AUGUST 15, 1945 JAPAN HESITATES By August 1945, America was poised to achieve total victory in World War II. As described in my article Downfall, the August 6, 1945, atomic attack on Hiroshima made it clear. The Potsdam Declaration was no bluff. American broadcasts and leaflets announced the nuclear catastrophe and existence of the atomic … Read more
AUGUST 6, 1945 EXCEPTIONAL DEVELOPMENT On August 6, 1945, America effectively ended World War II by triggering the downfall of Imperial Japan. My previous post, Trinity, described how, through the unprecedented project code-named Manhattan, the United States had harnessed nuclear energy. Secondly, we successfully tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico on July 16, … Read more
AMERICA GOES NUCLEAR At 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon, an atomic device code named Trinity, in the Jornada del Muerto desert about thirty-five miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on the Army Air Forces’ Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. Scientists and military personnel … Read more