![]() On July 26, 1945, at the Potsdam Conference in the Allied-occupied city of Potsdam, Germany, the U.S. military leaders in 1945 was that the Japanese would fight to the bitter end and force a full-scale invasion of the island nation, resulting in significant casualties on both sides. With the Germans sustaining heavy losses in Europe and nearing surrender, the consensus among U.S. ![]() strategy aimed at bringing an end to World War II. Scientists working under Oppenheimer had developed two distinct types of bombs: a uranium-based design called “the Little Boy” and a plutonium-based weapon called “the Fat Man.” With both designs in the works at Los Alamos, they became an important part of U.S. On July 16, 1945, in a remote desert location near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated-the Trinity Test-creating an enormous mushroom cloud some 40,000 feet high and ushering in the Atomic Age. The complex is where the first Manhattan Project bombs were built and tested. Los Alamos Laboratory-the creation of which was known as Project Y-was formally established on January 1, 1943. Robert Oppenheimer was already working on the concept of nuclear fission (along with Edward Teller and others) when he was named director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in northern New Mexico in 1943. Facilities were set up in remote locations in New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington, as well as sites in Canada, for this research and related atomic tests to be performed. On December 28, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Manhattan Project to combine these various research efforts with the goal of weaponizing nuclear energy. Meanwhile, scientists like Glenn Seaborg were producing microscopic samples of pure plutonium, and Canadian government and military officials were working on nuclear research at several sites in Canada. Groves was appointed to lead the project.įermi and Szilard were still engaged in research on nuclear chain reactions, the process by which atoms separate and interact, now at the University of Chicago, and successfully enriching uranium to produce uranium-235. The OSRD formed the Manhattan Engineer District in 1942 and based it in the New York City borough of the same name. History Shorts: How the Atomic Bomb Was Used in WWII
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