I’m 6’1" :shock:
You’ll do. 
Actually according to a show that was on the History Channel they did detonate a nuclear device on the coast of Korea in Aug 1945.
In 1946, a journalist named David Snell working for the Atlanta Constitution wrote a sensationalist story which indicated that Japan had in fact successfully developed and tested a nuclear weapon in Konan. Snell was a former reporter, soon to become Life Magazine correspondent assigned to the 24th Criminal Investigation Detachment in Korea. He interviewed a Japanese officer who said he had been in charge of counter intelligence at the Konan project before the fall of Japan.
According to the officer, who used a pseudonym in the article because he was afraid of retaliation by occupation forces, the program was able to assemble a complete nuclear weapon in a cave in Konan and detonate it on August 12, 1945 on an unmanned ship nearby. Reportedly, the weapon produced a mushroom shaped cloud with a diameter of about 1000 m (the first American bomb, “the gadget”, had a mushroom cloud some three times the size of that), and also destroyed several ships in the test area. To the observers 20 mi (32 km) away, the bomb was brighter than the rising sun. The officer then claimed that the Russian Army, which captured Konan in November 1945 after some of the last fighting in the war, dismantled the Japanese project and shipped it and some of its scientists taken prisoner back to the Soviet Union.
Most mainstream historians dispute that the Japanese program got close to developing an atomic bomb but US intelligence took the possibility very seriously after Snell’s article was published and continued to question repatriated Japanese from the Konan area about the project.
A 1985 book by Robert Wilcox reprinted the Snell interview as a basis for investigating the Japanese WWII nuclear efforts. In addition to detailing the known Japanese army and navy efforts, the book cites numerous intelligence reports and interviews which indicated the Japanese might have had an atomic program at Konan. It also gave evidence that the Japanese navy, taking up the atomic project after Nishina’s Riken had been destroyed, increased the Japanese efforts to make a weapon. The book, prefaced by Derek deSolla Price, Avalon professor of the history of science at Yale University, who endorsed it, was both panned and praised. Price wrote, “No longer can we maintain that a Japanese bomb just couldn’t have happened. Obviously it ‘nearly’ did. The only questions are how near and what does it do to our judgment on the one case we have of atomic warfare.” James L. Stokesbury, author of A Short History of World War II, wrote: “I had no idea the Japanese were working as seriously on an atomic bomb…this has to modify our perception of one of the crucial issues of the war.”
Yeah, but that was actually a good thing, wasn’t it.
But in all fairness, the guys that actually built the bomb were either germans, of german heritage or educated in germany before 1933 :mrgreen:.
The real clown thing were the nazis who thought of nuclear physics as “jewish science”.
Both those accounts and the accounts of a German nuclear test in mid 1945 have one major problem with them. They all talk about an explosion significantly smaller than either of those dropped on Japan or the Trinity test, and these are a great deal harder to get working than larger nuclear devices. There is a reason that all the first generation nuclear devices were in the region of 20kT.
No argument from me - I’d far rather live in a world where the Physics precluded such a thing from being practical, but sadly I don’t.
That’s probably going a bit far - the same for instance could be claimed about the Cavendish Labs at Cambridge University. The reality is that most of those dealing in theoretical physics had something to do with Germany, because that was where the best people in the subject tended to get together. The same applies to experimentalists at the Cavendish labs. Finally, it took a hell of a lot of pure engineering genius to build the plants to make the nuclear material, and that was almost universally American.
I think I heard on some show the other night about weapons making, when asked about making an A Bomb today and how easy is it to do the respondent said that it was pretty easy these days it was just hard to get it to go off and that only one third of the fissionable materials in the Hiroshima bomb had gone off…1/3…think of what it might have done…
You’re way out on that one - it was more like 1% of the fissionable material in the Hiroshima bomb, and about 20% in the Nagasaki bomb. The problem is that it’s really difficult - particularly with gun-type weapons - to hold the core together long enough to burn up any significant fraction of the fissile material.
As for “pretty easy these days it was just hard to get it to go off”, surely the defining characteristic of a nuclear weapon is that it does indeed initiate! If so, that’s a thoroughly asinine comment…
Goody! That 12 year olds away!
Are you saying that only 1% of the material exploded? Im not exactly Oppenheimer so can you explain?
For starters nuclear weapons don’t “explode” - words like “initiate” fit them better.
The basic problem - particularly with gun-type weapons - is that they blow themselves to pieces very early in the detonation. Things happen incredibly fast inside a nuclear weapon, to the extent that they invented a new time period (the shake, as in “shakes of a lamb’s tail” and equivalent to 0.00000001 seconds) to help describe it. Add in the fact that in a chain reaction each fission usually touches off more than one subsequent fission, and you have a situation where the bomb will blow itself to pieces long before very much of it has actually fissioned.
The momentum involved in an implosion device holds it together for a tiny fraction longer, and this accounts for the higher efficiency.
Then let’s say that THEY were “way out” with their information… and I’m sorry if you think my passing on information that I gathered is “asinine”…
Thanks!
This is actually a very fascinating what if, but I doubt the world would be a nicer place without. Imho we almost certainly would’ve seen a third world war or at least a major war between several major powers by now, if it wasn’t for nukes.
