Ryan Crierie brings us an illustrated guide to the atomic bombs dropped during World War II. Compared to their shocking destructive power, their small size is amazing (and a little frightening).
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An Illustrated Guide to the Atomic Bombs
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(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 02 2015, @03:09AM
Made in America,
Tested in Japan.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @03:53AM
Thoughts of The Bomb, they haunt me.
The propaganda I was taught was Fat Man and Little Boy were used to bring an end to a war with Japan, and that without such a display of force, the Empire of Japan might continue on to fight till the very last person. I wonder to this day, when Japanese people see these pictures of Americans loading these horrible weapons, do they see the enemy? I'm stricken with horror at the idea of nuclear war, and here we are having actually bombed civilian centers that were intermixed with military buildings and ports.
Now, several generations later, is everything forgiven even if not forgotten? I know we cannot (shouldn't?) blame a people for the aggressions / crimes of their government, but I think if I were to view these pictures with the idea that my grand parents were annihilated under them... ?
Under it all I would find forgiveness or would it be a challenge?
(Score: 1) by CyprusBlue on Friday January 02 2015, @04:08AM
They were free to not to have sneak attacked Pearl Harbour as well. And let's not forget the rape camps...
This is one victim who doesn't really have a leg to stand on about being on the cross.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday January 02 2015, @04:22AM
Administration and the people are not the same thing. I bet your government does things you don't approve of.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @04:19PM
People are responsible for the actions of the government they tolerate.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @08:19AM
...and the USA could have decided not to throw a naval blockage on the Moluccan Straits to strangle Japan's access to petroleum and rubber.
It was a purposeful aggression to bait Japan into attacking the USA so the USA could get into the war against the Axis--specifically, Germany.
If you think there were any good guys in this, you are delusional.
...and numerous top military men have said the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary to defeat Japan. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wordpress.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by KilroySmith on Friday January 02 2015, @05:06AM
Considering that the firebombing of Tokyo killed roughly 90,000 people, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were roughly the same order of magnitude (at least the immediate deaths; add 50% for the radiation deaths over the next couple of years), the nuclear attacks weren't unprecedented in their scale from the Japanese point of view.
Militarily, the difference was that the Tokyo firebombing took over 300 bombers plus an untold number of fighter escorts. Hiroshima was accomplished with a single bomber. Imagine those 350 bombers all equipped with nuclear weapons.
(Score: 1) by KilroySmith on Friday January 02 2015, @05:08AM
Oops.
Note that this meant that EACH city had roughly the same number of immediate deaths as the Tokyo firebombing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 02 2015, @05:39AM
The men were fighting, the women were working in armaments industries. They depended on China, Korea and the Philippines for their food supplies but the US Navy had them blockaded.
I am completely convinced that the war would have ended quickly had we not dropped the bombs.
There are some who claim that we bombed Japan to impress the Soviet Union.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday January 02 2015, @09:14AM
Might want to look up the pics from the training video of Japanese soldiers teaching little kids to be suicide bombers with grenades on sticks and rethink that position. My great uncle fought in the Pacific and said they were as fanatical as any religious zealot today. He was a marine on one of the islands (may have been Guadalcanal, it was 40 years ago when he told me this) and they had scavenged "Ma Deuce" 50 cals off of everything, busted planes, busted patrol boats, he said they ended up with so many 50 cals if it moved it had a 50 cal or four mounted on it.
But he said the Japs would just keep right on doing those damned Banzai charges, even though it was a waste of lives and had zero chance, the 50s would just grind 'em up and damned if they wouldn't do it again. he said when you landed on a Jap island you had no choice but to kill every last one as they wouldn't stop, you could be surrounding a single wounded Jap with 30 Americans with rifles pointed right at him and damned if he wouldn't pull the pin on a grenade and lunge at you, which is why they had to shoot wounded Japs on the battlefield, they'd hide a grenade next to them and when you leaned over to render aid? They'd set it off.
That was one thing my grandfather who fought in Europe and my great uncle who fought in the Pacific agreed on, how truly senseless and insane the last year of the war was. It was obvious there was ZERO chance of Germany and Japan winning or even stopping the advance but they just got more fanatical, you'd end up having to shoot old folks, kids, even pregnant women because they would be out there trying to blow you away or being suicide bombers, it was truly mass insanity. They both believed to their dying day invading Japan would have been FAR worse than Germany, because the emperor was a god to them. You compare how many surrendered on the islands versus say how many Germans surrendered to the allies? Yeah sorry, the Japanese would have fought to their very last. Remember that the japs had to stop 2 of their generals AFTER the bombs had fallen from getting on the radio and dismissing their surrender! They tried to force their way into the radio station to call on the people to fight to the very last man rather than give up after being nuked twice, THAT is how fanatical we are talking here friend.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @06:56AM
A visit to each of the two major sites in the war with Japan will quickly answer your question.
