendered before the third was built. It’s that simple lol
And yet the Indianapolis was sent back to the USA, alone, slow, radio silent, begging to be sunk. And it was sunk. Nobody was supposed to survive.
It is highly likely that there was more than just the two bombs officially transported. Anyone who would know for sure is already dead.
It is likely a secret that will be released in 2045.
Right- we only had 2… but nobody knew that
@@soshieopath7142 its really not a hard concept to understand lol
@@soshieopath7142 Wrong, as this unexpectedly accurate scru-tub video stated, the 3rd was already being assembled on Tinian and was scheduled to be dropped on Aug, 19. It only lacked the addition of the plutonium core which was only held up by the US and the newly minted UN waiting to hear a response from the Japanese govt after the 2nd bomb had been dropped. The 3rd city was already targeted and there were more bombs in the early staging pipeline.
I wish I’d read your comment before watching the video. The video is 10x longer than it needs to be.
My mother was part of the Manhattan Project. I even have one of her mushroom cloud uniform patches! A few decades later I was a nuclear weapons courier. We used to joke about being a different kind of nuclear family.
Fascinating. How does one "courier" a nuclear weapon?
@@TomSwift-wy1gx It's a team effort to transport a weapon, but one person has to sign for it, become responsible for the chain of custody to the next recipient and has to oversee the loading of the weapon and make sure it is secured properly. It's much more detailed than handling conventional ordnance. If anything happens to it you are responsible.
@@philsalvatore3902 I did a couple of NORIs with fighters and gravity bombs. I was just a spectator, really. You probably have some great stories.
You must be so proud.
LIFE "Is Funny!" Dad's brother was on the Mighty Mo! at Armistice! I had family, friends, teachers, bosses, family Dr, and Neighbors All Involved from every angle of Birth of idea to Delivery. I GREW UP ground Zero! Hot and Cold War, next to all So Cal industry and Next to Rockwell Downey same streets and schools every home move. "I Have ZERO" FEAR of a Nuclear War or Weapons System.
Kokura, Japan was supposed to be the 2nd target instead of Nagasaki, but Kokura was spared because it 100% cloud cover, so they diverted to Nagasaki instead. Also, there was a little known conventional bombing raid on an industrial site in northern Japan that happened _after_ the Nagasaki bombing.
The last bomb run over Japan was August 14th 1945 and it was not small. It involved over 820 B-29s and over 180 fighter escorts, multiple cities were heavily bombed, and 2 cities were firebombed. By 12 noon on August 15th, after a last ditch coup d' etat failed at the Imperial Palace, Hirohito surrendered and addressed his people over the radio, calling for all Japanese to lay down their arms surrender to American forces.
The Last Mission. Worth reading.
@@rogergoodman8665 Thank you, I didn't know that.
Thank you for bringing that up. Thanks to our crap teaching of history, what most ppl didn't know is that the conventional bombing from B29s was ongoing, and it was brutal. Japan had little air defenses so basically it was a turkey shoot.
@@rogergoodman8665 I think they were being ironic when they said "little known".
Among the 17 Japanese cities originally selected as A-Bomb candidates, all but 3 were rejected. This was because almost all of Japan's cities had already been totally leveled to ash piles by General Lemay's much more devastating fire bombing campaign. Consequently, the US would not be able to measure the effectiveness of the A-Bomb from battle damage assessment of the aftermath of the impending A-Bomb attacks. The three cities were chosen because they were among the few that had not yet been turned to ash piles.
yes, Hard to turn dust into dust.
It was a psychological effect. The thought that one plane could destroy a city was more frightening than 1000 planes doing it.
Not really. Cities were deliberately left intact in order to gauge the atomic blast.
That is totally wrong. First, there were more then just three targets selected both from the target committee and in the signed order. So here you are wrong.
Second, while they choose targets not yet raided, there were still many left. Japan is not as small as many seem to think.
Completely wrong.
My father was a US Marine on Okinawa, preparing for the invasion of Japan in August 1945.....All Marines on Okinawa had been issued new uniforms and new equipment for the Invasion of Japan. If it had not been for the Atomic bombs and Japan's surrender, there's a good chance my father would have been killed invading Japan I would have never been born! I'd like someone to calculate the number of Americans who would have been killed invading Japan, and then calculate the number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchilden of veterans who would have never been! I would wager it's a far greater number than those killed by the bombs. Any death is a tragedy.....and we should pray for the souls of those lost in the war on all sides!
At the time U.S. forces only had the two bombs.
From your perspective you wouldn't have been born if your dad had died in war.
From my perspective, anyone intended to be born whether intended by God or by the natural forces of the universe, will be born no matter what mortal humans do. Just as when someone time is done on earth, nothing we do can overcome the intention of God or universe.
Meaning you would've been born absolutely 💯 exactly the sane person you are today no matter which human was used to fulfill God or natures plan.
We didn't start the war. Factor that in when thinking of the # of Japanese killed by the bombs
@@cargolaw I thought that also for a long time...actually, if my sources are correct, and I never believe anything these days....the US did have more atomic bombs available....
It was projected in war games that a invasion of mainland Japan would have cost 1 million American men.
And that was if the invasion went well and as planned
Thanks doc for enlightening me yet again. I have learned 100s more in minutes of time by you instead of hours in schools that don't teach this. Love it@!!
One of my old bosses in my first contract company was a member of Dr. Edgerton's team during the 1940's during the development of testing equipment for the A-Bomb tests in Nevada. He was onsite for several of the tests in the early days before he moved to other projects for EG&G. His recollection was that other technicians and scientists said that several A-Bombs were being readied by the latter part of 1945, but there were concerns about the effectiveness of the weapons as well the aftereffects on personnel occupying areas that had been bombed. Many in the US military and civilian leadership also felt that A Bombs might have a detrimental effect on the local population, both physically and mentally. Being nuked wasn't exactly something that instills trust in the local population. A 3rd A-Bomb might have been a step too for too many in the Truman administration, but we won't ever really know as the war ended after the first two bombs.
My trustworthy aunt Mavis tells a different story , A TRUE ONE !!
EG&G didn't that make Krytron switches (also different ones are used in pulsed LASER systems)?
This is an interesting perspective. It makes sense that they would worry about the effects of another bomb on US personnel ( as it was soldiers on occupation duty in Japan did suffer the effects of the bombs).
The resentment factor I doubt. Keep in mind the firebombing of Tokyo killed a million ppl and in many ways was a lot more gruesome than the A bomb. I doubt that the emperor and Tojo would decide not to surrender if a 3rd bomb was used,and popular will quite honestly wouldn't change either, Japan was wiped out before the bomb.
Edgerton and EG&G did not get involved with the atomic bomb program until the third atomic test. I took a summer course at MIT with Dr. Edgerton in 1984. I had about a one-hour discussion with him about instrumenting and photographing atomic bomb tests. He said, "We (meaning EG&G) did not do anything with atomic bomb tests until the third test. The first test was secret and the military attempted to record it. For the second test, our cost was deemed to be too expensive - and they got little information from that test. From the third test onward, we triggered and instrumented all of the tests and did all of the high-speed photography."
@@buckhorncortez Those fellows' work was pivotal and is what gave Teller insight into how to construct the "super", because without the high-speed photography showing the tower guy cables catching fire from the burst of X-rays while still outside the fireball, it might have taken years for someone to realize they could be re-directed into the secondary fusion fuel.
I am 91 -Air Force Korean War Vet - I had 2 R&R - 2 Week Tours in Tokyo - I was amazed in that It Had No Damage - It was like NY City - In 1953 the people were gracious , fun loving - Some were Not - Now I know the Whole Story - Thankyou
My father is 90 and he was also an Air Force Korean War vet. He was based for a while in Japan also. He was a photographer, who took photos of the ground to ascertain where the troops and artillery (North Korean and Chinese) were.
@@cowboyofscience7611 God Bless Him - Korean War Vets Fought A war that was forgotten because it was To Close to WW3 - America Had - "HAD" IT WITH WAR ! - We Directed The Bombs - Without Your Father There Would Have Been No "Targets"- God Bless America -
@@ivanhicks887 You're exactly right--And thank you for your service, Sir!
@@cowboyofscience7611 And Thankyou For Your Concern -
Tokyo was hardly untouched. More people were killed in Tokyo by incendiary bombs than by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Maybe that had good progress rebuilding by the time you were there.
A third bomb was to be deployed via the B-29 called "Deming's Demons" from (I'm told by my Dad, a WWII Vet) Attu or another base close by. Japan should be very grateful that it wasn't deployed on Tokyo because the Japanese government would not have been around to sue for peace after we finished the subsequent bombing. We would have substantially reduced the Home Island population by half if we had bombed Tokyo. Japan did recover from the two bombs, but only after we helped them do so. So many of our troops were lost in both theatres that Truman did not have a choice to use as many bombs as needed to force the Japanese to surrender. Fifteen more bombs were in the pipeline to be used against the Western Pacific Nations if they acted up.
I guess there was a case of murdering too many civilians....what evil people
Oh you guys recovered Japan. You sold out people who helped you against the Brits when you started your country, but saved and rebuilt your enemies. Shameful.
Looks at piss ant Russia lol, the Texas economy is better.
Japanese military back then, hmmm sided with Nazi's, big mistake
And of course the people of Japan didn't want war at all
@@peterc4082White
@@peterc4082 saved and rebuilt your enemies and TURNED THEM INTO ALLIES - Honorable.
Stalin knew of the project. He was not surprised when Truman told him of the new weapon. Dark Doc needs to do a story on that.
The spies? Yeah and talk about how they deliberately leaked the technical details to ensure that the US could not have a tyrannical monopoly on the weapon. It was a very deliberate treason on the part of multiple scientists.