If you had only officers then who would do all the real work. You need soldiers. Without soldiers who would carry out the evacuation plans. If you had only officers then probably Trueman would have listened to them and sent a half dozen more A-Bombs to Japan like he was suppose to. The officers are the ones that make decisions and we all know a lot of Generals wanted to bomb Japan more to apease their whims.
Officers.
Not soldiers.
As distinct from his advisory council of privates. :rolleyes:
Trueman was a cricketer.
Truman was the American President at the end of WWII.
Neither of them was evacuated, but if Freddie Trueman sent a ball down your pitch you’d evacuate yourself.
I agree that if Truman had had only officers then probably he would have listened to them, but he had somewhat larger military forces so I expect that he listened to privates in the army, USAAF, USMC and swabbies in the USN for guidance on major tactical and strategical decisions, like dropping the atomic bombs. No doubt you can point to records where this happened in the military and presidential considerations which led to the decision to nuke Japan with, alas, a mere two atom bombs.
I think you mean ‘supposed to’. Not that it overcomes your monomania with half a dozen A bombs raining upon Japan, or the absent evidence that Truman was ‘supposed to’ send another four bombs he didn’t have.
Really?
So your point is that Japan was nuked to appease the whims of a lot of generals?
Name them, and provide evidence of their whimsical decisions to nuke Japan.
U.S. bombings of military targets and the blockade that cut off Japan’s supply lines were crippling enough to the livelihood of Japan that a surrender could have been established. Japan had even attempted to send a message through the Soviets to the U.S. to open up peace talks, but the soviets had invaded Japenese controlled Manchuira and had declared war on Japan. The U.S. did not just want Japan to surrender to them unconditionally they wanted to cripple the Japenese to the point where they could not sustain themselves or rebuild on their own. The U.S. and the Soviets were both in a land race for control of the asian countries and the U.S. wanted Japan before the Soviets could get to it. We devestateed Hiroshima and Nagisaki so that we could have a hand in rebuilding it and Japan to fit our own needs. We created the constitutional monarchy that replaced their militaristic dictatorship.
By bombing Japan with half a dozen more A-bombs we :the west" would of become rich off of the rebuilding of Japan. Look at Iraq now and who is getting the contracts to rebuild. Don’t tell me the West is not getting rich off of the destruction they are creating. (despite the heavy war costs and loss of true brave Americans). The vice president has companies opertaing at arms length as contractors in the Iraq war. There could of been a hidden economical reason that the high brass wanted to nuke Japan into obliviation. and italy and Germany, if the time and bombs were available.
Anyone could see that such a coherent train of mostly properly spelled thought wasn’t yours. And it isn’t.
U.S. bombings of military targets and the blockade that cut off Japan’s supply lines were crippling enough to the livelihood of Japan that a surrender could have been established. Japan had even attempted to send a message through the Soviets to the U.S. to open up peace talks, but the soviets had invaded Japenese controlled Manchuira and had declared war on Japan. The U.S. did not just want Japan to surrender to them unconditionally they wanted to cripple the Japenese to the point where they could not sustain themselves or rebuild on their own. The U.S. and the Soviets were both in a land race for control of the asian countries and the U.S. wanted Japan before the Soviets could get to it. We devestateed Hiroshima and Nagisaki so that we could have a hand in rebuilding it and Japan to fit our own needs. We created the constitutional monarchy that replaced their militaristic dictatorship.
http://mrballou.blogspot.com/2007/03/con-atomic-bomb-japan.html?showComment=1175281140003#c991743867104743146
It is a tribute to your plagiaristic stupidity that in your ignorant puerile cut and paste you reproduced the misspellings in the article you lifted from someone marginally smarter than you whose grasp of history is vastly better than yours, but still completely wrong.
It is still my opinion whether you like it or not. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean you are right. I am entitled to my opinion because I am not narrow minded and believe whatever you say as if it were the only opinion in the world. In a democratic society we are entitled to an opinion so please don’t look for ways to alter or hamper my opinion. We in Canada have the right to express our opinions.
Is that why you’re busy expressing someone else’s opinion?
It appears to have escaped your notice that I didn’t express an opinion on your plagiarised quote.
If I did, I would have pointed out that the other Allies wanted the USSR to attack Japan in accordance with an Allied agreement; that the Soviets attacked on 9 August 1945, the same day as the second atom bomb was dropped on Japan; that the first atom bomb was dropped three days earlier; that the size of the forces employed by the Soviets took rather longer than three days to marshal; and that most of the rest of the quote is demonstrable nonsense which I can’t be bothered trying to explain to you, partly because it doesn’t involve dropping another four non-existent atom bombs on Japan which seems to be the limit of your historical analysis.
There is no evidence of that in your posts so far, which reflect a narrow minded obsession with nuking Japan and Germany. Your mind is certainly confused. The plagiarised opinion you’re now so strongly supporting appears to be arguing against the need to nuke Japan. You’ve been advocating nuking it a lot more, all over the forum.
I’m not trying to. You’ve already ‘hampered’ your opinion by plagiarising someone else’s.
As does everyone on this board, no matter how silly, uninformed, outlandish, outrageous, moronic, and confused they may be.
I think it’s time the admins opened up a comedy section on the board. Most of your posts so far would fit into it.
ROFLMAO!!!
whatever roflmao means…
Also, I back RS* with the comedy section.