Nuclear+Weapons

History:
Once German scientists discovered fission in 1938, about a year before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the concept of a nuclear weapon was born. A sustained chain reaction of fissionable uranium would release enormous amounts of energy.

Many German scientists defected to other countries as Nazism dominated their native country. With them came the knowledge of fission, and the capability to build an atomic bomb. In 1939, two German scientists urged Albert Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt, urging him to start an atomic weapon research project.



Out of this letter, Roosevelt commissioned the Manhattan Project.


 * Trinity to Hiroshima**

The Manhattan Project's culminating test was called "Trinity", and was the first atomic weapons test in human history. It was detonated in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, and had an explosive force equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT.



Borne from the Trinity test were the two atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan in August of 1945.

The first atomic bomb to be used in war was "Little Boy", a uranium bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.



Three days later, the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.