I remember hearing that Stalin actually knew about the project before Truman. I don’t know if that is true, but it gets my “WOW”juices flowing.
Yeah there was a communist sympathizer working at Los Alamos. They didn't even have to figure out how to build their own bomb the schematics were stolen and handed to them.
Russian scientists infiltrated the Manhattan Project, working on it with us. That's how they knew
I was told by an Australian vet. that Stalin's reply to the the reveal of the existence of the Bomb was "Show me."
My Father was in 3 back to back tests: Operation "Tumbler Snapper" we have him on documentary film. Foward trench/ special communications/ the bomb goes off,the shock wave blows over them, they dust themselves off, grab their clipboards, light up a cigarette and walk off towards the mushroom cloud. He died from multiple medical/ cardiovascular complications at the age of 52. My brother and I have various subliminal mutation. Except for the fact that my brothers thyroid system ever came on line, at middle school he was already 6ft 3 and 230lbs. They made him the football team's Center. T.M.G.
He should've laid off the cigarettes. Those things will kill you.
@@stargazer7644 yeah they do. Cigarettes are not "user friendly" I believe today's term that applies.✌️
52 is too young to die.
Actually cigarettes were a major ease during ww2, one could rent a penthouse for a couple of cartons of Lucky Strike and a pound of coffee in Europe.
This was an excellent video. Love the entire Dark series. I never knew there was more than a possible 3rd bomb and I hadn't known how close the 3rd bomb was so ready and that possibly Tokyo was the target. Up until now, I thought Tokyo was off the list since the firebombing of it had been so successful. Every day I have so much great TH-cam content like the Dark series I wonder why I maintain my Netflix subscription. I rarely watch it anymore given such excellent TH-cam creators such as the Dark series and other TH-cam creators. Thank you. Keep it up!
Mark Felton's vids are good. Esp the one on post-WWII Vietnam...
@AlexPerez-gs3pi Yes, I watch that channel a lot too. As you mentioned, very good content. One of my many TH-cam channels I subscribed to. Again, why do I keep my Netflix subscription? TH-cam gets a lot of bad press but I find myself watching it almost exclusively now.
The "Demon Core" that has been reported on over the years was to have been the core of the third bomb.
Me too.
I have my laptop HDMi to my 60" big screen.
TH-cam on Chrome browser better than smart TV app TH-cam because adblock eliminates all the TH-cam ads.
@Alex Perez sometimes?
My late father had the good fortune to not turn 18 till 1946, but being a farm boy from the Pacific Northwest who wanted to go to college (and whose older brother had served in Europe) he joined up and served in the Occupation of Japan. They were offered a chance to visit Hiroshima at some point but he turned it down, thank goodness, and lived to be 88.
Thanks, Forest
Tokyo was not going to be the next target for at least 2 major reasons.
1) Tokyo was already mostly ash and rubble from firebombing. The atomic bomb targets were supposed to be undamaged cities so that the effects of the bombs could be more easily measured. Eventually they might have started nuking cities that had already been firebombed, but not until they ran out of untouched cities.
2) They didn't want to kill the emperor or the Japanese government. The firebombing of Tokyo specifically avoided the royal palace for that reason as well. If the Japanese government was dead there would be no one to order their soldiers and the population of Japan to stand down.
You make good sense, thanks for sharing your knowledge 🍿🤟
Otoh without govt, no one to issue valid orders or allocations of munitions.
The real reason govts are not valid targets is it's a good excuse to make their own arses safe. (From sovereign backed attackers).
Yes they would had. Take tokyo down and its ppl left would become U.S and all that land would be ours. Yummy
@@germany2546 - Yeah, that's... not how things actually work in practice.
Kill the emperor, who the people at the time viewed more like a Jesus figure, and you only ensure the local populace remains hostile forever.
@@germany2546
No. We had considerable experience to the contrary. There were two ways to get Japanese to vacate a bunker: several guys to pack a flamethrower (note only one flamethrower) in and burn everything.
Find a relevant Japanese officer to relieve them of their post.
Having the emperor order a stand down was the only realistic way to end the conflict. Ending him would have been the worst thing we could have done for our own objectives.
Love these, thanks for posting. History is not all fun and games and memes. It's dark stuff and I appreciate this narrator for just telling it like it is.
He is not understanding it, the heavy water from Germany / Norway, not enough to make more.
It's a Harry Potter movie, fantasy !
Narrating unfactual jiberish
You have no idea
The proposed tempo of atomic weapons use on Japan was by the end of July 1945 expected to be: 3 in August, 3 in September-October and as many as 7 in December. This would have required the use of mixed use U235/Pu239 warheads which were in the works at Los Alamos. Therefore the numbers quoted in this video are basically correct as near as I can independently determine.
To read an article about the telephone conversation on August 13 referred to at 8:12, and also a re-typed version of the transcript itself, search for the titles "The USA had a Top Secret plan to make a new atomic bomb 'every ten days' in 1945" and "A phone call to chat about making a new A-bomb every ten days, and how to use them".
The two cities nuked had the largest number of. Christians in Japan . Something to ponder
I met a guy from Oak Ridge TN about a year ago. I ask had his family lived there long. He said they moved there in 1943. When asked if he had family that worked on the bomb he said his Aunt was a Calutron Girl. He ask if I knew what that was. Of course I do. He said she had passed away in about 2005. But she had three daughters. I ask him to thank each of them for me and tell them what a huge contribution their mother had made to the program.
I hope he remembered to do that when he returned home.
I'm 3rd generation working at oak ridge, lived in it and grew up there. My grandmother was in accounting at that time. I have actually worked on some of the equipment that was used to enrich the uranium, and that was around 70 years after they built the machinery. I'm now retired electrician/ instrumentation tech/ systems engineer.
According to a Japanese historian, the target of the 3rd bomb was to be at the Nakajima aircraft factory at the Nerima area in the NW of Tokyo, which was not really that densely populated. The factory is long gone.
A bomb exploding over Nerima would explain the wackiness of Ranma 1/2 better than any cursed Chinese springs...
The world planners would have dropped that bomb if they wanted to; their plans were to renovate HIroshima and Nagasaki from the very beginning of the war.
Ah yes, Nakajima who changed their name to Fuji Heavy Industries to avoid the stigma. Subaru is love.
@@jwilde642 I was just the same as for my first visit to the top of the day of Christmas a
00
The third bomb was to have the Demon Core, which was being used in experiments at the time. It has quite a history since it wasn't used to destroy a third Japanese city. A video of its story will be interesting to this channel's fans.
In an August 2002 interview with Studs Terkel published in the British Guardian newspaper, Paul Tibbetts recalled something similar: "Unknown to anybody else--I knew it, but nobody else knew--there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got a phone call from General Curtis LeMay. He said, 'You got another one of those damn things?' I said, 'Yessir.' He said, 'Where is it?' I said, 'Over in Utah.' He said, 'Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it.' I said, 'Yessir.' I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Trinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over."
Not sure where this comes from, but does anyone think the US military did not plan for more than two atomic bombs??? They had a schedule for every bomb they could make for months ahead? Of course they did. The general running the entire effort of bombing Japan would not have been out of the loop, not knowing what bombs would be ready and when. The strangest part of this is that the bomb was in Utah. What facility was it at that it was just sitting around collecting dust?
@@rickcollins1825 good question. I was thinking of the bomb’s core components when Tibbets said that. I’m seeing on the Wendover historical site that they made a lot of the Fat Man casings there in Utah. And that the third plutonium bomb shell (after the Alamogordo and the Nagasaki bomb) was readied to be flown out to California. The plutonium package was put together at Los Alamos and flown by a Lt William A King - eventually for Tinian I presume. From the site:
“During or shortly after the bombing of Nagasaki, Colonel Paul Tibbetts under orders by General Cutis LeMay, dispatched Lt. Col. Classen, the deputy group commander, in the unnamed victor 94 and crew B-6 in Jabit III, together with their ground crews, to Wendover AAFB to stage for the possibility of transporting further Fat Man [Model 1561] bomb assemblies to Tinian. At Los Alamos, the second plutonium core for the third bomb had been fabricated and was ready for shipment to Tinian by special courier Lt. William A. King on a C-54 cargo aircraft of the 509th CG. These shipments were halted by orders from Washington to hold all shipment of atomic bomb components to Tinian, due to the impending surrender of the Japanese.”
Can post the link if you wish. Hopefully it doesn’t get dumped by youtube.
All that I read in the 1960s and 1970s is that there was not enough fissile materiapl for any past those first two. Refining the U-235 and Plutonium was a LONG and slow orocess.
They may have had the parts for another bom, but from what info was out 20 years later, there was no muclear material ready to put in it.
The primary target for the second bomb ("Fat Man") was actually Kokura. Unable to visually site the target due to smoke, the bomber flew to the secondary target, which was Nagasaki.
Cloud cover prevented Kokura from being bombed. Nagasaki also had some clouds but they dropped the bomb anyway. Incidentally missing the target the bomb fell into a ravine and did not do the amount of damage the Hiroshima bomb caused.
One of the residents of Kokura was one Dr. Ted Fujita who studied tornadoes & severe weather in the US after the war.
@@douglashogg4848 "Fell into a ravine"??? It was dropped over Urakami valley (bit of a difference!). But yes it was off-target and resulted in less destruction than was intended. It's an eerie place (ground zero, there) - I visited around 2001.
Partly false. It was cloud cover, not smoke.
Lots of BS and misinformation on this thread.
