Two o’clock in the morning on August 29,1949 the first nuclear atomic bomb was dropped known as the “First Lighting.” It was dropped on the testing site in Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. This nuclear bomb was produced by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) also known as the Soviet Union.
Igor Kurchatov was the director of the scientific soviet nuclear bomb program. There were two practice rounds two weeks prior to the explosion. During these two weeks period the Special Committee on the atomic bomb sent Lavrentii Beria to go and watch the assembly work, and return back and show Joseph Stalin the Soviet leader, their progress. One of the main reasons for the producti on of this bomb was to teach the Soviet Union about the effects of nuclear bombs.
Since the effects were the main purpose of the the atomic bomb the USSR built tunnels, bridges, water towers, buildings, wooden houses, brick houses, and other different types of structures nearby. There was also all different type of animals caged up so they can examine the effects of nuclear radiation.
The Soviet Union used a train to ship all the components needed to create this bomb, to the weapons lab in Russia back to the testing site back in Kazakhstan, which was two-thousand miles away from Arzamas. The bomb was going to be tested in a tower built by the Soviet Union. While building this tower they placed the device in a concrete hall, with railway trucks all over the entire place. This was so the bomb pieces can come in one side and the finished product was carried out the other side to brought to the top of the tower for testing.
Although the atomic bomb hit the ground at two o’clock in the morning it was originally scheduled to be tested at six o’clock in the m...
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... Nations support.”
About a month after that a man named Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist, was arrested for giving the Soviet Union secretive information to help them develop the atomic bomb. During World War II, Fuchs was positioned at the U.S. atomic development headquarters. Fuchs was giving the USSR information about the U.S. program, including the blueprint for the atomic bomb known as the “Fat Man”, that was later dropped in Japan. He also told them about everything the Los Alamos scientist knew involving the hypothesized hydrogen weapon.
As a conclusion, the development of the nuclear atomic bomb “First Lighting”, was an overall great success for the USSR and improved the security system. This would not have happened if everyone would have not worked together. As the years passed the inventions of nuclear weapons has gotten every time they create a new one.
The super bomb in which America and Russia were trying to build was in fact the Hydrogen Bomb. This bomb had an unlimited blast potential and for the country who possessed it unlimited power. The A-bomb’s explosion was based on the principal of fission (the splitting of atoms), however the H-bomb’s explosion was base on fusion (the coming together of atoms). In August of 1945 Russian President Stalin, turns up the nuclear project in Russia. He put Barria whom was in charge of the secret police, to head the Russian Nuclear program. An American scientist named Edward Teller solicited the American government to build the H-bomb. He was born in Hungary and had learned to fear the communists and the Russians. In April of 1946 the Super Conference was held. Klaus Fuchs was a scientist that worked for Teller at Los Alamos, he told the Russians how to build the A-bomb, and also about Tellers ideas of the H-bomb. He was arrested for spying for the Russians. By chance the Americans found out that there were traces of radioactive material in the air over Russia. They pieced together that Russia had the A-bomb they decided to go ahead with plans to build the super bomb. President Truman came to the conclusion that no matter how bad of a weapon the H-bomb was if was better if we had if first. America had lost some of its power and wanted to gain a new edge. General Curtis Lamay was put in charge of Strategic Air Command to protect America from the threat of nuclear war. Lamay was the ranking Air Force General over the Skies of the pacific and was the man for the job. His strategy was to have an abundant amount of bombers ready to strike every major city in the Soviet Union. He wanted everyone in the Army and Air Force to act as if war was not far away.
...ure negotiations with the Soviets, the bomb had the opposite result. Instantly after Hiroshima, Stalin commanded Soviet nuclear scientists to catch up with the technology obtained by their rival, establishing the race for world dominance (Alperovitz, 416). The Soviets successfully tested its first atomic bomb on September 23, 1949; and the changeover to the atomic age had been established (Alperovitz, 419).
"The successful explosion of a Teller-inspired thermonuclear device in 1952 gave" the U.S. the go ahead blow against the Soviet Union in the arms race of the fifties (Teller and Ulam). Scientists around the world had been thinking that a thermonuclear bomb, also know as the Hydrogen Bomb, could be developed, but they arms race was completely focused on the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was a household name because he was the head scientist at Los Alamos while developing the atomic bomb, after that had been completed the tide shifted to a man who’s name is Edward Teller. Teller, who is a “Hungarian-born atomic physicist” and “know as the "father" of the hydrogen bomb”, was at the forefront when it came to the design of the Teller-Ulam Hydrogen Bomb (Hydrogen Bomb Exploded). Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, mathematician who developed idea of the lithium hydride bomb, was the other half that perfect combination. Although there was excitement for the U.S. being the first with the bomb some scientists did not share that excitement.
America’s development of this secret atomic bomb began back in 1939 when President Roosevelt was still alive. This project was so secretive that Roosevelt did not even want his Vice President Harry S. Truman to know a thing about it. Truman could not believe it, until he read the note from Secretary Stimson. That night he wrote a letter in his diary about the U.S. perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the world. Tr...
Atomic Bomb in World War 2 During World War II the United States government launched a $2 billion project. This project, known as the Manhattan Project, was an effort to produce an atomic bomb. This project was taken on by a group atomic scientists from all over the world.
