The History of Nuclear War I: How Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were Devastated by Nuclear Weapons in August 1945.

By John Richard Shanebrook

In August of 1945, some 200,000 people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki from two nuclear weapon explosions during Nuclear War I. This book details the following historical events that led to Nuclear War I: Fermi and Szilard worked on nuclear fission at Columbia University in 1939.

Plutonium-239 was discovered in 1940.

Einstein informed President Roosevelt of possible German uranium bombs.

Fermi built the world's first nuclear reactor in 1942, to manufacture plutonium.

General Groves and Oppenheimer led the U.S. effort to build atomic bombs as part of the Manhattan Project.

Soviet spies infiltrated the Manhattan Project.

The Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, was the world's first nuclear explosion.

The Pope (1943) and many scientists spoke against the use of nuclear weapons.

Truman became President on April 12, 1945 and first learned of the Manhattan Project.

The B-29 bomber was selected to deliver atomic bombs to Japan.

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb (uranium) was exploded over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

For three days (August 6th to the 9th) hope abounded that Japan would surrender but preparations for more nuclear war continued.

On August 9, 1945, an atomic bomb (plutonium) was exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

Emperor Hirohito survived a coup by angry military officers and Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491821169

John Richard Shanebrook

John Richard Shanebrook was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering before becoming a technical writer on nuclear technology issues. He is the author of the book, “Nuclear War I and Other Major Nuclear Disasters of the 20th Century,” published by AuthorHouse in 2007, under the pseudonym, Samuel Upton Newtan. During his engineering career, the author published over 90 technical papers and invented, or co-invented, several biomedical engineering devices including prosthetic heart valves and the Vortex Blood Pump. He has been an invited lecturer at many colleges and universities, including the United States military academies at West Point and Annapolis. His publications include measures to halt the horizontal and vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons and a proposal for an international treaty to protect nuclear facilities from Acts of War.

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© 2013 John Richard Shanebrook. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/10/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2114-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2115-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2116-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917829

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Columbia University—1939

Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi collaborate on nuclear physics and form the nucleus for future American work on nuclear energy.

Chapter 2 Plutonium-239

Discovered in 1940, this artificial isotope is the preferred fissile material for fission nuclear weapons.

Chapter 3 Einstein’s Letter to President Roosevelt, the MAUD Committee, and J. Robert Oppenheimer

Leo Szilard enlisted the help of Albert Einstein to warn President F.D. Roosevelt of the possible development of uranium bombs by Germany. The race for the atomic bomb was now on, with help from England and the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Chapter 4 Chicago Pile 1 (Nuclear Reactor)

Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard developed the world’s first nuclear reactor to produce Plutonium-239 for nuclear weapons.

Chapter 5 The Manhattan Project—Part I (Successes)

General Leslie R. Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer lead the American effort to build the world’s first nuclear weapons.

Chapter 6 The Manhattan Project—Part II (Failures)

Soviet spies and the Smyth Report help the Soviet Union to acquire atomic bombs in 1949. Nuclear waste problems are endemic to the Manhattan Project and continue to this day.

Chapter 7 The Trinity Test

The Manhattan Project achieved a resounding success with the world’s first nuclear explosion on July 16, 1945.

Chapter 8 Efforts to Stop the Bomb

The voices of religious, scientific, and political consciences spoke against the use of nuclear energy for destructive purposes.

Chapter 9 President Truman and Nuclear War I

In less than four months, President Truman saw Germany surrender, the Potsdam Declaration, and nuclear war. All of this from a high school graduate, with retail business experience, and very limited foreign policy exposure.

Chapter 10 The B-29 Delivery System

The B-29 bomber and U.S. atomic bombs come together.

Chapter 11 The B-29 Atomic Bomb Mission to Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets flew the B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, to Japan, where a uranium atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima.

Chapter 12 The Three Days of August 1945, Between Atomic Bomb Missions

Hope abounded that the Japanese would surrender, but preparations for more nuclear war continued.

Chapter 13 The B-29 Atomic Bomb Mission to Nagasaki

On August 9, 1945, Major Charles W. Sweeney piloted the B-29 bomber, Bockscar, to Japan where a plutonium atomic bomb exploded over the city of Nagasaki.

Chapter 14 The Surrender of Japan

The events of August 9, 1945, shocked the leaders of Japan to debate the issue of unconditional surrender. Emperor Hirohito finally decided the issue and survived a coup d’état by angry military officers.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the men and women of the Manhattan Project and to the people who worked on Tinian Island to put the B-29 bombers into the air against Japan. They are all thanked for doing what they had to do and for doing it well.

Acknowledgement

The author extends his thanks and gratitude to Andrea Turner for her exceptional care in helping to complete this book. Her many suggestions helped to improve the clarity and format of this book. She was an inspiration and invaluable aid throughout the final stages of completing this manuscript.