My Grandpa was on Omaha or Normandy?? But he would Never talk about what he did and saw!!! Thank you to All the Brave Souls that fight for us
Omaha was Normandy
One thing I did not put together until recently is the fact that the Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") was never tested prior to its use.The Trinity test was of the type of bomb used on Nagasaki ("Fat Man"), which was an implosion type weapon using a plutonium core, while the Hiroshima bomb was a gun type with a uranium core. It was felt that the latter would definitely work, while they were less confident about the implosion bomb. It's hard to believe that an untested weapon was used on Hiroshima. What if it had failed?
If it failed, we had many more waiting. For months before we dropped the first bomb, the us was ready and waiting to nuke every enemy nations capital city within 48 hours, if Britain fell.
An awesome amount of confidence, indeed. A good reason for not letting the Iranians enrich Uranium, whatever their excuses.
The Manhattan Project scientists, the greatest collection of brainpower ever assembled, were certain the gun bomb with U235 would work. Uranium enrichment is a painstaking process and there was no point in wasting what little they had on a test. The gun bomb doesn’t have a core, it has a U235 bullet fired into a U235 target. Oppenheimer almost resigned when it was discovered that a gun assembly wouldn’t work for plutonium.
@@mikew5858 >> Bro. Don’t tell the Iranians.
even if it didnt go critical it would still be a huge explosion. more akin to dirty bomb.
I helped (as a volunteer) with the final reunion of the 509th Composite Group. It was held in Wendover, Utah over Labor Day in 2001. Col. Tibbetts didn't attend as he was at the reunion for the USS Indianapolis. Wendover was where the 509th trained. You can see the bomb pit where the practice bombs were loaded. The airbase is being restored.
🫡
You and the men you served with accomplished more than we can comprehend.
Much love and respect on behalf of a generation undeserving of your sacrifice.
It pains me to see what we’ve become, but there is hope we can regain or honor and dignity
@@mrmagoo8956 amen
Fuckin wild man. Just know we never forgetting you an this comment
@@mrmagoo8956 I'm sorry if you got the impression I was a member of the 509th I am not. I was just a volunteer for the reunion twenty plus years ago. I agree with you that those men deserves all of our love and respect for all that their generation accomplished!
Love this channel. Learn alot that we were never told about in history. Keep them coming. Very cool.
Read Critical Mass by Carter Hydrick or type it in here on TH-cam
This channel is 100% LIES!
This is so thorough, accurate, and concise. Compelling, excellent work.
My father was in the Photographic and Spectrographic group at Trinity. At 3:01 is his jeep with a white insulated box for keeping film safe. He also took still and movie aerial footage of the crater, and had a framed photo on our basement wall. It was a strange childhood.
No crater. The explosive has no mass.
I don't think Trinity made any crater. It was an air burst from a tower. It's only fallout would have been from the bomb's atomic material that was drawn into the atmosphere. But, this wasn't enough to be noticed. To have measurable fallout from a single bomb the bomb has to be ground burst so debris and soil are drawn into the bomb's mushroom cloud where it gets coated with the bomb's atomic material. The atomic material is then deposited on the ground when the debris and soil return to the ground.
The first known incidence of atomic bomb fallout came after one of the tests in the Pacific. Shortly after the test a Japanese fishing trawler in the area was covered with dust. But it was only after the crew got sick that the connection was made between the dust and atomic fallout.
My father was in the Navy and part of the occupation force that went into Tokyo after Japan surrendered. His description of the devastation from the firebombing was chilling. He had seen the ruthlessness of the Japanese in battle--he never had any regrets that the U.S. had firebombed, then nuked Japan to end the war. He said that any attempt to invade Japan to defeat it would likely have cost millions of lives on both sides.
Don’t invade it then. Stay home and dont blocade them in 1941. Easy. Same happening now for Russia and China. The US keeps pushing and provoking, until…
There were projections about probable number of casualties and they were very, very high. They also made the assumption that virtually everyone in Japan would have been involved.
@@stevenwolfe7101 more like realistic
@@LeonAust I think they were realistic and that an invasion of Japan by a ground force would have been the worst battle ever fought, in terms of casualties on both sides. We have all seen the stories of Japanese soldiers who either did not get the news of the surrender or who, having heard of the surrender, decided to fight on. These soldiers and other people could have held out for many months or even years and their tenacity is to be admired by those who believe in self-sacrifice.
My Old Man landed at Atsugi. There is Pathe News Footage of the Sailors
Thanks, I have always been interested in the World Wars. I appreciate how much effort you put into these videos.
@BOB K appears like you're looking forward to it.
Thank you for the amazing addition to the story I have followed for years! The more I learn of WW2 history, the more I notice we are repeating it!
One reason Japan surrendered was that the US relaxed its demand for unconditional surrender. Through intermediaries Japan negotiated the deal to allow the emperor to escape prosecution for war crimes and to serve as figurehead monarch of postwar Japan. The US may have agreed to do this to avoid the prospect of Russian boots all over Korea and Japan.
Russian boots are still on northern Japanese Kuril islands
@@robbaur3911 for now... They are in stark decline...
Tom Bower's books, "Blind Eye to Murder" [post-war cover-up of widespread, generalised atrocities in Europe, done mostly by Nazis]
and another, "Paperclip Conspiracy", examined selection of those guilty of war crimes but not prosecuted, being deemed useful to the USA.
@@EllieMaes-Grandad Informed estimates place the number of Germans in the future West Germany who were guilty of WWII war crimes and thus might have been prosecuted by the occupying powers at 500,000 or more. If 500 were tried each month, the trials would not yet be over.
I don't think the U.S. agreed before the occupation to exempt the emperor from war crimes charges. But, we did lessen our demand for unconditional surrender by not demanding Hirohito's abdication. Several of the defendants at the Tokyo trials implicated Hirohito, but MacArthur saw to it that they changed their testimony so as to make him look innocent (which we now know he clearly was not). For some reason MacArthur felt we would have been unable to control the Japanese population if we had removed the emperor.
They only had one additional bomb as of August, 1945. They could make around 3 per month. The limiting factor was getting enough Pu239 and U235
Exactly. There was a shortage of Uranium and Plutonium. There weren't dozens of atomic bombs ready to be dropped. I know because my dad was at Los Alamos and worked on the first bomb.
@@bobvog7123I know because that’s very common knowledge and was said in the 2023, 2nd highest grossing movie “Oppenheimer” based on the project manager of the manhattan project.
Oh and my dad was Oppenheimer.
@@bobvog7123: I heard that the sand there turned into glass. True?
@@derekderek2570: Gee, so was mine.
@@e.conboy4286true! It’s called trinitite
War sucks. People will never learn.
A few bad men doing bad things and millions of innocent people pay with their lives
I once heard an old Chinese war veteran say:
"No one at war wants peace more than the soldiers on the ground. It's only the politicians that want conflict."
Meanwhile, War provides the BIGGEST ETERNAL PORFITS for the international banker's!
@@Zac_Frost Except nowadays it's because of hundreds of thousands of Muslim fanatics who believe in a religion which states that all non-Muslims shall be eliminated from the face of the Earth. If they don't believe this, they are by very definition not Muslim.
amen
I was stationed in Japan for almost 4 yrs during my time in service. Beautiful country and people. War is definitely hell
If you can find "The Role of PTSD in History" (an article) - it explains a lot. Angry people make war.
I was always under the impression from my research that after the detonation of Fat Man we didn't have the capability of building a third bomb at that time. That we would have basically had to start from scratch. Always fun to learn something new and that we not only had the capability and materials for a 3rd bomb, but many more after that. This has got me hyped up to see Oppenheimer this summer. I can't wait to see how Nolan recreates the Trinity explosion.
I have read many times that the 2 used were it. Curious to see the references on this one.
I was of the same ... I thought .. informed opinion. Just a teacher of 20th C history. Insufficient supply of refined Uranium.
How much uranium ore do you have to dig to get enough bomb grade stuff? It must be a hell of a lot!
@@coopandcarter It's not just the ore. After you dig that up you then have to purify it and separate the isotopes to get the fissile material. And the ratio is nuts, it's like for every 1000000 non-fissile isotopes you get one fissile isotope. You can watch other videos about the making of the atomic bomb and getting the uranium for Fat Man. They are highly informative.
@@coopandcarter 10kg of ore makes about 1kg of 5% enriched uranium of which about 0.7% is U235. So yer it's a lot
Historian here. Sources vary somewhat, but in general the third bomb was not fully ready nor assembled to be used, and Japan surrendered before it was assembled. It would have been another 2 months ( roughly) for a 4th bomb ( or subsequent bombs) to be ready for use. When Truman informed Stalin of the successful Trinity test, Stalin already knew due to espionage. Soviet entry in the war on Japan probably had little effect, it would have taken time to mobilize Soviet forces to travel across Russia to even begin to engage Japan. The Japanese had no idea how many atomic bombs the US had to use on them, and they had no countermeasures to prevent further bombings, as none of their aircraft could fly high enough to attack the B 29's, nor could any anti-aircraft fire reach them. The one great moment of US military wisdom was in not attacking Tokyo with an atomic bomb, nor harming Emperor Hirohito.
Not knowing how many bombs were available, and not being able to stop their use, surrender was in the best interest of Japan, which allowed them to preserve their cultural legacy, against the potential of extermination by atomic weapons or direct invasion. This saved millions of soldiers and civilians, from any side, from dying.
A concise and illuminating summary. Thank you.
And I believe the Japanese were weighing their surrender to whom. They wisely chose the US terms of surrender even though it was to the Allied Powers as a whole. Stalin's conditions would have been horrific to Japan.
Even with this logic, the Army wanted to keep fighting. The Emperor overruled them in an extraordinary moment since he was usually more of a figure head.
No, there would have been a 4th bomb in a few weeks, at most. At that point, the US could produce about 1 bomb every 10 days or so.
