Atomic Bomb

[GMoxley]

I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for Spartanburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartanburg,_South_Carolina) and I noticed this interesting tidbit: "The decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was made in Converse Heights."

Does anyone know anymore about this story?

[GMoxley]

I asked one of my friends about this and he said that "apparently" Truman was visiting Byrnes in spartanburg when he made the decision.

Incidentally, this is supposedly where the name "Sparkle City" came from. It was the code name for Spartanburg used by the Secret Service. Although, I had always thought it came from the "Sparkletones."

[atlrvr]

On a related note....didn't the US accidentally drop an atomic bomb in eastern SC in the 1950's? It didn't detonate of course.

[GMoxley]

The accidental dropping of a bomb I had not heard of. However, I did hear that there was a plane that crashed off the coast from savannah and an atomic bomb was never recovered. Supposedly, it still is in the ocean somewhere near Tybee Island.

[Spartan]

Interesting. I would like to know more about this secret service code for Spartanburg. That is much "cooler" than the Sparkletones story

[willum]

indeed it is

[upstateplanet]

The accidental dropping of a bomb I had not heard of. However, I did hear that there was a plane that crashed off the coast from savannah and an atomic bomb was never recovered. Supposedly, it still is in the ocean somewhere near Tybee Island.

Correct. The bomb, supposedly, is still off Tybee Island. It was jettisoned after the B-47 Bomber carrying it collided with an F-86 fighter out of Charleston AFB.

article

28 days later, Georgia extracted its revenge by "nuking" Florence!!!

Well...sorta.

[RestedTraveler]

Correct. The bomb, supposedly, is still off Tybee Island. It was jettisoned after the B-47 Bomber carrying it collided with an F-86 fighter out of Charleston AFB.

article

28 days later, Georgia extracted its revenge by "nuking" Florence!!!

Well...sorta.

Call me crazy, but I believe that our National Security would be best served if the Federal Government and U.S. Military would spend only a fraction of the Iraqi War effort on locating, securing, and disarming this bomb.

[GSP Tiger]

Was one of the researchers of the atomic bomb from Spartanburg?

[monsoon]

Was one of the researchers of the atomic bomb from Spartanburg?

Before they could actually produce a working bomb, thousands of people eventually became involved because while the theories of atomic fission were one thing, the engineering required to produce a working device that could be dropped from a plane were quite complex.

One of the biggest hurdles was in producing enough U235 from U238 to build a couple of bombs. Everyone knows about Los Alamos, but not as well known were the huge machines built in Eastern Tennessee to produce the weapons grade uranium. These were massive machines involving huge numbers of people to build, so there was a very good chance that someone from Spartanburg was involved.

It is a bit of fascinating dark history as they were so unsure of producing a uranium (U235 bomb) they also designed a plutonium based bomb. Plutonium is easier to produce than U235 but it has other disadvangages. The first atomic bomb exploded in the world at Trinity, was in fact a plutonium bomb. The first Atomic bomb that killed people was the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima using U235 produced in Tennessee possibly by people from Spartanburg. This bomb has another Carolina connection as was Thomas Ferebee from NC that actually pulled the trigger that dropped that bomb.

The Hiroshima bomb was remarkably successful in that it vaporized most of Hiroshima and 80,000 people with it. 10s of thousands more died in the days following the dropping of a uranium bomb on that city due to having their skin burned off and/or radiation poisening. Many people had their eyes boiled out of thier sockets as they happen to be looking at the direction of the explosion. Radioactive dust rained on the city and covered everything. The Japanese did not know about the radioactivity and thus did not know to take precautions. The bomb met all of the death and destruction goals set for it and then some except it was used in Asia instead of Europe. The Truman Administration decided the resulting images from photographers were too much for the American public so the photos of the damage were classified for many years.

A couple of years ago, when the Bush Iraqi war was still popular, our media proudly made a big deal out of the Moab bunker busting bomb as being the mother of all bombs. Lots of chest beating with that one. Where the media missed it is that bomb had a yield that was a fraction of the size of the Hirosima and Nagasaki bombs.

• Moab - "Mother of all Bombs" - Yield = 21,000 lbs

• Hiroshima Bomb - Yield = 25,000,000 lbs

• Nagasaki Bomb - Yield = 44,000,000 lbs

And these original atomic bomb were fairly primitive devices compared to modern bombs. The USA did not consider these bombs to be powerful enough so went on to produce bombs based on the fusion of hydrogen into helium. The yield on these bombs are significantly higher.

• Moab - "Mother of all Bombs" - Yield = 21,000 lbs

• Hiroshima Bomb - Yield = 25,000,000 lbs

• Nagasaki Bomb - Yield = 44,000,000 lbs

• USA Castle/Bravo Hydrogen bomb (1954) = 30,000,000,000 lbs

If a Castle/Bravo bomb were exploded in the upstate, it doesn't really matter where, Spartanburg and Greenville simply would cease to exist in the universe. It should be noted the tritium needed to construct the Hydrogen Bomb is/was produced in SC.

[jaxpalmer]

I dont think saying that at the place your from the decision to drop a bomb that killed well over 300,000 people is anything to take pride in.

[upstateplanet]

I dont think saying that at the place your from the decision to drop a bomb that killed well over 300,000 people is anything to take pride in.

It saved the lives of probably a million US & allied soldiers who would have had to invade Japan, if not for the bomb.

[Spartan]

Indeed. It was also one of the most significant events of the 20th century, regardless of what you think about it.

[monsoon]

I dont think saying that at the place your from the decision to drop a bomb that killed well over 300,000 people is anything to take pride in.

Nobody here is in a position to make moral judgements on the past. And I am pretty sure no one here has experienced the horror of 6 years of total world war. (If you are a 80+ year old WWII war veteran then I will give you that) Given that 40 million people died in WWII, the decision to use or not use The Bomb was a profound and difficult one considering the decision either way was going to have an effect on who gets to die for the remainder of the war.

I might be wrong, but your comments sound as if you are taking a pot shot at the USA.

[willum]

i'm not pointing anyone or anything out about people/what was said on this board, but most ppl (myself included) have no idea what war really is. Our grand/greatgrandparents went through some tough tough times during WWII and WWI. The people in Europe went through some especially horrible times, times we could never imagine. Living in Germany gave me a little better perspective on this, but it's a totally other thing to understand the gravity that was WWII. London was blitzkrieg(ed) for how long? I mean, could you imagine going through that?

So, saying this more in general than anything, but 99% percent of us have no idea how horrible that time period was, and how hard of a decision it was to drop the bomb. And more so, when you want to take shots at how bad this Iraq war is, keep in mind what war is.