Jump to content

Horn117

Full Members
  • Posts

    239
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Horn117

  1. 1 hour ago, Bevo said:

    Both the uranium gun bomb—Little Boy—and the plutonium implosion bomb—Fat Man—were largely pre-assembled at Los Alamos. Final assembly took place at Tinian Island in the Marianas group in the western Pacific Ocean. With an operating B-29 airfield, Tinian was used as the advance base for carrying out the delivery. The Manhattan Engineer District built special bomb assembly buildings, loading pits, and other facilities at the base. A thirty-seven-member team of scientists and specialists from Los Alamos was responsible for last-stage experiments and tests and final assembly of the bomb.

    The major parts of the uranium bomb consisting of the combat ballistic case and the uranium-235 projectile departed Los Alamos for Kirtland Army Air Field in Albuquerque on July 14, 1945, in a convoy of a closed black truck and seven cars with security agents. From Albuquerque, the bomb, packed in a large crate and a small metal cylinder, was flown in an Air Force plane to Hamilton Field near San Francisco where it was moved to the Hunter's Point naval shipyard. In the early morning of July 16, the bomb was placed aboard the cruiser Indianapolis, which set sail almost immediately for Tinian via Hawaii. The Indianapolis arrived at Tinian on July 26 and disembarked the bomb that day. (Four days later, the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of almost 900 lives.) The final parts of the uranium bomb, including the uranium-235 target insert, were flown by two otherwise empty C-54 cargo planes from Albuquerque to Tinian, via Hamilton Field and Hawaii, arriving on the night of July 28-29. On July 30, the target insert, projectile, and initiators were assembled in the bomb.

    I lived in Guam, Saipan and Tinian for a work project back in 2005-2007. Crazy shit standing next to those bomb pits.

    • Hook 'Em 1
×
×
  • Create New...