Preface

When I began to write this book, I struggled with where to begin this historical account of Nuclear War I. I even contemplated starting with the history of atomic and nuclear physics. That is, way back to the time of Democritus, who invented the concept of an atom, as the smallest, indivisible building block of matter. I decided to leap forward and concentrate on the actual events that led to the beginning of the Manhattan Project and the single person most responsible for the creation of the first nuclear weapons by the United States in World War II. That person was Leo Szilard.

Szilard was an enigmatic genius. He left his native Hungary in 1919 to study engineering in Germany, at the University of Berlin. He quickly changed his mind and studied physics instead. In Berlin he studied with and eventually worked with, renowned physicists Max von Laue, James Franck, and Albert Einstein. With von Laue, he received his Ph. D. in Physics (1922) and in 1927 was awarded a patent with Einstein. However, his Jewish ancestry clashed with the anti-Semitic regime of Adolph Hitler. By 1933, he immigrated to London, England. Perhaps it was the dreary weather in London that contributed to his incredible vision in 1933 of a nuclear chain reaction, and the requirement for a critical mass. This thinking led to his patent in England, for a nuclear chain reaction (March 1934).

As early as 1935, Szilard became very concerned about the need for secrecy in nuclear physics research in order to keep such knowledge away from the Nazi regime in Hitler’s Germany. He realized that military arms control would be a global priority in the future and he tried to instill a degree of self-censorship in his science colleagues.

By 1938, Szilard had immigrated to the United States, where he joined the Physics Department at Columbia University. Soon thereafter, Enrico Fermi also arrived at Columbia from Italy and the two worked together on nuclear physics research. It was here, in early 1939, at Columbia University, that the American program in nuclear energy was born.

Eventually, nuclear physicists at Columbia University (and elsewhere) found that the uranium isotope, U-235, could be fissioned by neutron impact and this could lead to a nuclear chain reaction. A U-235 nucleus is struck by a slow neutron and becomes the very unstable Uranium-236 after absorbing the slow neutron (as shown in the diagram below).

Diagram.jpg

The U-236 nucleus then forms a dumbbell shape and the two bulges fly apart due to the repulsive force from the positively-charged protons in the two smaller masses. The resulting two fragments are extremely agitated and expel neutrons. These emitted neutrons (two or three per fission) can then proceed to fission more U-235 nuclei and thereby contribute to a nuclear chain reaction.

It is noted that the fission process is enhanced by the presence of a neutron moderator, such as solid graphite or liquid water. This reduces the speed of neutrons so they are absorbed by U-235 nuclei upon impact. These absorbed neutrons greatly disturb the pliable nucleus and it stretches into the dumbbell shape shown in the diagram.

This neutron absorption process is also significant when neutrons impact the more numerous U-238 nuclei. In this case, the nucleus does not split but transforms into a new artificial element, Plutonium-239 (Pu-239). Pu-239 is even more fissile than U-235 and also sustains nuclear chain reactions. This new element became the premier fissile material for nearly all fission nuclear weapons after WW II, by the United States and many other nations.

During WW II, the U.S. program to develop nuclear weapons was devoted to producing both U-235 and Pu-239 fission weapons. This program, the Manhattan Project, focused on methods of manufacturing adequate quantities of these two fissile isotopes and designing bombs to detonate these nuclear explosives.

In the diagram, the two fission fragments shown, correspond to Strontium-90 and Xenon-143. However, many other dual combinations are possible and all are highly radioactive. Essentially, this fission process converts mildly radioactive uranium into some 200 highly radioactive isotopes, all of which are dangerous to human health. This increase in radioactivity is approximately one billion times greater than the original uranium before fission.

Once created, these highly radioactive fission fragments must somehow be prevented from entering the Earth’s ecosystem. This challenge has failed in some serious nuclear accidents. For instance, the reactor explosion at Chernobyl (Ukraine) in April 1986 was a huge disaster; along with the Fukushima (Japan) catastrophe in March 2011, which was caused by a huge earthquake and tsunami. In addition, many explosive nuclear releases have contaminated large areas of Earth, via so-called radioactive fallout. These include the three nuclear explosions in WW II (Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki), as well as hundreds of tests of nuclear weapons in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Preface Sources and Notes

1.   Blow, M., The History of the Atomic Bomb, American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1968.

Page 30 describes the early work by Leo Szilard, at Columbia University, on uranium chain reactions. Found on page 38, is the excellent diagram showing how a single neutron splits a U-235 nucleus into two smaller fragments (e.g., Strontium-90 and Xenon-143) plus two or three emitted neutrons slowed by a moderator.

2.   Blumberg, S.A., and Panos, L.G., Edward Teller—Giant of the Golden Age of Physics, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990.

This highly readable and entertaining book is a treasure on the great nuclear physicists in America from the 1930s, on. To the authors’ credit, the information on Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, George Gamow, and many others, is invaluable. This author greatly appreciated the so-called joke, engineered by George Gamow, as described on page 42 that tricked Hans Bethe into a joint paper with Ralph Alpher and Gamow. The result was the Alpha, Bethe, and Gamow paper as a play on the Greek alphabet for (α, β, and γ). This paper was essentially a mathematical explanation for the origin of the Universe and the Big Bang Theory. Ralph Alpher was a friend, colleague, and neighbor of this author in the Schenectady, New York area for many years. A friendly, unassuming man, he unknowingly befriended my two daughters while awaiting flights out of the Albany Airport many years ago. He is greatly missed.

