Hiroshima :: essays research papers

The biggest and bloodiest war ever fought on the face of the earth, World War II, was coming to a deadly end. The allied forces were starting to run out of options and resources. The United States of America decided to unleash the most destructive force they had, the power of the atom. Many supporters of the Atomic Bomb say that even though it killed thousands in Japan, it saved millions more everywhere else.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For the number of supporters of the bomb there were that many more skeptics that believed the atom bomb would never work. Some reasons that contributed to this theory were that it was so complex that someone working on it made a mistake somewhere. One of the major skeptics of the atomic bomb was Albert Einstein himself, which made many more people become skeptical. (â€Å"Hiroshima† 1998)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The pilot that dropped the atomic bomb was Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 509th Bomber squadron (James Chan â€Å"Hiroshima† 1997) and he was flying the Enola Gay, which was named after his mother and was a B-29-45-MD Super fortress. (Peter Wyden â€Å"Day One† 1984)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It was 2:45 A.M. when the Enola Gay took off, after it got going it was flying at a ground speed of 330 M.P.H. The flight was going to take six and a half hours until they reached Hiroshima on the Honshu Island on Japan (U.S. National Archives â€Å"Hiroshima† 1999). Even though the crew knew their destination, Hiroshima, their target, the iota T-bridge, and that they were dropping a bomb, they didn’t know that it was an atomic bomb that would take out almost the entire city. (Peter Wyden â€Å"Day One† 1984) The name of the Bomb was named the â€Å"Little Boy† and it weighed 10,000 lbs. 137.5 of that was pure Uranium. When the bomb detonated the Uranium split into two and it started a fission chain reaction (â€Å"Hiroshima† 1998). The fireball created by the bomb was equal to six and a half tons of TNT. The heat in the hypocenter reached upwards to 3000 degrees Celsius (James Chan â€Å"Hiroshima† 1997). Within a mile of the blast fences, railroad ties and trees ignited from the heat. In the hypocenter iron melted and 900 feet from the hypocenter granite melted (Peter Wyden â€Å"Day One† 1984). The bomb was detonated at approximately 9:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945. Seen from five and a half miles away the explosion was 10 times as bright as the sun (James Chan â€Å"Hiroshima† 1997).