Stalin, political bureaucrats, and even leading Soviet physicists of the time often put early pre-war and wartime Soviet nuclear research on the back burner. This was mainly due to the Soviet Union fighting for its very existence during the first years of the war. After the tide of the war had turned towards the Soviets, and intelligence from the Western powers suggested an active atomic weapon program, renewed interest by Stalin and the Soviet machine began in earnest. The Soviet Union was behind the technological curve when it implemented its atomic weapons program in earnest and suffered greatly from a lack of resources. The Soviet scientific community, by itself, could not have produced a working atomic weapon in just four short years after the successful deployment of two atomic bombs by the United States over Japan in 1945. Resources, material, research, and scientists taken or stripped from Soviet occupied areas of the defeated Nazi Reich (mostly German) and designs stolen from the American Manhattan Project used for the Soviet nuclear weapons program allowed that program to become successful.
In New York City the main ideas about the atomic bomb were developed, it was called the “Manhattan Project”. It was originally General Leslie R. Groves that was put in charge of the development of the atomic bomb. He wasn’t exactly people friendly so he got Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a civilian, involved as a project director. Communication and working proficient...
The atomic bomb created under the Manhattan Project set a new level of psychological panic. It influence media, government, and daily lives of those all around the world. The media was covering stories about protection from a nuclear attack and the government was right next to the reporters helping to further the creation of fear with their messages about preparation.
Despite all of the security used by the officials in charge of the “Manhattan Project,” soviet spies managed to leak information to the Soviet Union that allowed them to create a nuclear bomb of their own. Klaus Fuchs, an important scientist to the “Manhattan Project,” managed to move throughout the project and provide crucial information to the Soviets. David Greenglass also provi...
At 5:30 AM July 16th 1945, the nuclear age had started. The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated. On August 6th 1942 at 8:15 AM, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a perfected atomic bomb created by the Americans, over the city of Hiroshima hoping to end the war. Thousands of people died in the two cities in Japan. They were Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the Manhattan Project”. The research and development project that produced these atomic bombs during this time was known as “the Manhattan Project”.
The United States’ decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima required extensive research leading to its production. The main goal of the American side was to damage the enemy’s confidence, while choosing a target with the highest military output in order to conclude the war (Robinson).The group in charge of developing the technology was known as the Manhattan Project, and was kept top-secret. Selection began in the spring of 1945, with assistance from the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, his Headquarters (Robinson).There was a variety of experts working on the project, including mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and specialists trained in weather and blast effects Headquarters (Robinson). In order to monitor all of the results, the city had to be untouched, meaning the target had to have no signs of previous bombings. Based on these requirements, the designation of Hiroshima for the bombing was not a simple determination. After a target was selected and the weapon was developed, testing was set to begin. On July 16, 1945, the first test in Alamogordo, New Mexico, proved that the bomb was prepared for release onto...
In 1939 rumor came to the U.S. that Germans had split the atom. The threat of the Nazis developing a nuclear weapon prompted President Roosevelt to establish The Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer set up a research lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico and brought the best minds in physics to work on the problem of creating a nuclear weapon. Although most the research and development was done in Los Alamos, there were over 30 other research locations throughout the project. After watching the first nuclear bomb test Oppenheimer was quoted as saying simply “It works.”.
When the United States caught word that Germany was close to creating the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists wanted to create it first, for the U.S. After three years of research, the first small atomic device was exploded on July 16, 1945 in the lab at Los Alamos. Having proved their concept worked, a larger scale bomb was built. Less than a month later, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (Rosenberg).
but it benefited the whole world. Before the U.S. actually created and used the atomic bomb, the world was racing against an imaginary clock to be the first to use nuclear warfare. “Germany’s nuclear research had faltered. Japan was even further behind. The only country close to keeping pace-surreptitiously- was the Soviet Union”(Roberts 2-3). If the U.S. wanted to be the first they had to act fast. When the bomb had been tested and used on Japan, the race for the rest of the world to catch-up began. About two years after the first U.S atomic bomb drop the Soviet Union had successfully tested there own version of the bomb. To insure that safety of world “both sides settled on a policy of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD), meaning that both would refrain from striking first because each could be obliterated by the other”(4). Later as more countries figured out nuclear warfare The Nuclear Club was created. As countries join they agreed not to fire their weapons on the other members of the club to avoid total annihilation. The atomic bomb dropped on Japan was violent but helped the would create everlasting peace in nuclear
The development and usage of the first atomic bombs has caused a change in military, political, and public functionality of the world today. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolutionized warfare by killing large masses of civilian population with a single strike. The bombs’ effects from the blast, extreme heat, and radiation left an estimated 140,000 people dead. The bombs created a temporary resolution that lead to another conflict. The Cold War was a political standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States that again created a new worldwide nuclear threat. The destructive potential of nuclear weapons had created a global sweep of fear as to what might happen if these terrible forces where unleashed again. The technology involved in building the first atomic bombs has grown into the creation of nuclear weapons that are potentially 40 times more powerful than the original bombs used. However, a military change in strategy has came to promote nuclear disarmament and prevent the usage of nuclear weapons. The technology of building the atomic bomb has spurred some useful innovations that can be applied through the use of nuclear power. The fear of a potential nuclear attack had been heightened by the media and its release of movies impacting on public opinion and fear of nuclear devastation. The lives lost after the detonation of the atomic bombs have become warning signs that changed global thinking and caused preventative actions.