Summary of Simon Winchester's Pacific

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The first thermonuclear bomb was tested on May 8, 1951. It was a small prototype device, known as George, that was exploded three months later. Then, on November 1, 1952, the first true thermonuclear test weapon, known as Mike, was detonated.

#2 The islands that would be used for the test were first spotted by an English seafarer named John Marshall in the eighteenth century. The island inhabitants were Malay and Polynesian. They had lived peacefully on the atolls for thirty previous centuries, until their discovery by outsiders.

#3 The Germans believed it was practical and commercially advantageous to try to rule the Marshall Islands. They first set up commercial trading stations on the atolls, then established settlements, and finally, with the help of Lutheran missionaries, so entirely convinced the Marshallese that their future would be brighter under German rule that the islands became German colonies.

#4 The United States was the only country to possess atomic weapons after the war, and it used them to destroy the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war with Japan. It was decided that the navy should be in charge of testing them, because the surface ship was the most vulnerable target.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669398486

IRB Media

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Insights on Simon Winchester's Pacific

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The first thermonuclear bomb was tested on May 8, 1951. It was a small prototype device, known as George, that was exploded three months later. Then, on November 1, 1952, the first true thermonuclear test weapon, known as Mike, was detonated.

#2

The islands that would be used for the test were first spotted by an English seafarer named John Marshall in the eighteenth century. The island inhabitants were Malay and Polynesian. They had lived peacefully on the atolls for thirty previous centuries, until their discovery by outsiders.

#3

The Germans believed it was practical and commercially advantageous to try to rule the Marshall Islands. They first set up commercial trading stations on the atolls, then established settlements, and finally, with the help of Lutheran missionaries, so entirely convinced the Marshallese that their future would be brighter under German rule that the islands became German colonies.

#4

The United States was the only country to possess atomic weapons after the war, and it used them to destroy the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war with Japan. It was decided that the navy should be in charge of testing them, because the surface ship was the most vulnerable target.

#5

The site of the test was the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was chosen because it was far away from major shipping lanes and could be isolated from the local population. It was also close to an airfield that could house the bombers that would carry any air-dropped weapons.

#6

The American government, led by Admiral Blandy, convinced the Bikinians to leave their island and let the Americans ruin it forever. They used a biblical story to appeal to the Bikinians’ devotion to their Bibles.

#7

The islanders were bribed with food to allow the Americans to test on their islands. They were quickly out of Bikini, and were sent to an unknown island far away.

#8

Operation Crossroads was the first of the 55 nuclear test programs that would be run by the United States over the next half century. The total of 1,032 atomic bombs that America has exploded since 1945 far exceeds the combined totals of all the other nuclear devices exploded by all other nuclear-capable countries.

#9

The first three atomic explosions had been witnessed only by American military personnel or the victims. Almost no American civilians had ever seen such a thing.

#10

The first atomic bomb detonation was the Able shot, which took place on May 8, 1946, in Bikini Atoll. It did not do as much