1945
Atom bomb Successfully Tested
On this day in 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the
Manhattan Project comes to an explosive end as the first atom bomb is
successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Plans for the creation of a uranium bomb by
the Allies were established as early as 1939, when Italian emigre physicist
Enrico Fermi met with U.S. Navy department officials at Columbia University to
discuss the use of fissionable materials for military purposes. That same year,
Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt supporting the theory
that an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction had great potential as a basis for
a weapon of mass destruction. In February 1940, the federal government granted
a total of $6,000 for research. But in early 1942, with the United States now
at war with the Axis powers, and fear mounting that Germany was working on its
own uranium bomb, the War Department took a more active interest, and limits on
resources for the project were removed.
Brigadier-General Leslie R. Groves, himself an
engineer, was now in complete charge of a project to assemble the greatest
minds in science and discover how to harness the power of the atom as a means
of bringing the war to a decisive end. The Manhattan Project (so-called because
of where the research began) would wind its way through many locations during
the early period of theoretical exploration, most importantly, the University
of Chicago, where Enrico Fermi successfully set off the first fission chain
reaction. But the Project took final form in the desert of New Mexico, where,
in 1943, Robert J. Oppenheimer began directing Project Y at a laboratory at Los
Alamos, along with such minds as Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Fermi. Here
theory and practice came together, as the problems of achieving critical mass-a
nuclear explosion-and the construction of a deliverable bomb were worked out.
Finally, on the morning of July 16,in the New
Mexico desert120 miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated.
The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves 10,000 yards away
to observe as the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet
into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of
TNT. The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized.
The question now became-on whom was the bomb
to be dropped? Germany was the original target, but the Germans had already
surrendered. The only belligerent remaining was Japan.
A footnote: The original $6,000 budget for the
Manhattan Project finally ballooned to a total cost of $2 billion.