If Japan had not surrendered, there would have been an invasion of Kyushu (the southernmost island of Japan itself) by November 1, 1945.
The big question would have been whether to continue using the limited number of bombs on Japanese cities or save them up to use as tactical weapons on during the invasion. Given the limited understanding of radiation at that time, the US Army was planning to send troops through irradiated zones within hours or a day or two of the bombing, which would have exposed them to significant radiation.
Your summation omitted one very important aspect here. There is a reason Russia had not declared war on Japan at even this very late stage. Russia and Japan still had lines of communication going to help be an intermediary in negotiating the end of the war. Russia thru back channels knew full well what our successful Trinity test meant to that end. Russia declared war on Japan to ensure a seat at the table and for a piece of the spoils of war, which being just under the wire they got. Once Japan saw Russia jump ship, their last chance of working out any deals to end the war in their favor, quickly faded, and the rest is history.
Very interesting. A lot of info here I have not read elsewhere. Thanks for the upload 👍
The answer is simple they didn’t want to accidentally kill the emperor who could order Japan to surrender unconditionally whereas if he didn’t do that the whole nation would’ve been resisting for up to 10 years.
Yes, they would have resisted and fought with swords if they ran out of bullets but not for 10 years. It was estimated it would cost between 300- and 500.000 US soldiers their lives if they would have conventionally attacked mainland Japan.
Both Bockscar & Strange Cargo were supposed to conduct a simultaneous attack on Japan. During preflight Strange Cargo dropped it's payload (FATMAN) onto the apron. It had to get picked up and evaluated to make sure it was still good to go. My late grandpa, John Hubaney was the crew chief ground crew assigned to that project.
They attacked in 3 ship formations. Once carried the bomb, one was loaded with electronic and photographic equipment and another one flew interference in case of enemy fighters. These (code named Silverplate) B-29’s had all of their defensive gun turrets removed except for the tail gun to improve range and speed.
Strange Cargo was supposed to drop the Kokura / Nagasaki implosion weapon. However they decided it was too time consuming to move the cameras and electronics from Strange Cargo to Bock’s Car. Instead they swapped crews. Strange Cargo’ crew flew Bock’s Car and dropped the bomb. Bock’s Car’s normal crew flew Strange Cargo on that mission. Strange Cargo was the only airplane that flew both Atomic Missions.
So Strange Cargo dropped the first atomic bomb and not the Enola Gay? :)
Hiroshima Mission Planes
Enola Gay. Strike plane carrying Little Boy.
The Great Artiste. Observation/instrument plane.
Necessary Evil. Camera plane.
Full House. Weather reconnaissance.
Jabit III. Weather reconnaissance.
Straight Flush. Weather reconnaissance.
Big Stink. Backup strike plane on Iwo Jima....
Nagasaki Mission Planes
Bockscar. Strike plane carrying Fat Man.
The Great Artiste. Observation/instrument plane.
Big Stink. Camera plane.
Enola Gay. Weather reconnaissance.
Laggin’ Dragon. Weather reconnaissance.
Full House. Backup strike plane on Iwo Jima.@@jaman878
@@davidforbes7772 No, the Enola Gay dropped the bomb. Strange Cargo was outfitted with electronic and photographic equipment to to record the blast on both missions.
There was a B-29 pilot who lived in Omaha. While I lived and worked there, 1978 to 1987, he completed research into something that came about, because he had harbored a long standing GRUDGE about being ordered to make a conventional bombing raid on Tokyo, on the 14th of August, 1945. His research (in Japan, with help from Japanese Archivists) found documents that indicated, that as a result of that raid, the "lights went out" at the Imperial Palace. When the lights went out there was a group of "militants" who were going to try to over power the guards, kidnap Hirohito and not allow him to make the surrender speech. Instead of that happening, the Palace guards intercepted the militants and Hirohito went on to announce the surrender then next day (Aug. 15,1945) After years of carrying a long ANGER at having been sent on a bombing mission, which COULD have resulted in his death...and which he and others in the crew thought worthless...(There was news that the announcement of the surrender was forthcoming!) this man found that THAT BOMBING RAID had an important part in helping to end the war. This was sort of a LOCAL NEWS item, I'm sure it's in the microfilms of the Omaha World Herald, but it's one of those "interesting facts" of the "for the lack of a nail, a horse was lost" chain of events that involved many factors...and that at least ONE person, didn't understand THEIR IMPORTANCE until 30 years after the event! (Go Bless that MAN for doing that work, and documenting it publicly. It's an important lesson for all!)
We would likely still be screwing around with the dynamic *today* if he had been killed. Japan is like a bees nest. Industrial creatures in full command of loyalty... Might not be that big of a nest, but I wouldn't just poke sticks at it. Someone would have had to finish them off or something methinks... It wouldn't have gone well at all.
This was actually documented to some extent on some history show. I can't remember which, but it covered the attempt to both kidnap Hirohito and steal the record that was to be played the following morning to announce the surrender. I also sadly can't remember if the bombing raid was mentioned or to what extent, but I do remember there being some aspect that foiled the kidnappers plans, so it seems likely that the raid was it. I hope this research brought that brave hero some peace.
Sorry to disagree but that account doesn't sound like an actual soldier of the time. That period was VERY anti-Japanese, (racist if you will), and the guys I met later on told me how wonderful it was to smell burning flesh inside the airplane as they cruised over the burning cities at night. Grudge...? Naw, they had written themselves off until the victory. Back then, it was a total war effort; total commitment.
@@Pimp-Master You're basing that on the opinions of a small group of people. Everybody has their own perspective of historical events that they witnessed or participated in.
@@jblyon2 Possibly fortunate outcome doesn't make someone who took part in bombing a hero.
Even as a former enemy and an uneasy ally, it is horrible to contemplate the destruction of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku with a dozen atomic bombs. Thank God Emperor Hirohito called for unconditional surrender.
fuck them
We showed them mercy
@@Akkbar21 lol
That would have taken about 3-4 months to be able to hit that many targets.
@@rydplrs71 3-4 months isn't very long when you're talking about the lifespan of a nation.
Great information, Dark. I've never heard all of this before.
Fortunately a 3rd bomb was not required. The loss of life caused by the first 2 was a colossal tragedy. Both the result of Japanese policy and how the Japanese military fought the war. Together with the refusal to surrender. The Japanese military leadership with the emperors approval had long since put pride about the suffering of the Japanese people. The fire bombing killed more Japanese civilians than the Bombs. The number of Japanese civilians who were killed or committed suicide on Okinawa should give an estimation of the horrific cost on the Japanese population an invasion of the home islands would been.
Ultimately the bombs saved other Japanese lives as well as allied lives.
Even after 2 bombs. The Japanese government was split and only surrendered with the Emperor vote to break the deadlock.
Fortunately he chose to side with the acceptance of the surrender.
After the only two exisitng A-bombs had been dropped, archival records show a third bomb was under assembly at Tinian in the Mariana Islands where the Enola Gay and Bockscar had flown from, with the main plutonium core still to be to be shipped from the U.S. "Dozens" appears to be a wild farbrication.
yep, this channel can never be accused of accuracy.
Not really; there was a huge production gearing up. The Japanese didn’t surrender after Hiroshima because they thought there was just one bomb.
@@jaybee9269 Source for either claim? Japan was starving to death and surrendered once the Soviets started invading the "Sacred" Home Islands - which conquest are held by Russia to this day.
@@thomaslinton5765 >> I don’t have one handy. But Groves and Oppenheimer planned for many bombs. Japan had their own atomic bomb program (little known) and their experts thought there was only one bomb ready. They did not understand how lavish we were with funds, personnel and material.
@@jaybee9269exactly, they planned but other bombs were not ready at the time of Hiroshima. More bombs were built afterwards but not before Hiroshima
Actually there were projections at that time that showed the war with Japan would have lasted 4 to 5 more years with 1 million dead allied forces , and 5 million Japanese dead .
That’s a great point and fact that the majority of historians seem to ignore.
The Russians were going through them like a packet of salts. On the surrender there were 1million japanese troops in China.
Would they have made it through the winter of '45-'46 though? The USN had crippled Japanese merchant shipping. No fuel nor food was coming in. At best some small fishing vessels were bringing in fish but not enough to feed the army let alone the whole nation.
No, there was no real projections, it was mere conjectures. The numbers got frequently changed. Yet it was true that they did expected lot of resistance, specially after the events in Iwo Jima. Clearly, they will not have any help from partisans, like they did when they were fighting Germany and Italy.
On the other side, there was a lot of pressure to use the bombs, as eventually some people may have to justify the huge amount of resources invested in that project. It would be hard if at the end, it wasn't used to actually aid the war effort in any tangible way.
@@weredrgn Are you aware that the Navy had been predicting casualties prior to every invasion? And that every one of those predictions underestimated the casualties? Add in the Japanese fanaticism, 1 million American casualties may well have been an underestimate.
Great video. I can only hope that we know that these weapons should never ever be used again on anyone, especially what we have now sitting in silos in many countries around the world. If we learn anything from history it's the short term and long term damage nuclear weapons do.
Millions of dead soldiers from WWI, WWII and other battlefields and other fields of war through history teach that there are lots of deaths from "conventional" weapons. If it saves our soldiers' lives, it is worth using. All of the Allied dead soldiers who would have resulted from a conventional invasion of Japan lived to appreciate that the A-bombs saved their lives. War is hell... don't sneak attack us at Pearl Harbor or elsewhere if you don't want to learn that up front and personally!
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side. We’s comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail.
What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y’know was kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin’; sometimes the shark go away . . . sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then . . . aah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, in spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and they . . . rip you to pieces. Know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men; they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday mornin', I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up ‘n down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.
