On July 16, 1945, the United States conducted the first ever nuclear weapon tests, thus gaining priority in the possession of an atomic bomb.
As soon as hostilities in Europe ended, the United States was the first in the world to test an atomic bomb. This happened on July 16, 1945. However, the United States' nuclear program began much earlier.
The program for the development of the United States of atomic weapons started in October 1941 - the Americans feared that Nazi Germany would receive superweapons earlier and could deliver a preemptive strike. This program went down in history as the "Manhattan Project". The project was led by the American physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who was constantly under the supervision of the FBI, as he actively sympathized with the left movement. However, the latter fact did not prevent him from taking part in the development of a deadly weapon - the physicist was very worried about the events in Europe.
The researchers developed the Fat Man bomb, which worked on the basis of the decay of plutonium-239 and had an implosive detonation scheme. In addition, Oppenheimer instructed a separate group to develop a bomb of a simple design, which was supposed to work only on uranium-235 and was named "Kid". It was her that on August 6, 1945, the Americans dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The first decision was made to detonate an implosive-type plutonium bomb, the explosion of which is directed inward. In fact, it was an analogue of Fat Man, which did not have an outer shell.
Due to the super-secrecy of the development, it was decided to conduct the tests in the south of New Mexico at a test site located about 100 km from Alamogordo.
The atomic bomb "Trinity" two days before the test was installed on a steel tower, at various distances from which were located seismographs, cameras, instruments, recording the level of radiation and pressure.
The first nuclear explosion in the history of mankind took place on July 16, 1945 at 5.30 am local time, and the power of the explosion was 15-20 thousand tons of explosives in TNT equivalent. In this case, the light from the explosion was visible at a distance of 290 km from the test site, and the sound spread over a distance of about 160 km.
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“My first impression was the feeling of a very bright light that flooded everything around, and when I turned around, I saw a picture of a fireball, now familiar to many … Soon, literally 50 seconds after the explosion, a shock wave reached us. I was surprised at her relative weakness. In fact, the shock wave was not that weak. It's just that the flash of light was so strong and so unexpected that the reaction to it reduced our susceptibility for a while, - Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project.
In addition, in the center of the explosion in a circle with a radius of 370 m, all vegetation was destroyed and a crater appeared, and the metal and concrete structures that were in the same place completely evaporated. The cloud formed during the explosion rose to a height of 12.5 km - while traces of radioactive contamination were observed even at a distance of 160 km from the test site, and the contamination zone was about 50 km.
“We knew that the world would never be the same. Several people laughed, several people cried. Most were silent. I remembered a line from the sacred book of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita - Vishnu tries to persuade the Prince that he must do his duty, and to impress him, takes his multi-armed form and says: "I am Death, the great destroyer of worlds." I believe that all of us, one way or another, thought about something like that, "- later recalled the" father "of the bomb Oppenheimer.
US President Harry Truman told Joseph Stalin about the successful bomb tests on July 17, when the Potsdam conference started in Berlin, which allowed the United States to conduct a dialogue with the USSR from a position of strength. But the successful test of the first Soviet atomic bomb took place only after four years, on August 29, 1949.
Vladimir Gelaev