How To Build An Atomic Bomb

A project that employed 130,000 people and costed around 2 billion dollars and turned the tables of WWII. The Manhattan Project, a plan all over the USA to research and build an atomic bomb. Ranging from 1941-1946, General Leslie R. Groves ran the project, as J. Robert Oppenheimer ran the research. “Manhattan Project” by Ctbto.org reports, “Project research took place at over 30 different sites across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.”(citation needed) With this, the race to the atomic bomb began. Two bombs were made during this, Little Boy and Fat Man. Little Boy was similar to a gun, with a uranium core. Why Little boy is referred to as “gun like” is because, uranium is shot into uranium to create a chain reaction. Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Fat Man had a plutonium core and was more of a
implosive bomb. The reason why it is implosive is because, it is engineered in a way where explosives surround the plutonium core and when set off, crush the plutonium. Fat man was dropped on Nagasaki shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima. During the bomb’s production, there were 3 facilities located at Oak Ridge, Washington, and Los Alamos; where they began assembling the bomb.
The project was very secret and only a small circle of scientists knew about the bomb’s creation. “51ft. The Manhattan Project” by the Independence Hall Association states, “In fact, Vice-President Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project until he became President Truman.” It was kept secret from the Soviet Union until a spy revealed it to them. Despite this the Axis powers were unaware of the making of the bomb. Whether the US should have dropped the bombs on Japan is still debated to this day. President Harry Truman decided to drop the bomb after ordering the Japanese to surrender and they refused. “What Truman was thinking when he decided to drop the bomb” by Jonathan Rosenberg reports that, “The weapon destroyed 90 percent of Hiroshima's buildings, and later, a radioactive rain, black and deadly, fell upon the city. Some 130,000 people perished that day, including 110,000 civilians.” The devastation of this bomb is pretty great, but did he make the right choice to drop the
bomb? Truman was right to drop the bomb. Though the devastation and lives taken is heart wrenching, who knows where we would be if we did not. The Japanese were not surrendering and USA had no other choice for the safety of the country. After the devastation of Pearl Harbor the offer of dropping the bomb was too hard to refuse. Building an atomic bomb is a lumbering amount of work that takes many years of dedication and to say that we reached that, is an understatement.