Noon the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, she swung in low and he saw us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
Jaws
Fuckin Quint
Funny thing about Quint, he was a Canadian citizen. And the tax laws at the time were he had to fly back to Canada every three days , stay overnight to avoid us taxes. So there is that. Thanks for retelling his speech.
@@benr2862 memorized it to pick up chicks in bars. bad idea.
Show me the way to go home.......
My father in law (USN WWII) was on a destroyer escort in the Pacific in this timeframe. My brother's father in law (USMC WWII) was on a troop carrier that was also staged for the invasion. Fortunately they both made it back home but if we had not used the bombs they may not have. I feel fortunate to have heard both their stories first hand and will never forget them or those men. We miss you Brownie & Norm. Thanks to all now serving, those who have, and those who will in the future. FLY NAVY!!!
The US estimated there would be 6 million casualties on an invasion of Japan,good thing the-A-bomb was ready for service.
They estimated a million casualties if we had to land on the home islands.
My dad was also in the South Pacific. I’ve often wondered if I would even be here now. RIP daddy. Thanks to you and all in you generation. The greatest generation in history.
@@powerbadpowerbad The Soviet Union was poised, ready to invade the Japanese islands from the north. Had landing craft and everything ready.
@@SteveWray WOW.I didn't know that.A home invasion of Japan would've had mass casualties on both Russian and american sides.GOOD thing US had those A-bombs ready to use.
Love Dark series! Please keep doing great videos!!!
Excellent content and presentation.
My second cousin joined the navy at 17 I believe, and was killed on the USS Indianapolis when it was hit with 2 torpedoes after dropping off critical parts for the bomb, to be used on Hiroshima
I lived in Pahrump Nevada in 1989. The test site was a primary employment option at the time. Essentially many of the residents of Pahrump worked out on the test site. In 1989-94 I knew so many people that had cancer it was unbelievable. Just a fact. One of the jobs the civilian sector did was cover the hole from a test blast with heaven equipment. They would announce a test in the town part and when it went off you could visibly see the ripple come across the desert valley from the back of no name cafe. Great times. Unbelievable
I live in Pahrump now for over years, went to a (EPA?) meeting about the ground water contained by the old tests was heading south -and tests shown it to contain trouble for towns.I was There to "Suggest" using (by wells) that the water could be used to grow Alge. then the Alge (as desil fuel) could make electric (as that shouldn.t be radioactive) but EVEN if it, they then had a small amount to deal with.
Some liked my thought, others (because I didn't have a company) dismissed me So I chose a Company name, some "GOT IT" & simled at the Company name... "Solent Green"
Last movie Edward G Robetson made, Heston tried to make a statement that he hoped would become as famous as he said in ape planet ( Get your stinking hands off me...) by saying in this movie "Solent Green.it's PEOPLE..." great movrie 1974.
I still get (15 years later?) US Govermant doucuments addressed "SOYLENT GREEN, LLC" & under that "ATT (name witheld to protect the... Guilty.)
Back the Pahrump was didn’t have much .. Crazy out there though !
There was not "unbelievable" levels of cancer in the people who worked at the test site unless you feel that the prevalence of cancer in the general population today is also "unbelievable".
@@stargazer7644 In a small town of Pahrump Nv. In 1989 there was a number of people with cancer as well as many other diseases. Many of those people worked at the test site. It’s just an observation. I also herd a lot of first hand testimonies from the ones who worked out there as well. Maybe it was linked to the sands of the desert or maybe it was something else. It depends what and where you worked. It may have been the result of Nuclear testing. In those days they’re would announce the tests and you could see the ripple of the blast across the sands. ??
@@rickbrickles1410 40 percent of the general population develops cancer today. They don't work at a nuclear test site. It doesn't have anything to do with desert sand either. Lots of people (including me) have lived in the desert and survived to tell the tale. Yes, lots of people get cancer. If you live long enough, something is going to kill you. There was no horrible increase of diseases linked to early nuclear weapons testing.
I spoke with a B-29 navigator while touring a B-29 and he seemed real legit. Said he was on crew number 10 planned to drop a bomb on Japan. He said there were 12 crews in training.
I know of another navigator who was to fly on the third mission to drop another bomb. He rarely spoke of anything about that time. The one thing he did impress on me was that he was acquainted with the crews of the two earlier bombings. He told of the great toll on every crew member once the massive destruction was fully known. They struggled mightily. May they all rest in peace and may humanity mature enough to forever end the cruel barbarity of war.
I grew up with the bombs. My late father was a photo technician with the 509th at Wendover, Tinian and Roswell. He had a large album full of photos. I asked him if he got to leave Tinian after the war was over. He said they didn't leave until 1946. They thought the peace process might break down and they had a 3rd bomb ready to go. He said he saw it. Most of the photos he took on the island were taken after the war because they didn't have much else to do. Even though my brother and I were both in the Air Force, dad was the last to receive a ribbon. Surviving members of the 509th were given the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with V device. The flag on dad's casket was folded by the SAC Honor Guard. Years later, dad's grandson (my nephew) had a photo taken of himself holding dad's great-granddaughter with the Enola Gay in the background. She will understand what it is all about when she is older.
Amazing documentary 💯🔥
You are amazed by wild inaccuracy on U-Tub?
Truman said the decision to drop the bombs and start an atomic era of warfare was the most difficult decision of his political career.And you can certainly understand that sentiment after watching the footage of the devastation caused by Fatman and Littleboy.
Si los japoneses hubieran escuchado los ultimatums enviados por USA y se hubieran rendido, no hubiese habido bombazos...
And you believe the mouth droppings of a politician?
@@temptempy1360
You'll note Truman left the political arena after his presidency and retired.
I'd believe he was being more honest than those always vying for influence.
He had no choice. The joint chiefs would have resigned and he'd have been impeached. OT would have caused a constitutional crisis.
@@Aim54Delta I am inclined to agree with you. Truman was the "accidental President" because although FDR looked pale and ill. no one thought that he would die so quickly and propel Truman into a Presidency for which he was poorly prepared. He was not aware of the atomic bombs when FDR died. But he turned out to be an excellent Presdient and he made the tough decisions that had to be made.
I went to parochial school with the bombardier's daughter, some 32 years after the war. I don't recall which city they targeted. He had nightmares at least twice a week, and then there's the cancers. The daughter also told us descriptions of the attack. Words do no justice....
There is absolutely no research paper (unless it's American propaganda) done on either Hiroshima or Nagasaki that shows a significant increase in cancers in the next decades.
And if there had been no bombs, you probably wouldn't have known the bombadier's daughter as the bombadier would likely have been killed in the bombing campaign.
BTW, I doubt very much that the daughter knew much about her father's mental state. I knew lots of WW2 veterans-- many of whom had seen terrible things-- and they kept their experiences to themselves.
@@FactCheckerGuy It's true that nearly all WWII Vets kept the stuff to themselves. However, their household had a fairly good idea of the ordeal he was going through. Twice a week waking up the Entire house with his screams, yelling stuff, etc. No, not as well as he himself did. I'm pretty sure he never went to therapy to talk.
What do you say? "Yeah doc, I have this nightmares several nights a week. Why? I dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima. No-- The Bomb." I don't even know if a hundred therapy hours, or a thousand, could help. What pill helps with the memories and nightmares?
I've seen a little combat, and yes I've had minor issues, especially compared to.....basically taking a city off the map. At the same time, I'm glad he survived and I got to be friends with her; as you pointed out, had they not dropped the bomb, he probably would've died doing bombing runs. Her last name is "Van--" something. I don't remember the rest. Google can tell you I'm sure
There was an attempted coup in Japan when certain elements in the military heard that the Emperor had recorded a surrender message. Some of the Emperor’s advisors had been counseling surrender for months.
After reading a lot about WWII recently one of the disconnects with the history of it is this notion of a clean war or that bombing was able to be done tactically. The reality is that with the technology that existed then, despite the myth of things like the Norden Bombsight, most bombing to be effective required massive bombing just to hit the target. The British early on kind of rejected that, Harris, the head of their strategic air command, rejected that early, it is why the British bombed at night. And it pretty much was done in retaliation for the blitz and there was a strain of let's kill German civilians too
I just read a short book by Malcolm Gladwell that talked about the idea of tactical bombing and where it came from. In the 1930s a group of Air Corps ppl created what became the Air Force War college. They were proponents of targeted bombing, their idea was with the modern technology it was possible to bomb let's say a factory ,and that was the goal, to minimize civilian deaths. They became the nucleus of US air power, and with things like the Norden bomb sight they felt they could do that. It is why the US did daytime bombing of Germany, even though they took huge losses to do so. The problem? The technology didn't work and accuracy was all over the place, they were lucky if 10% of the bombs hit the target. When the US got close enough to Japan to start bombing it, the person in charge was one of those who created the dogma of tactical bombing. They tried it and it failed, it was the same thing. In the end Le May replaced him and he was the opposite, he felt only mass bombings would achieve the goals. He took it one step further with the firebombing, that quite frankly targeted civilians to 'break their will'.
In the end civilians were going to be killed whatever the intent. To get enough bombs on a factory or whatnot required mass bombings,as crude as it was,inefficient. To get enough bombs on a factory might take hundreds or thousands of bombs being dropped, most of which would be wide of the target and kill civilians.
One thing tht targeting civilians showed was it didn't work to break the enemies will, it just pisses off the population. In England the blitz didn't work, the only time morale broke was when the V1 and V2 s started hitting, mostly because it worked so differently.
So people see the A bomb and say 'thst is immoral' bc they believe tactical bombing worked ,when it didn't. The a bomb worked bc the Japanese saw a weapon that could literally destroy the country where it couldn't be rebuilt,Hirohito realized that. Japan's cities were already rubble,but they knew that could be rebuilt.