Pages 19 and 46-55 describe many of Leo Szilard’s contributions to nuclear physics and the Manhattan Project. These included his early experiments at Columbia University with Walter Zinn, on nuclear chain reactions (March 1939). Edward Teller was also working occasionally at Columbia University with Szilard and Enrico Fermi. The latter two were somewhat opposite in personalities and there were often little spats (p. 50) that Teller helped to defuse as the resident peacemaker (pp. 59-60). Teller was greatly impressed by Szilard and credited him as no less than the initiator of the Atomic Age (p. 49).

It is noted that Fermi and Teller discussed the concept of igniting a fusion bomb (Hydrogen Bomb) with an atomic bomb explosion while at Columbia University (pg. 60).

3.   Caldicott, H., Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, The New Press, 2006.

Page 54 describes the production of over 200 radioactive isotopes from the fission of uranium and the resulting increase in radioactivity by a factor of one billion. Pages 60-64, discuss four of the radioactive isotopes as per their deleterious effects on human health. They are Plutonium-239, Iodine-131, Strontium-90, and Cesium-137.

4.   Lanouette, W., with B. Szilard, Genius in the Shadows—A Biography of Leo Szilard, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992.

Pages 485-488 present a chronology of the life of Leo Szilard. E.g., in 1939, he worked with E. Fermi on nuclear chain reactions and helped draft the letter to President Roosevelt that eventually started the Manhattan Project.

Pages 132-134 describe his vision of a nuclear chain reaction while strolling in London (September 1933).

5.   Segrè, E., Enrico Fermi—Physicist, The University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Starting on page 222 is an address by Enrico Fermi, on January 30, 1954. It describes the history of nuclear energy research at Columbia University, starting in January 1939. Page 224 emphasizes the efforts by Szilard to keep secret from the rest of the world, the rapidly evolving discoveries on nuclear fission and chain reactions.

6.   Wigner, E.P., The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, with A. Szanton, Plenum Press, 1992.

Pages 193-201 describe the early work of Szilard and Wigner on fission theory (1939). Also included are the contributions of Louis Turner (predicted plutonium and its fissionability), Richard Feynman, and Henry Smyth at Princeton University.

Page 196 details the feelings of Szilard on secrecy. In the end, the French scientist, Frèdérick Joliot ignored Szilard’s request to delay publication on nuclear fission.

Pages 199-201, describe the efforts by Szilard, Teller, and Wigner to convince Albert Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt on the military potentialities of nuclear fission. The letter was dictated by Einstein in German, and later translated into English, by Wigner (p. 201).

It is noted that the book by Wigner has an interesting discussion of four prominent Hungarian scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. They were so brilliant that they were facetiously referred to as, Martians, on page 221. The Hungarian scientists were, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Eugene Wigner. It was Szilard, Teller and Wigner, who were instrumental in formulating the Einstein letter that initiated the Manhattan Project. Teller was also a major factor in developing the American hydrogen bomb and von Neumann was a leader in the design of the first digital computers.

7.   Wikipedia.com for Leo Szilard.

8.   Wikipedia.com for Nuclear Chain Reactions.

9.   Wikipedia.com for Plutonium.

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Chapter 1

Columbia University—1939

Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi collaborate on nuclear physics and form the nucleus for future American work on nuclear energy.

Enrico Fermi was one of the most gifted physicists of all time. He was so revered by his contemporaries that he was facetiously known as the, Pope of Physics, while he was researching nuclear physics in Rome, Italy. He was equally brilliant in both theoretical and experimental physics. Perhaps, Fermi was the last to excel at both. Neutron moderators was one of his greatest contributions where he studied various materials (e.g., water and paraffin) to slow neutron speeds such that they were absorbed by nuclei upon impact. Fermi bombarded all the natural elements this way and created radioactive isotopes from some of them. He was particularly interested in uranium, the heaviest natural element, because he hoped to create new elements by firing neutrons into the uranium nucleus.

However, his work with uranium was, perhaps, his greatest failing. He missed the fact that some uranium nuclei fission when struck by a slow neutron, instead of simply absorbing the neutron. This was suspected by chemist, Ida Noddack, who criticized his conclusions and suggested he may have split some uranium nuclei into two lighter elements. Later Fermi realized his error but still won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938, at the age of 37. He was honored for his work using slow neutrons to produce artificial radioactive isotopes from the natural elements.

Fermi and his family traveled to Sweden in 1938 to accept the Nobel Prize. After this trip, they continued on to America due to their political problems in Italy. Fermi’s wife, Laura, was Jewish. That is, the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini had instituted new laws that brought Italian Fascism in line with that of German Nazism. The Fermi family arrived in New York City on Jan. 2, 1939. Fermi