Okla-homey
4/24/2008, 07:25 AM
April 24, 1945: Truman is briefed on Manhattan Project
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/148/mpimg0075bi9.jpg
Truman and his SecWar Harry Stimson
63 years ago today, newly sworn-in President Harry Truman learns the full details of the Manhattan Project, in which scientists are attempting to create the first atomic bomb. The information thrust upon Truman a momentous decision: whether or not to use the world’s first weapon of mass destruction.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3462/mpb04091401si5.jpg
The note from Stimson to HST passed this day. You'll note HST asked for this issue to go on his schedule the following day. When Stimson learned of this, he headed over to the White House with Groves and insisted on seeing the President immediately.
America’s secret development of the atomic bomb began in 1939 with then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s support. The project was so secret that FDR did not even inform his fourth-term vice president, Truman, that it existed. (In fact, when Truman’s 1943 senatorial investigations into war-production expenditures led him to ask questions about a suspicious plant in Minneapolis, which was secretly connected with the Manhattan Project, Truman received a stern phone call from FDR’s secretary of war, Harry Stimson, warning him not to inquire further -- and then Senator Truman complied.)
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/6343/mp550pxmanhattanprojectlg1.png
Manhattan facilities. It was the greatest engineering and scientific accomplishment of the twentieth century. And it was accomplished in relative secrecy.
When President Roosevelt died on April 14, 1945, Truman was immediately sworn in and, soon after, was informed by Stimson of a new and terrible weapon being developed by physicists in New Mexico. In his diary that night, Truman noted that he had been informed that the U.S. was “perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the whole world.”
On April 24, Stimson and the army general in charge of the project, Leslie Groves, brought Truman a file full of reports and details on the Manhattan Project. They told Truman that although the U.S. was the only country with the resources to develop the bomb--eliminating fears that Germany was close to developing the weapon--the Russians could possibly have atomic weapons within four years.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9899/mpoppgrov2bigpg0.jpg
Leslie Groves and Bob Oppenheimer at ground zero at Alamogordo
They discussed if, and with which allies, they should share the information and how the new weapon would affect U.S. foreign-policy decisions. Truman authorized the continuation of the project and agreed to form an “interim committee” that would advise the president on using the weapon.
Although the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the month after HST learned of "the bomb," Stimson nevertheless advised Truman that the bomb might be useful in intimidating Soviet leader Joseph Stalin into curtailing post-war communist expansion into Eastern Europe. Truman agreed and said that if the weapon proved feasible “I’ll certainly have a hammer on those g-- d--- Russians.”
Meanwhile the war with Japan dragged on and it looked to many as if the Japanese would never surrender. On July 16, the team of scientists at the Alamogordo, New Mexico, research station successfully exploded the worlds first atomic bomb.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/6945/mp4804rk2.gif
July 16, 1945 - At 5:29:45 a.m. "Gadget" was detonated in the first atomic explosion in history. The explosive yield was 20-22 Kt (initially estimated at 18.9 Kt), vaporizing the steel tower.
Two weeks later on July 31, 1945, Truman gave Stimson the handwritten order to “release when ready but not sooner than August 2.”
The first bomb was exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and a second was dropped on Nagasaki on August 8. The Japanese quickly surrendered. Although other nations have developed atomic weapons and nuclear technology since 1945, Truman remains the only world leader to have ever used an atomic bomb against an enemy.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/2641/mpoakridgecelebrationlawn3.jpg
Workers at the Oak Ridge facility celebrate the fact their work ended the war in the Pacific
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/4703/mpproject1un8.jpg
People who worked on the Project got one of these later.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/148/mpimg0075bi9.jpg
Truman and his SecWar Harry Stimson
63 years ago today, newly sworn-in President Harry Truman learns the full details of the Manhattan Project, in which scientists are attempting to create the first atomic bomb. The information thrust upon Truman a momentous decision: whether or not to use the world’s first weapon of mass destruction.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3462/mpb04091401si5.jpg
The note from Stimson to HST passed this day. You'll note HST asked for this issue to go on his schedule the following day. When Stimson learned of this, he headed over to the White House with Groves and insisted on seeing the President immediately.
America’s secret development of the atomic bomb began in 1939 with then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s support. The project was so secret that FDR did not even inform his fourth-term vice president, Truman, that it existed. (In fact, when Truman’s 1943 senatorial investigations into war-production expenditures led him to ask questions about a suspicious plant in Minneapolis, which was secretly connected with the Manhattan Project, Truman received a stern phone call from FDR’s secretary of war, Harry Stimson, warning him not to inquire further -- and then Senator Truman complied.)
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/6343/mp550pxmanhattanprojectlg1.png
Manhattan facilities. It was the greatest engineering and scientific accomplishment of the twentieth century. And it was accomplished in relative secrecy.
When President Roosevelt died on April 14, 1945, Truman was immediately sworn in and, soon after, was informed by Stimson of a new and terrible weapon being developed by physicists in New Mexico. In his diary that night, Truman noted that he had been informed that the U.S. was “perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the whole world.”
On April 24, Stimson and the army general in charge of the project, Leslie Groves, brought Truman a file full of reports and details on the Manhattan Project. They told Truman that although the U.S. was the only country with the resources to develop the bomb--eliminating fears that Germany was close to developing the weapon--the Russians could possibly have atomic weapons within four years.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9899/mpoppgrov2bigpg0.jpg
Leslie Groves and Bob Oppenheimer at ground zero at Alamogordo
They discussed if, and with which allies, they should share the information and how the new weapon would affect U.S. foreign-policy decisions. Truman authorized the continuation of the project and agreed to form an “interim committee” that would advise the president on using the weapon.
Although the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the month after HST learned of "the bomb," Stimson nevertheless advised Truman that the bomb might be useful in intimidating Soviet leader Joseph Stalin into curtailing post-war communist expansion into Eastern Europe. Truman agreed and said that if the weapon proved feasible “I’ll certainly have a hammer on those g-- d--- Russians.”
Meanwhile the war with Japan dragged on and it looked to many as if the Japanese would never surrender. On July 16, the team of scientists at the Alamogordo, New Mexico, research station successfully exploded the worlds first atomic bomb.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/6945/mp4804rk2.gif
July 16, 1945 - At 5:29:45 a.m. "Gadget" was detonated in the first atomic explosion in history. The explosive yield was 20-22 Kt (initially estimated at 18.9 Kt), vaporizing the steel tower.
Two weeks later on July 31, 1945, Truman gave Stimson the handwritten order to “release when ready but not sooner than August 2.”
The first bomb was exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and a second was dropped on Nagasaki on August 8. The Japanese quickly surrendered. Although other nations have developed atomic weapons and nuclear technology since 1945, Truman remains the only world leader to have ever used an atomic bomb against an enemy.
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/2641/mpoakridgecelebrationlawn3.jpg
Workers at the Oak Ridge facility celebrate the fact their work ended the war in the Pacific
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/4703/mpproject1un8.jpg
People who worked on the Project got one of these later.