With today's technology it is possible to do targeted bombing. In the book an air force officer said you could be sitting in the living room of a house, and they could hit an upstairs bedroom, kill the person there, and you would be untouched. This is relatively new, in the gulf war we used B52s to carpet bomb Iraq in the early 90s.
I am not saying targeting civilians is great policy, in other words, I am saying that in WWII it didn't matter,that tactical bombing took the same toll on civilians in that era as carpet bombing.
You said that the British bombed Germany as a retaliation for the Blitz. You must have read some typical Allied-sourced story-telling. The facts show that the Germans did not start bombing the opponent as a strategic move. They had bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam, but those were tactical events, connected to the battle on the ground, as it happened from day to day. The British started to bomb Germany since the defeat of France in May 1940. Hitler was quite adamant about preventing an escalation of bombing each other. When a German raid on the London docks caused some stray bombs to hit civilian houses as well, Churchill had his casus belli to launch a raid on Berlin the next night.
Talk about the so-called Blitz has been emanating from stories of the time, in which the Germans obviously were marked as the igniters of the war, so, they also started the bombing raids on cities for no other reason than to hit the opponent with whatever means available. It is wartime propaganda. Hitler could not oppose the sentiment among his staff to retaliate, whereas he felt that this was the wrong way to deal with the conflict. He'd rather settled for a peace with Britain and France, but they declared war on Germany, due to the Polish issue. Bombing Britain was not on his mind then. The course of the war may have changed that, but stating that the British wanted to retaliate because of the Blitz, is in denial of the actual facts.
Some collateral damage is expected, eg like those who starve in sieges thats a their side issue. You still have to be able to point to a valid target and say "using tools available we destroyed _this_ valid target". It doesnt deny civilian casualty happens but it cant be the target or wanton slaughter of random innocent humans.
One reason v1, v2 was so terrible is there was no agency or careful accuracy to avoid innocents
Norden bombsight...what a lie. It would have been wonderful if the thing worked as hyped, but sadly for the guys involved, it didn't. I believe the stragegy was to send over 1000 planes that would only release bombs on radio command after the lead plane did so. So much for precision.
@@Guido_XL It was retaliation when a German Heinkel plane unintentionally dropped a few bombs on London. However Churchill (the warmonger) had obviously anticipated this as wellington bombers were already prepared and bombed Berlin the very next night. this was followed by the Blitz.
@@Guido_XL ...Churchill was a barbaric Fiend who wanted to drop poison Gas onto the German civilians. why he is regarded as a hero is beyond me.
I had often wondered what would have happened if the surrender of Japan had not happened when it did. You have given me that answer and I greatly appreciate that! Love your series and am an avid fan!
They surrendered because Russia was coming very soon and they feared their retribution for their actions against them.. not the nukes we dropped
Imperial Japanese navy and airforce were almost destroyed and the Allies could have bombed Japanese military bases, runaways, naval docks from the sea...with total blockade, Japan would be thrown back to stone age and would have to surrender to later become the 2nd largest economy in the World..
@@ameyas7726 The targets they hit were of military value. That is why they were selected. Not only that, but the Army Air Force dropped leaflets ahead of time warning the citizens of those cities to evacuate and they listed 6 cities which were in that category. That was certainly a lot more than what they did to warn us at Pearl Harbor. I have sympathy only for the children, but it couldn't be helped. It had to come to an end sooner than later. They knew it was over long before they finally surrendered.
There are histories of what was going on in Japan at the time: Look for the book about Hirohito: He went through 4 cabinets, until there were only two military left in the cabinet, and they both voted against unconditional surrender, but Hirohito voted as he always did... for peace, for his people, and the human race. The Military would never let him surrender. Find that - note: Although this was revealed in the 1960s, it was hidden, and no mention of it here....Kyoto was taken off the list, and Tokyo was taken off even earlier. Find out why....
Another 18-24 months of combat, allied casualties on the order of 1 million and ten times as many dead Japanese. The meat grinder of Okinawa was seen as a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan. Half the civilian population of Okinawa was killed during the invasion. The casualties incurred in an invasion of Japan would have been horrible. As awful as they were those two atomic bombs saved at least an order of magnitude more casualties than had they not been dropped.
These are the type of historical videos worth watching for educational purposes. I actually discovered info here i hadn't heard before. Research never ends for the enquirers.
And never trust the official government story.
My grandfather's unit got sent into Hiroshima 5 days after it was nuked to help give aid to survivors. I have a photo of him with a group of children he found and rescued.
His unit never knew about the radiation and they were given no protection.
Unfortunately, the bombs were a necessary evil to end the war before millions more were to be killed in a massive invasion into the Japan mainland.
While the USA's Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge were moving fast to build more A-Bombs, I believe it is well documented that after the first 2 bombs were dropped on Japan, additional bombs would not become available for at least several weeks.
The core and initiator for a third bomb were in California for shipment to Tinian when Truman notified Stimson that no more atomic bombs would be used. The bomb casings, explosive lenses, and x-units were on-site at Tinian for assembly when the core and initiator arrived.
@buckhorncortez: The famous Demon Core was being used in experiments, and was about to be sent out for the 3rd atomic bomb over Japan. It has an interesting history after that cancellation.
Thank you for posting these!
Another thing was the people that worked on the Manhattan Project most likely all died at a young age as well. I can imagine most of them had cancer from being exposed to such radioactive materials without proper protection. We see the old footage of people handling uranium with gloves and lab coats treating it like a cold virus. I think many of them were smart enough to know it would kill them but made the sacrifice to win the war at all costs.
No they were well aware of the hazards. Scientists like Richard Feynman lived normal lives. Thousands of people worked at the Oak Ridge TN and Hanford WA production facilities. Significant radiation exposures only happened due to occasional accidents. The most hazardous stuff is being cleaned up at a cost of $4 billion a year.
You can handle non-critical uranium and plutonium without gloves. Just don't try to lick and sniff shavings of the stuff.
As a high school student, I toured Caltech. At that time, there was a nuclear reactor in the basement of a building attached to a dormitory and classrooms. The professor, whose name escapes me, had radiation burns all over his hands, and operated the reactor manually. He requested a dime, and several of us, myself included, offered him dimes. He put the dimes on a petri glass which he lowered into the reactor with a cotton cord. When the dimes were pulled out after a few seconds, they were highly radioactive. Within a few minutes, the radioactivity declined and he handed the dimes back. Radioactive silver has a very short life, but I don't know about the other metals in a dime. There still was little concern about radioactivity 16 years after the atomic bombs were dropped in Japan.
Among other things, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki certainly sent a message to the Soviet Union. That message was, "We'd better get some nuclear weapons of our own."
That was already I'm the works.... the Russians were in the middle of The Manhattan Project as well as Bletchley Park due to Left Wing sympathizers.... traitors.... same ones running our governments today...
Naively, it is astonishing that project which employed “thousands of people,” and “dozens of sites,” could be kept top secret. Kudos to the security team who made that possible.
Well, Stalin knew so they didn't manage to keep it THAT secret...
Security ???? My Father was part of the greater Project. He was prospecting for Uranium in the 4 Corners area. The guys pumping Gasoline in the little desert towns knew that the Geologists like Dad who were scrambling over the sides of the Rattlesnake infested mountain sides were -- quote -- " Looking for Uranium for the Atom Bomb..."
The Air Force Officer in charge of co-ordinating with the men in the "field" could not tell the Airbase Commander what he was doing. So he would drive off base on a 24 hour pass. Then be arrested a week later when he returned. He would be allowed to make 1 phone call to Washington DC and the Commander would be ordered to give him another 24 hour pass!!!😂😂😂
If you don't tell people what they're doing, it's hard for them to blab.
Stalin had spies throughout the Manhattan Project, so the 'security' was shit.
Many more people knew than people think, most people or companies developing film at the time would have been able to figure it out pretty quickly.
"The Pacific War" by Iain Toll explains that the Japanese refused to capitulate after the first bomb. They assumed the US only had one bomb, so concluded that they could continue to resist. The second bomb shook their confidence that we did not have more. Thus, the second bomb was necessary to get them to capitulate. The reason a third was not dropped was because it was unnecessary.
The Japanese knew exactly what the bomb was the day after Hiroshima. They knew what fissile material was used, the approximate weight of material and had a decent idea of the design. They, too, were working on the bomb
Japanese scientists were aware of the possibility of atom bombs based on U235. But it was also believed by both the Germans and Japanese that separating enough U235 from natural uranium was an insurmountable problem (plus the Japanese did not have access to uranium ore). Even if the US had found a way to get enough for one bomb, making another would take a very long time. They had no idea about plutonium (except as a possible theory - it was not discovered until 1940 and 1941 at Berkeley, and kept secret). When a second bomb followed three days after the first, they knew that the US atomic technology eclipsed their knowledge.
This is known to be true as we have a lot of detail about the Japanese discussions. Their belief was based on the known difficulty of trying to extract U235 from uranium, which was viewed as nearly impossible. The correctly surmised that a U235 bomb was a one off thing -- it would take many months to make another. But they knew nothing about plutonium, which was far easier to make and actually more fissile that U235.
No, Harry Truman did not have several extra A-bombs at his disposal in August or September 1945, despite what the narrator says.
The narrator's assertion that Stalin wished Truman luck in dropping the atomic bomb is incorrect, as Truman never explicitly mentioned it was an atomic bomb. Furthermore, Stalin never admitted to knowing it was an atomic bomb, despite being aware of its existence.
There was already a 3rd bomb and there would have been a 4th in a few weeks, at most. There was a capacity to produce a bomb about every 10 days, indefinitely.
