https://lflank.wordpress.com/2024/08/06/the-third-atomic-bomb/ Hidden History Hidden History Search Primary Menu Skip to content * About Search for: [ ] [Search] History The Third Atomic Bomb August 6, 2024 Lenny Flank 2 Comments After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US Army Air Force had plans to drop a third bomb on August 19, 1945--with more to come if necessary. [2128419803]Fat Man bomb casing at the USAF Museum # Even before the second atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese were considering how to find a way to end the war. The Allies had already delivered the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded an unconditional surrender. But the Japanese Government was unwilling to capitulate without a guarantee that the Emperor would be allowed to retain his position as titular head of state. After Potsdam, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki had asked Russia to act as a neutral go-between to try to broker a deal--but that effort fell through when Russian forces invaded Japanese-occupied China on August 9, the same day the US atom-bombed Nagasaki. This led to a deep split in the Japanese Government. One faction, consisting mostly of the civilian diplomatic ministers, feared a Soviet invasion and occupation of northern Japan and advocated a surrender, but with most insisting upon a special provision which allowed the Emperor to continue as monarch. Another faction, mostly centered around the military, wanted to fight on, even after the atomic bombings, and resist to the bitter end. The Naval Chief of Staff, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, argued that the United States probably had only a small number of atomic bombs, perhaps only the two they had already dropped. He didn't know it, but he was partially correct. After Nagasaki, the US had only enough plutonium for one nuclear core which needed to be cast and prepared before it could be used in a weapon, and that would take several days. Along with forecasts of bad weather over Japan, this meant that the next atomic bomb would not be available for use until around August 17-19. Two more plutonium cores were also in the works, but they would not be ready until the end of August or the beginning of September. President Truman, meanwhile, had been surprised at the rapidity with which the first two bombs had been dropped, and now he explicitly ordered that no more nuclear weapons be released without his direct authorization. In the meantime, to increase the pressure on the Japanese Government, he issued a statement declaring that the US was prepared to continue to use atomic weapons until Japan surrendered. The Japanese Cabinet continued to debate, but were deadlocked. Finally at 2am on the night of August 10-11, Prime Minister Suzuki asked Emperor Hirohito to break the impasse, and the Emperor announced that he wanted the war to end. Suzuki sent a message to the United States that Japan would surrender--as long as the Emperor was allowed to stay in office. That caused a debate in Washington, with one faction rejecting the offer and holding out for Potsdam's strict terms of "unconditional surrender", and the other arguing that having the Emperor remain in office under American authority would make the giant task of controlling the defeated Japanese population much easier. Meanwhile, the third plutonium core had been finished and was making its way to California, and from there it would, if necessary, go to the B-29 base at Tinian and be inserted into another weapon. Truman also ordered the nightly fire-bombings of Japanese cities to continue to keep the pressure on, only to reverse himself on August 12 and call a halt to the air raids. B-29s instead dropped leaflets on Japanese cities urging surrender. With the question of the Emperor's future status still undetermined, though, the impasse continued, and Truman authorized new firebomb raids on Japan on August 14 to prod the Japanese. In addition, the US military now made contingency plans for another nuclear strike, on August 19 or the first good-weather day after that, if the Japanese still refused to capitulate. Since then, there has been no information publicly released about which city would have been the target for this third atomic attack, but there has been plenty of speculation. Not many targets were left: the B-29s had already firebombed virtually every city with a population over 30,000, some 100 cities in all. One popular hypothesis is that the bomb would have been dropped on Tokyo, but that is unlikely. The Japanese were at least talking about a surrender, and it would not have done any good for the US to kill the government that it was negotiating a possible peace with. Others have speculated that the target would have been Yokohama, or perhaps Sapporo, which were still relatively undamaged by firebombs. Given previous events, however, it seems most likely that the third target would have been Kokura, which had originally been the primary target for the second bomb but had been spared at the last minute by cloud cover that forced the atomic mission to divert to its secondary target of Nagasaki instead. The city of Niigata had also been on the original list of potential atomic targets, making it a likely choice as the secondary target for the third bomb (and possibly the primary target for the fourth). In the end, the third atomic bomb proved to be unnecessary. Late in the night of August 14, the Japanese Cabinet, urged by the Emperor, finally reached the decision to accept an unconditional surrender. The message was sent to the Allies the next day, and the war came to an end. Ironically, the argument and delay over the Emperor's status also proved to be unnecessary: the US kept Hirohito as the head of government (subject to the American occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur), just as the Japanese had been insisting, in order to maintain control over the islands, to keep stability among the defeated population, and, most important, to groom Japan as a US ally in the upcoming Cold War. The third bomb's plutonium core went on to have a history of its own. After the surrender it was sent to Los Alamos for use in experiments to determine how much material was needed to produce a critical mass under different circumstances. On August 21, 1945, less than a week after Japan notified the US that it would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, physicist Harry Daghlian was performing an experiment when he accidentally dropped a piece of "tamper" material, used to reflect neutrons back into the core, and triggered a critical mass. Daghlian used his bare hands to pull the mass apart to stop the chain reaction, and absorbed a fatal dose of radiation. He died three weeks later. A military security guard in the room with him, Private Robert Hemmerly, was also irradiated but survived, only to die of cancer 33 years later. In 1946, the same plutonium core was being used for more tests. On May 21, physicist Louis Slotin was performing an experiment with a group of other scientists, and was foolishly violating the safety protocols by using a screwdriver to hold the two halves of the sphere apart. When the screwdriver slipped, the core dropped to form a critical mass. Slotin received a fatal dose of radiation and died 9 days later. This second fatal accident earned the plutonium sphere the ominous nickname of "the demon core". At the time of the Slotin accident, the demon core had already been scheduled to be placed into a Fat Man type weapon and used in Operation Crossroads in July 1946, which was a series of three detonations designed to test the effects of nuclear weapons on naval vessels at sea. But after the first two test shots, codenamed Able and Baker, the third--Charlie--was canceled. The demon core which was to have been used in the Charlie shot was instead melted down in August 1946 and its plutonium was incorporated into a number of new atomic cores. Share this: * Twitter * Facebook * Post navigation Previous PostNASA's Armored Vehicles 2 thoughts on "The Third Atomic Bomb" 1. [63b] Atomic Target Morecambe says: August 6, 2024 at 11:31 am Fascinating read with lots of insights Reply 2. 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