In Pearl Harbor, you see an account of the soldiers who were killed in the bombing. There is a feeling in Pearl Harbor that this was unfair and that the military were victims. There is a lot of imagery of the destruction and the horror of the event, but the park is peaceful and does act as a sort of place to face the past. At Pearl Harbor, there are a lot of veterans who are visiting, probably to confront their past and to forgive or perhaps to remember.
In the center of the bombing in Hiroshima is a place called Peace Park with a museum. Here there is a more reverent peaceful feeling. Some of the trees that were damaged in the explosion are still there and alive. There are statues not depicting the death and horror, but hope for peace. There is one notable statue of a girl who died of cancer and the statue is draped in thousands of paper cranes. In the museum there is a room with models of the city and epicenter before and after the bomb. These show the buildings that were damaged, but they are surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of letters engraved on metals plates. These are copies of letters sent to every country every time they tested a nuclear weapon since the bombing. The leaders of Hiroshima are actively discouraging the world from using these weapons because of what they can do.
The people in the Hiroshima area that were old enough remember the fear of the airplanes and the sound of the air raid sirens. They and the younger people remember how nice the American soldiers were after the war. Lots of kids at that time remember getting a lot of candy from the soldiers.
In both cases, Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, it seems that the people who were not there are the ones who are the most offended. Those who were there have already come to terms with the event and have moved on with their lives and forgiven.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday January 02 2015, @07:40AM
Perhaps you should be more haunted by the backpack nukes that the USSR manufactured and where many got missing during the collapse of the country.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 02 2015, @05:27AM
Testing of weapons on civilians is a war crime. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal sentenced a number of the members of Unit 731 for such crimes.
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Friday January 02 2015, @10:38AM
"Tested in Japan" is a joke. It doesn't mean that dropping the bombs was *literally* a test.
In other words, whoosh.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 02 2015, @07:32PM
Are you sure? I was considering the source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @05:42AM
Actually they were tested in New Mexico, but given your racism toward "dirty brown people", that's as good as a foreign country to you.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 02 2015, @05:36AM
The smallest one can make a Uranium bomb is a little over eighty pounds.
My father was a Naval antiaircraft missile fire control officer in Vietnam. The Talos [navy.mil] missile had two stages, a solid fuel booster and a liquid-fueled air-breathing ramjet second stage, with a range of fifty miles. It could be fitted with conventional as well as nuclear warheads [okieboat.com].
The US Air Force also has nuclear antiaircraft missiles, mounted on fighter jets. These were described by a pilot who was scrambled during the Cuban Missile Crisis as "The stupidest weapon ever invented".
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Friday January 02 2015, @06:11AM
Nope, nowhere close to being the stupidest weapon, because they later took that same warhead, stuck it on a mortar-like launcher, and called it the Davy Crockett. The effective range and kill radius were more or less the same, so it was essentially a nuclear suicide weapon.
Also, some of the shit the Nazis got up to during the desperate last months of the war were stupider than even that.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 02 2015, @07:11AM
it was powered by concentrated hydrogen peroxide.
A British pilot who tested a captured plane described it being like an out of control locomotive.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by fnj on Friday January 02 2015, @08:19AM
Fortunately, the US armorers were a lot less ignorant than you. Davy Crockett had a 10-20 TON-equivalent warhead - about 1/1000 of the Hiroshima bomb.
A Hiroshima bomb has about a 1600 metre radius of "complete destruction". Now, by the inverse square law, Davy Crockett is about 30% in terms of linear distance scaling for the same effect, or 500 metres. Radius of light damage is 5600 and 1600 meters respectively. The range of Davy Crockett was 2000 and 4000 meters for two different launcher versions. So clearly the launch team was nowhere near the "kill radius", and not even within the "light damage" radius. Furthermore the above estimates are based on an unprotected city, not troops with access to prepared positions - obviously including a handy ditch.
Radiation does not change the picture much, either.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 02 2015, @02:37PM
if it goes off right on top of you, provided you aren't exposed directly to the blast, because they aren't very brisant, or "shocky".
However the overpressure will throw things around at high velocity. You might be hit by debris, or tossed around yourself.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 02 2015, @07:15AM
many of the neutrons leave the pit without interacting.
You also have the problem that the nuclear explosive expands rapidly. After a very short time there is a very small probability that any one neutron will strike a Uranium or Plutonium nucleus.
One way to improve the yield is to put a Hydrogen booster inside the pit. A small amount of fusion takes place, yielding some neutrons. Those neutrons go on to split more of the Uranium or Plutonium than would otherwise be the case. While some energy is liberated by the fusion, it's only a small portion of the total yield; the Hydrogen booster is used for its neutrons not directly for its explosive energy.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]