I called bullshit on that, too, within the 1st minute of this video.
Fascinating - thank you. It was a great relief to us all at the time.
there are distinct night & day differences between the A bomb & H bomb although the early Gun type A bombs were never manufactured and stored for use after the initial attack on Hiroshima, Even the Nagasaki attack wasn’t a gun type bomb but rather an implosion type detonation on to a man made plutonium core design, vs the gun type- which is basically a detonation charge shot (like a gun) at an enriched natural uranium core…..the first 2 a bombs were fission type bombs where as all hydrogen bombs are fusion type reactions. I could go more in depth but not in a comment section lol 😆
The H bomb basically uses a fission bomb to create the temperature and pressure to initiate a fusion reaction. In theory if they could start the fusion reaction with lasers for example, an H bomb would put out very little radiation. Catch is of course they can't, so it still uses a fission bomb which makes it dirty.
There was a problem with plutonium production after the war so they in fact made a dozen or so "little boys" to fill the gap!
My Dad was training a squadron of TBMs in preparation for the invasion of Japan on the day they surrendered. He had been rotated out of combat(CVL-25) in order to be CAG aboard the Boxer. He said they were in the middle of a glide/bomb practice attack, when the word came over the radio. Without the atomic strikes, it is questionable whether he would have survived the war.
That's the reason I do not question the dropping of the atomic bombs. The casualty rate of American service men would have been extremely high.
@@irregularhunter0586 thats exactly what would have happened if the nukes were not dropped. We were planning to invade Japan and our land forces would have suffered tremendous loses. think about this, we went from total war to total peace in less than 4 days.
No he wouldn’t have. They were all willing to fight to the. Death
@@jameshollen9723 "Interesting" (maybe "sobering" would be a better adjective) about the plans for the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands:
The War Department (now the DoD) anticipated so many casualties that they had a huge number of Purple Hearts made for the killed and wounded US troops. They made so many that almost every single one that's been given out since then has come from that original stock. And they've still got about half of them left.
Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Lebanon and all the rest-the killed and wounded in all those conflicts are about half the number they were expecting if we had to invade.
@@irregularhunter0586 The US Army is a company, a calculated risc. Why not only bomb the emperor ?
The template design of the A-Bomb came from England, including work completed by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in Febuary 1940. The British team at Los Alamos was headed by Australian physicist, Sir Mark Oliphant. Think that’s Oliphant, the guy with narrow rimmed glasses working with the dials? Oppenheimer had met Oliphant earlier, to be convinced by Oliphant physics theory could be put into practice. Canada played a role too, by providing plutonium and building a prototype reactor. The US was needed because of the size and expense of the project. Movies don’t mention all the countries involved.
Tube Alloys
Like Germany, where Einstein was born, raised, and taught? How on earth does this matter? I bet some of the people responsible for the engineering marvel of the atomic bomb also vacationed in Japan at one time in their lives, so are we to acknowledge Japan's contribution to the Atomic Bomb as such? LOL
Yes, that certainly is Sir Mark Oliphant at the 7:49 point of this video. He went on to serve as the Governor of South Australia and lived to the ripe old age 99.
Not mentioned was the massive fire bombing that followed both nuclear bombs. That attack by more than 700 B -29 bombers sealed the deal. Japan got the message loud and clear that the bombing would continue until there wasn't anything or anyone left in Japan. The nukes followed by the fire bombing and then the attacks by the Russians brought the war home to Hirohito. Japan could not endure any more. Hirohito was not a hero for issuing the order to "endure the endurable and bear the unbearable". It was profound fear and realization of the extent of the devastation that was coming.
A little-known fact was that there were seven (7) survivors of both bombs.
A better known fact is that Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only person who survived both bombs. He died in 2010 at the ripe old age of 93.
@@stargazer7644 That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. :)
I heard that Kyoto was designated for the third shot but that McArthur pleaded with Truman to spare the city. (I have no idea how reliable that source was)
There wouldn't have been much point in dropping the A-bomb on Tokyo as there wasn't much left of it. Besides, we would want a fairly clean target so as to get a good bomb damage assessment, particularly given how new this weapon was.
No. Kyoto was taken off the target list at the very beginning because Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, had visited Kyoto and knew that it was the old capital and a culturally significant city. Leslie Groves argued with Stimson over this and kept pressing Stimson to include Kyoto on the target list. Stimson finally went to Harry Truman and got Truman to exclude it from the list, at which point Groves dropped the issue. McArthur had nothing to do with what cities were on the target list.
Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah had worked in Japan in the 1920s and spoke Japanese, the only senator who knew Japan personally. He persuaded Truman and Stimpson that destroying Kyoto would just make it harder for Japan to surrender out of outrage. He had also pressured FDR to open the door to Jewish refugees from Europe.
There was GREAT ANGER among American generals, including MacArthur. "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
The video seems to tell it as though there was NO japanese condition for surrender, but I recall seeing another video that details the allies DID accept japan's conditional surrender (the condition being that japan WOULD maintain the emperor).
I can imagine, many would accept that condition, as it could be argued as a cultural point, of no military value).
Regarding the war in Europe, I think Gen. Patton was keen to continue east and fight the Russians, all the way to Moscow.
I think he may even have told Truman that but Truman declined.
In hindsight, given what Russia is doing now, I think Patton had the right idea.
Your right
The Soviets would have kicked our butts. The Wehrmacht was the greatest army ever assembled. And the Soviets beat them in almost 4 years of fighting, and at a cost of 12 millon soldiers. June '41 to May '45. We lost 400,000 in both theaters. Stalin lost many entire divisions in the East, and kept sending full replacements. They killed almost all the 7 million German soldiers killed in the war. The US was only a tiny part of the European theater. The Russians would have gotten to Berlin by April 1945 with or without the US and UK in the West. Most US dead in WWII in Europe were fighting Grmermans in Italy, a minor theater in the war.
Stalin, I understand, really wanted to continue on, to France and take all of Europe. Only the A-bomb stopped jim. Had he known how small the US/UK forces were, he could have taken Europe without batting an eye. Only the A-bomb prevented that. The Cold War may have started with the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and his people saved Europe.
@stevegarcia3731 soviets had an amped up factory, but did they have supply? Us was already making next generation bombers. After a brutal war, I question if soviets army would revolt. Fighting for the country is different than fighting for conquest. Your point is well taken.
@@EdwardEmmick
Good points. With the Soviets, Stalin did like Putin is doing in Ukraine now - just throwing bodies at "the enemy." Gen. Franz Halder made the plans for Hitler for Operation Barbarrossa and then managed the invasion for more than a year, shoulder to shoulder with Hitler. In his diary, he was astounded that yhe Germans would wipe out an entire division or army, and in days or weeks Stalin would have an entire replacement in place. Many times. The Russians went because Stalin sent them, and none of them thought to revolt. The German invaders had given them all kinds of reasons to go fight, if they were ordered to go. And I would add that they didn't train them worth a shit, so they were mincemeat for the German top divisions, i almost all cases. And they had chased the Germans all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin at Stalin's orders, and if he told them to march to the Atlantic, they would have, in a heartbeat.
You can go see the third bomb that was supposed to be dropped at the Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg Texas
The B-29 cost more to produce and develop than the A Bomb. Curious fact.
How can anyone calculate that its waffle 😂
I was born before the dropping of either bomb (so I'm old) and I remember hearing several times that the production of the bomb and the production of the plane cost about the same.
@@richardrobertson1331 Your need to watch the language very carefully, "The conventional firebombing of Japan used greater expenditure than the production and delivery of the atomic bomb!" In terms of damage, the conventional firebombing took out a Hiroshima every three days, the combined damage of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was just a little more than the MARCH 9 firebombing of Tokyo, the firebombing continued for more than 3 months going past the bombing of Nagasaki.
Nonsence
I'd need you to cite a source and see the numbers for myself. We knew how to build bombers, the B-29 was just bigger(by far). Oak Ridge, TN was a city built to provide materials to build atomic bombs. a city was built to build a bomb in NM and at Hanford in WA. The AAF built a huge plant in Nebraska with support housing I'm sure. The Hanford bomb was the 1st one dropped.
I love these type of stories and you told it great.
Don't forget the British & Canadian scientists in the Manhatten project. They came from the earlier British "Tube Alloys" atomic bomb project.
Yep, they envisioned an atomic bomb long before the Manhattan project ( the British) and turned over their work to Los Alamos. One of the ironies is after WWII the US denied the British access to the design of the bomb&most specifically the process to extract u235&,,plutonium, the British developed all that on their own after WWII.
@@njlauren Not true. Every physicist who heard the announcement of fission proven by Hahn and Strassmann in 1939 knew the potential of the discovery. In fact within a week of Luis Alvarez telling Oppenheimer about the fission discovery in January of 1939, Philip Morrison relates this anecdote. That he walked into Oppenheimer’s office and saw on the blackboard, “a drawing - a very bad drawing, an execrable drawing - of a bomb.” The reason the U.S. refused to give the British detail of the atomic bomb has to do with Britain's agreement with France that they would share military information. When the U.S. asked Britain if they would share the atomic information with the French the answer was "yes" they would be obligated to do that because of the agreement. The United States felt that violated the Quebec agreement signed between the U.S. and Britain, and declined to provide the information. There's always more than one side to a story - should you choose to find the whole story and not just the information that supports your point-of-view.
Truman DIDN'T have "dozens" of atomic bombs at his disposal. He had exactly ONE more Plutonium core (the so-called "demon core") which hadn't been incorporated into a third weapon yet, and it was still in Los Alamos.
That is correct. The US had “blown its nuclear wad”, so to speak. Preparing and delivering that 3rd bomb would have taken weeks.
