Little Boy was the name of the atomic bomb which was dropped from Enola Gay , over Hiroshima on August 6,1945. at 8.15 AM.The bomb exploded about 1,500 feet above the city with a force of 15,000 tons of TNT. The name of the plane was Enola Gay, named after the pilot’s mother. The pilot, attached to the 509th, was Col. Paul Tibbets. The copilot was Capt. Robert Lewis. Little Boy destroyed 5 square miles of the city and caused about 140,000 deaths by the end of 1945.
The gun-type weapon possessed the power of 26,000,000 pounds of high explosives. Nuclear fission was achieved by the collision of two parts of active material (Uranium-235). A U-235 projectile fired down a gun barrel collided with a stationary element, causing a mass increase leading to nuclear fission. Little Boy was dropped untested. Previously, on July 26, the bomb, along with “Fat Man” was transported to Tinian Island by USS Indianapolis (CA-35) for final assembly. Four days later, Japanese submarine, I-58, sank Indianapolis, northeast of Leyte. the atomic attacks, the US Air Force dropped pamphlets in Japan. They advised the citizens of “prompt and utter destruction” and urged civilians to flee.
Prior to the atomic attacks, the US Air Force dropped pamphlets in Japan. They advised the citizens of “prompt and utter destruction” and urged civilians to flee.
The result of the Manhattan Project, begun in June 1942, “Little Boy” was a gun-type weapon, which detonated by firing one mass of uranium down a cylinder into another mass to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Weighing about 9,000 pounds, it produced an explosive force equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.
The crew of the Enola Gay consisted of 12 men. Prior to the war in the Pacifc and taking command of the Enola Gay, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr had flown the lead bomber ‘Butcher Shop'(aka Big Tin Bird) for the first American daylight heavy bomber mission on 17 August 1942, a shallow penetration raid against a marshaling yard in Rouen in Occupied France.
First Lieutenant Jacob Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay, 3 days later, he was a crew member aboard Bockscar when the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He was the only crew member to be on both missions.
Max Planck, was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.He had foreseen that the Nazi regimes racial law would have consequences for science in Germany.
An immediate consequence upon passage of the law was that it produced both quantitative and qualitative losses to the physics community. Numerically, it has been estimated that a total of 1,145 university teachers, in all fields, were driven from their posts, which represented about 14% of the higher learning institutional staff members in 1932–1933.Out of 26 German nuclear physicists cited in the literature before 1933, 50% emigrated. Qualitatively, 11 physicists and four chemists who had won or would win the Nobel Prize emigrated from Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, most of them in 1933.These 15 scientists were: Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Heinrich Gerhard Kuhn, Peter Debye, Dennis Gabor, Fritz Haber, Gerhard Herzberg, Victor Hess, George de Hevesy, Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Stern, and Eugene Wigner. Britain and the United States were often the recipients of the talent which left Germany. The University of Göttingen had 45 dismissals from the staff of 1932–1933, for a loss of 19%.
Eight students, assistants, and colleagues of the Göttingen theoretical physicist Max Born left Europe after Hitler came to power and eventually found work on the Manhattan Project, thus helping the United States, Britain and Canada to develop the atomic bomb; they were Enrico Fermi,[50] James Franck, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Robert Oppenheimer (who was American, but had studied under Born), Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, Eugene Wigner, and John von Neumann. Otto Robert Frisch, who with Rudolf Peierls first calculated the critical mass of U-235 needed for an explosive, was also a Jewish refugee.
Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, had been right in assessing the consequences of National Socialist policies. In 1933, Planck, as president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (Kaiser Wilhelm Society), met with Adolf Hitler. During the meeting, Planck told Hitler that forcing Jewish scientists to emigrate would mutilate Germany and the benefits of their work would go to foreign countries. Hitler responded with a rant against Jews and Planck could only remain silent and then take his leave. The National Socialist regime would only come around to the same conclusion as Planck in the 6 July 1942 meeting regarding the future agenda of the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council), but by then it was too late.
Hans Geiger was a German physicist. He is best known as the co-inventor of the detector component of the Geiger counter and for the Geiger–Marsden experiment which discovered the atomic nucleus.
In 1925, Geiger accepted his first teaching position, which was at the University of Kiel, Germany. Here, he and Walther Müller improved the sensitivity, performance, and durability of the counter, and it became known as the “Geiger-Müller counter.” It could detect not only alpha particles but also beta particles (electrons) and ionizing photons. The counter was essentially in the same form as the modern counter.
In 1929, Geiger moved to the University of Tübingen (Germany), where he was named professor of physics and director of research at the Institute of Physics. In 1929, while at the Institute, Geiger made his first observations of a cosmic-ray shower. Geiger continued to investigate cosmic rays, artificial radioactivity, and nuclear fission after accepting a position in 1936 at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin, a position he held until his death. In 1937, with Otto Zeiller, Geiger used the counter to measure a cosmic-ray shower
Beginning in 1939, after the discovery of atomic fission, Geiger was a member of the Uranium Club, the German investigation of nuclear weapons during World War II. The group splintered in 1942 after its members came to believe (incorrectly, as it would later transpire) that nuclear weapons would not play a significant role in ending the war.
