256 ENDGAME AND AFTERMATH 194 4 –1955
Knowledge about atomic
physics developed very quickly.
In 1896, French physicist
Henri Becquerel discovered
radioactivity, and by 1920, New
Zealand-born physicist Ernest
Rutherford had split the atom,
and Danish physicist Niels
Bohr had completed his atomic
theory. With the discovery of
nuclear fission by German
scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman in 1938, the race to develop
an atomic weapon had begun. The US-based Manhattan Project, set
up in 1941, quickly outpaced the British program. In 1943, Britain’s
Tube Alloys program and the Manhattan Project merged, while the
Allies successfully sabotaged Germany’s atomic program with an
attack on the Vemork heavy water plant (see pp.138–139).The bomb as a reality
On July 16, 1945, the US army successfully detonated an atomic bomb
at Almagordo, New Mexico. Churchill heard of the test through a
note handed to him at the Potsdam Conference that said, “Babies
satisfactorily born.” The atomic bomb was now a reality, and was
dropped to devastating effect on Japan in August of the same year,
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see pp.258–259).MANHATTAN
PROJECT
The Manhattan Project was one of several programs
working on developing nuclear weapons in the 1940s, and
it was the most successful. In July 1945, the project team
detonated the world’s first atomic bomb.
△ “Fat Man” replica
Code named “Fat Man,” the atomic bomb
that was dropped on the Japanese city of
Nagasaki in August 1945 was even more
powerful than the one used at Hiroshima.△ The beginning of the end
The world’s first atomic bomb exploded
at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico,
in an operation code named “Trinity.”▷ Team photo display
The Manhattan Project’s team consisted
of many scientists who had left Britain or
fled Europe before or during the war.US_256-257_F_Manhattan_Project.indd 256 04/03/19 10:47 AM