@@danielmcneil6342 It's documented in many places that Groves informed Stimson that a third bomb would be available for use after August 20. The bomb casings, explosive lenses, and x-units were on Tinian for assembly of a plutonium bomb waiting for the core and initiator. The core and initiator were in California for shipment to Tinian when Truman told Stimson that no more atomic bombs would be used. Oakridge and Hanford had production schedules with one uranium core to be available in September and two plutonium cores.
@@danielmcneil6342 No pun intended, I'm sure.Thankfully, two were sufficient to get their attention. The Army Air Force had burned scores of cites on the home islands to ashes but they just would not quit the fight. My daughter's maternal grandfather fought on Iwo, and the Marines had to kill nearly every Japanese soldier on that speck of rock. Many millions would have died in a ground invasion, so it really was an act of a merciful god that allowed us to perfect the bomb just in time to stop the carnage.
So, per your comment - a core would be available in September. Which would have to be shipped across the Pacific to Tinian. And then assembled.
How long would that take?
Weeks.
What did my comment say?
Weeks.
@@danielmcneil6342 I don't think I was disputing what you'd said. Just pointing out that we'd bombed the Japanese mercilessly and they still wouldn't quit. I don't doubt that is why our government insisted on an unconditional surrender that would allow the US to create an entirely new government, lest the militarists stay in control of the nation and retain an aggressive mentality. Sort of like what we did with Russia after the USSR imploded. We should have tried to create a real democracy there, and eradicate the idea they are destined to rule Europe. Now look what our inattention has allowed.
It was a terrible mistake for the US not to prevent any other country from building a nuclear bomb.
Bruh... it was a mistake making the bomb. Especially the US making it..
My grandfather was in China fighting along the Burma road when the bombs were dropped. They were preparing to go to mainland Japan when the bombs were dropped
One of my father's friends was a high level scientist on the Manhattan Project. I remember him saying that the most tightly held secret of the war, was that we had only built 3 bombs. One was used for the Trinity test. The other two were dropped on Japan. He said that it would have taken at least a year to complete another bomb.
Now THAT is what I read 50 years ago.
With reference to the Manhattan Project I think that the many scientists who had emigrated to America deserve at least a passing mention. I have no doubt that their input was as vital as anyone's.
I differ from you comrade, every one who had a hand developing weapons of mass destruction deserve not our praise but our contempt .
@@dy6682 Please do not misunderstand me: I find the development of these weapons utterly contemptible and have no love whatsoever for the people that did it. My reference was to the constant self-backslapping claims I hear from Americans that America did this all by itself. No it did not; a large proportion of the engineers and scientists who did this were immigrants. I was simply putting the record straight.
@@malectric Most Americans are descendants of immigrants. That is who we are, a nation of immigrants. E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. The Army sent my dad to fight the nation his parents came from and he was more than happy to do so. He grew up an American, no question about it. That is how it used to work. But the leadership and decision making for the Manhattan Project came from the US Government. Those skilled scientists could not have done it without the full support of the US behind them. And obtw most of my uncles and my dad were in the Army during WWII and my mother was part of the Manhattan Project I take your comments as a direct personal insult. You might also ponder that Japan had a viable nuclear weapons program during WWII, one that one of our B-29s set back badly. They missed their target and unbeknownst to them their bombs obliterated an important Japanese nuclear lab. They were going to put nuclear weapons on Kamikaze aircraft to bomb the US fleet when we tried to invade. Their effort was advanced enough that it was a real threat, though we knew nothing of it until the mid 1980s when the Japanese declassified some material nobody knew about . I was active duty at the time and when the Japanese released this information we all kind of stood there with our mouths agape. We never knew. Now we do.
@@philsalvatore3902 You mistook me. I was pointing out that without those clever immigrants, the project might not have been successfully completed, especially given the timeframe.
@@malectricVietnaaam?
Keep up the good work. Great video.😊
Don’t forget the British were also heavily involved in the manhattan project. There were also plans for the British to release one in Japan as well. Also I was not aware there were that many bombs
The British were initially involved but were quickly shut out.
@@douglashogg4848 interesting. I’ve heard otherwise. I read somewhere that there were many British scientists involved in the design process, were they shut out after ?
@@Yabuddy53 I believe the British where involved with the development of the special mirrors for the implosion needed for the plutonium bomb.
@Yabuddy53.
Pay attention. This was already mentioned in the video.
@@redblade8160 pay attention. I mentioned that I had heard a conflicting description of what happened. All I was doing there was asking specifically what he meant
I read D. M. Giangreco's book "Hell To Pay" which quotes and references primary sources on the lead up to dropping two bombs but not a third and why. The invasion planners wanted to use nukes tactically during Operation Olympic (Invasion of Kyushu) in the Fall of '45 which was the first part of Operation Downfall rather than continue to incinerate more cities.
Giangreco's book agrees with a number of other histories of the Manhattan Project that a core and initiator for a third bomb were available and that Groves informed Stimson that a third bomb could be available after August 20, 1945. The use of a third bomb was canceled by Truman and General George Marshall had asked Groves how many bombs would be available for the planned November 1, 1945 invasion of Kyushu. Marshall wanted to change using the atomic bombs from strategic use to tactical with as many as three used for Kyushu.
@@buckhorncortez IMO it's not that Giangreco agrees so much with some histories as much as he sets the record straight that anyone who uses US military intelligence documentation gathered prior to the occupation of Japan are basing their position on fatally conservative estimates of the capabilities of the Japanese military to resist the Operation Downfall landings in '45 and '46. All the pre-August '45 estimates were based on air reconnaissance and Magic intercepts. We missed several vitally important developments: 1) much of the Army of Manchuria was in Japan, not in Korea or on Formosa; 2) they had 1M tons of high grade aviation fuel specifically saved since January '45 for kamikaze attacks; 3) they had approximately 20k pilots available about half of which could fly at night or dusk; 4) they had something short of 20k planes available; 5) there were hundreds of small dispersed air fields; 6) they had inadvertently discovered that US radars could not detect wood and fabric planes until they were very close; 7) US proximity fuses could not detect wood and fabric planes at all; 8) they had hundreds of water-borne suicide boats, small subs and manned torpedoes.
Military intelligence had missed Pearl Harbor (maybe understandable) and the Ardennes Offensive build-up plus we had deceived the Germans' military intelligence with Operation Fortitude that covered for Operation Overlord. Military intelligence is what it is: just an educated guess. But basing a position that the bombs should not have been dropped on pre-occupation military intelligence is revisionism and is tantamount to outright fraud.
@@curtislowe4577 The MAGIC and ULTRA communications declassified in the 1990s provide documentation that Japan was not going to surrender prior to the use of the atomic bombs, and that Russia's entry into the war was anticipated. "140 Days To Hiroshima" is one book that provides a documented inside look at the Japanese government at that time. Also, Richard Frank's book, "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire" uses much of the same ULTRA and MAGIC information to provide a narrative from a Japanese and U.S. military standpoint.
The 3rd bomb was the demon core... they where using it for testing to know how much material they needed to make a bomb.. so they had it available... but just not the bomb casing and mechanics ... so they had to build it only.... that is why such a short time before it was ready... remember that Pu has to be refine by weights per atom... one by one... so that takes months to do at the time with the tech they had... but the demon core was available... I hope this explains some of your question about the 3rd bomb
@@robrocco5420 No. Plutonium is made by separating plutonium chemically from uranium. You're conflating plutonium production with the production of U235. U235 has to be separated from U238 and is literally collected atom by atom. The uranium separation facilities at Oak Ridge used thermal diffusion to enrich the uranium from 0.07 U235 to 0.92 percent. It was then sent to the gaseous diffusion plant where it was enriched to about 23% and finally to the Calutrons where it was electromagnetically separated and enriched to "bomb grade" uranium over 80% U235.
The bomb casings, x-units, and explosive lenses were already on Tinian and only needed the initiator and core to be assembled. It took about two days to assemble an implosion bomb at that time.
I worked at Hanford, collecting historical records of nuke tests, and didn't know about the third bomb. Not sure why that story wasn't more widely reported. It was no secret we intended to keep nuking Japan until they surrendered.
do a search for "The Demon Core".
Look up info on the Demon Core.
The plutonium plants kept going into the Cold War. The next dozen bombs were used in tests to refine the implosion mechanism. 8 of the first 9 failed.
Good video but . . . .what exactly was the 'Dark Reason' spoken of in the title?
I refuse to accept that America did anything wrong or should feel any remorse. The blind allegiance to a narcissistic regime is solely responsible. I am young enough (76) that I have no animosity toward the Japanese but Hirohito alone brought this upon his men, women and children
I have to take serious issue with this. The US did not have the ability to produce another plutonium device and deliver it to Tinian before late September or early October. With Nagasaki we had "shot our wad" until then. Allowing the enemy to believe otherwise was another matter. This has been so widely known that this video is click bait.
It isn't click bait. The key to the atomic bomb is the core with the fissionable product, and they had a third one at Los Alamos. They had the bomb cases at Tinian,and to fly the core there,and assemble it, wouldn't take all that long. We had no more assembled bombs after nakasaki, but we had one that just needed finally assembly.
Not true. Groves told Stimson that another atomic bomb could be ready for use any time after August 20, 1945. The core and initiator had been sent to California for shipment to Tinian. The bomb casings, explosive lenses, x-units etc. were already on Tinian and could have been assembled into a bomb within two days once the core and initiator arrived.
You'd be wrong too.
@@buckhorncortez As I recall, in an interview decades later, Tibbets - the Hiroshima pilot - said that there was critical material in Utah at the time and was being flown to California for transhipment to Tinian. But by the time the plane got to CA, the war was over.