Although Geiger signed a petition against the Nazi government’s interference with universities, he provided no support to colleague Hans Bethe (winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics) when he was fired for being Jewish.
Politicization of the German academia under the Nazi regime had driven many physicists, engineers, and mathematicians out of Germany as early as 1933. Those of Jewish heritage who did not leave were quickly purged from German institutions, further thinning the ranks of academia. The politicization of the universities, along with the demands for manpower by the German armed forces (many scientists and technical personnel were conscripted, despite possessing technical and engineering skills), substantially reduced the number of able German physicists.
The German nuclear weapons program (German: Uranprojekt; informally known as the Uranverein; English: Uranium Club) was an unsuccessful scientific effort led by Germany to research and develop atomic weapons during World War II. It was mainly unsuccessful because of the immigration, purge and murder of so many brilliant scientists. The scientists that remained and worked in the Uranium Club weren’t brilliant enough to figure out that their work was leaked to foreign intelligence agencies.
From April through December of 1945, ten of Nazi Germany’s greatest nuclear physicists were detained by Allied military and intelligence services in a kind of gilded cage at Farm Hall, an English country manor near Cambridge. The physicists knew the Reich had failed to develop an atomic bomb, and they soon learned, from a BBC radio report on August 6, that the Allies had succeeded in their own efforts to create such a weapon. But what they did not know was that many of their meetings and private conversations were being monitored and recorded by British agents.
Just imagine what could have happened if Hitler did not have such a hate for the Jews. His own hate lost him the war.
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Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached.
The bomb was designed to terrorize the people of Japan in a most unexpected way.
Dr. Lytle S. Adams, like most Americans at the time, was enraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor and had begun looking into what he could do to lend his support to the war efforts.
Having just returned from a vacation in New Mexico, he remembered being “tremendously impressed” by the Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, which migrated every year through the state and live primarily in Carlsbad Caverns.
After reading up on them, he returned to the caverns to capture some for himself. Upon studying them, Dr. Adams realized that they were perfectly suited for war.
After all, they were able to withstand high altitudes, fly long distances, and carry heavy loads — such as tiny timed bombs.
Like most Americans in the 30’s and 40’s, Adams image of Japan was a bit skewed. Most people believed Japan was an island of crowded cities “filled with paper-and-wood houses and factories.”.
With that train of thought, he believed that with enough bat bombs, the military could be wipe out entire cities simply by letting the bats do what they do best — migrate and hide in dark places.
So he did what any concerned citizen with a brilliant plan would do. He outlined his plan and sent it to the White House.
The proposal seemed like the plot of a B-horror movie. It promised to “frighten, demoralize and excite the prejudices of the Japanese Empire,” claiming that “the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour.”
Adams was clearly paranoid, noting that the plan “might easily be used against us if the secret is not carefully guarded. However, Adams was also very confident.
“As fantastic as you may regard the idea,” he said. “I am convinced that it will work.”
The proposal actually made it into to President Roosevelt’s hands (most likely due to Adams personal friendship with first lady Eleanor),
and he passed it along to his head of wartime intelligence Colonel William J. Donovan.
Roosevelt also included a letter of his own, backing up Adams preposterous theory.
“This man is not a nut,” he wrote. “It sounds like a perfectly wild idea, but is worth looking into.”
The proposal also found its way to Donald Griffin, who had pioneered research on bats’ echolocation strategies. Griffin lent his support to the plan in a letter.
“This proposal seems bizarre and visionary at first glance,” he wrote, “but extensive experience with experimental biology convinces the writer that if executed competently it would have every chance of success.”
After seeing Adams’ demonstration using the bats he had captured himself, the White House assembled a team and eventually agreed upon using the Mexican Free-Tailed bat. The U.S. Air Force then gave the authority for investigations to begin, and the plan became known as Project X-Ray.
Thousands of bats were captured across the southwest, tiny bombs were designed, and a transport method was engineered. However, a hitch in the plan was soon discovered, and after a minor setback where the Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base and caught fire, the plan was scrapped.
The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) observer stated: “It was concluded that X-Ray is an effective weapon.” The Chief Chemist’s report stated that, on a weight basis, X-Ray was more effective than the standard incendiary bombs in use at the time: “Expressed in another way, the regular bombs would give probably 167 to 400 fires per bomb load where X-Ray would give 3,625 to 4,748 fires.”
More tests were scheduled for the summer of 1944 but the program was cancelled by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King when he heard that it would likely not be combat ready until mid-1945. By that time, it was estimated that $2 million had been spent on the project.
It is thought that development of the bat bomb was moving too slowly, and was overtaken in the race for a quick end to the war by the atomic bomb project.
Alas, the bat bomb was not meant to be, however gung-ho the entire White House seemed to be about it. Adams was disappointed. However, he would come up with a few more crazy schemes. Some of which include seed packet bombs and a fried chicken vending machine.
History of Sorts 
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