Eyewitness Hiroshima: The story of Mankind's deadliest discovery in words of those who were there by Adrian Weale 1995 174pg

The Story of the development of the Atomic Bomb     13/12/20

1627 to 1691 Robert Boyle creating of Boyles Law was the beginning of ths physics and chemistry of atomic theory.

1901 Roetgen received the Nobel prize for his X Ray discovery.

WW1 Gas warfare was never properly used mainly because they didn't the technology to deliver it.  WW1 ended because of  a combination of economic and political collapse on the homefront. The German Army had not been comprehensively beaten

1939 the discovery of fission

1941 Britian had a lead over the US in atomic bomb research

Many Jewish scientist who fled Nazi Gemany managed to find sanctuary in the west amd were worried that the Nazi's might discover a nuclear fisson bomb first. Luckily the Germans had reached the conclusion that the bomb was infeasible. Pleople had 6 and a hallf years to get out of Germany from the start of the Nazi laws till the war began.  The most important source of uranium was the Belgium Congo.

Lise Meitner, Otto Fisch, Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peireos , Hans Bethe , Enrico Fermi and Franze Simon fled Europe.  Enrico Fermi had a Jewish wife.  America at the end of the war discovered that Germany was at least 3 years behind.  

1941 Dec 7th Japan attacked Pearl Harbour

1942 April the General James Doolittle mission from the USS Hornet with B25s bombed Tokyo And 3 other Japanese cities and abandoned their planes in China. 

Rooseveld appointed  Vannevar Bush sto deal with the Manhattan Project and he appointed  Colonel Leslie Groves to take charge.

1942 July Battle of Midway destroyed the biggest Japanese fleet.from this point Japan started losing the war.

1942 Sept Colonel  Leslie Groves who was deputy chief of construction in the US army and had just completed supervision of the Pentagon construction.  Grove risked being accused of misappropriation of funds especially in 1944 when  it was realized that Germany had abandoned the bomb project. The Manhattan Project cost $2 billion and the expenditure Henry Stimson , never offered to Congress to approve it.  It was founded on "possibility rather than probability. There was a supply of 1,250 tons uranium ore on Staten Island quayside and Groves immediately appropriated it.  Robert Oppenheimer was appointed scientific director and he selected the site Los Alamos Ranch , New Mexico.

1942 Nov Enrico Fermi at Chicago University with graphite rods and uranium proved that you can cause a spontaneous reaction that gave off heat..

1943 Nov The Heavy water plant in Rjukan Norway was destroyed by US bombers.

1944 Nowthey  B29 began bombing Tokyo again from the Mariana islands.It was 2 and a half years after the Doolittle mission. Japan had not developed night fighter aircraft and so they  attacked at night with incendiaries against the wooded homes.

1945 May 8th VE day Germany capitulated 3 months before the atomic bomb was ready. It was for this purpose the bomb was invented.  Japan's supplies of fuel , food and other resources  by then had been severely depleted.

1945 March 334 B29s dropped 2000 tons killing 100,000 Japanese. in 6 hours.

1945 April death of FDR. Truman kept on most of Roosevelt's staff and James F. Byrnes was secretary of State and he advised Trumpan to use the bomb.

1945 July USS Indianapolis was destroyed by a  Japanese submarine with a crew of 1196 of whom 318 had survived.

First they thought to use the British Lancaster plane for the bomb but later the new B29 long range bomber and pressurized to go above 30,000ft. The bomb would weigh 10 ton.   Colonel Paul Tibbits at the Pacific Island of Tinian.  The bomb removed the need for the invasion of Japan or "Operation Olympic  

1945 August 6th  It was decided to bomb an untouched city and Hiroshima was the largest.  Three targets were preserved for bombing Kyoto , Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Japan weather made it difficult as they only have 7 cloudless days a month.  The bomb only got its explosive charges when it was airborne." Litle boy" of uranium was on Enola Gay. The B29 could feel the explosive shocks and they saw fires breaking out in many parts of the city below.   The round trip from Tinian took 12 hours. Hiroshima had the Mitsubishi shipyard. 363 miles they flew from Hiroshima till they could not see the mushroom cloud.

 There was now a conflict in Japan between the realists and the militarists

 1945 August 8 Russia declared war on Japan.

1945 August 9th plutonium "Fat Man" was dropped by Bock's Car on Nagasaki as the target Kokura was covered by clouds and they were running out of fuel. Plutonium the size of a soft ball exploded like 18,000 tons of TNT.   There were several hundred allied prisoners in the naval dockyard..

Under PM Kotaro Suzuki  Hirohito was asked to intervene to break the deadlock between the peace and war faction. They would accept the Potsdam Declaration.  A second Plutonium bomb was scheduled for 17/18 August and the target might have been Tokyo

1945 15th August Hirohito spoke over the radio for the first time, thus surrender came 8 days after Hiroshima

1949Sept Joe 1 Russia developed the atomic bomb.