Fatman and Little Boy duds?

I know. You seem like an intelligent person so I don't suspect you of being a sockpuppet.

I apologize for the outburst in my most previous post. I was upset by a seemingly misinterpretation of my topic and felt that it had to be addressed. My way of going about it was very unecessary and I sincerely apologize for the childish manner of my comment.
 
Let's all take a quick primer in early nuclear weapons first okay? It seems necessary because you, the OP, and few others weren't even aware that Fat Man and Little Boy were completely different weapons.

Fat Man or, more accurately, a Fat Man-type was detonated first at Trinity and then dropped at Nagasaki. It used plutonium produced in breeder reactors. It used a very technically advanced implosion-type ignition, the design and construction took up most of Los Alamos' time and effort.

Here's the part which you and too many other people don't quite understand: The Trinity test wasn't a test to see if the nuclear physics behind the Bomb worked because the physics was a "no-brainer". Instead, Trinity was a test to see if the implosion-style ignition system worked.

Little Boy was used on Hiroshima. It used an uranium isotope and something like 98% of the available amount of that isotope in 1945 so additional Little Boys bombs would be almost impossible to build. Little Boy used a gun-type ignition system that was not tested because, like the physics behind the bomb, it was considered a "no-brainer".

Returning to your original questions...

If the Trinity test failed, the Fat Man design would be re-examined, re-designed, and re-tested. How long that effort would take would depend on why the Fat Man design was faulty. In addition, if Trinity failed, Little Boy wouldn't be used in August and would instead be kept for use during Downfall.

If Little Boy failed at Hiroshima, nuclear physics somehow doesn't work the way all the experimental evidence says it should. This is an ASB level event. Apart from a grossly incompetent arming process during the flight to Hiroshima, something Los Alamos spent years in examining and preventing, Little Boy simply cannot fail absent ASB intervention.

If Fat Man failed at Nagasaki, the project still had a successful Fat Man test at Trinity. An investigation into why Fat Man worked in New Mexico and not over Japan would begin. As with a Trinity failure I mentioned above, the recover after a Nagasaki would depend on what sort of failure occurred.

The bombs alone did not make Japan surrender, they were only part of a complicated surrender equation. In the minds of Japan's war cabinet, the declaration of war by the USSR and rapid loss of Manchuria held equal weight with the bombs and those two events are still going to occur.

If the bombings do not occur in August, one or more atomic bombings are still going to occur that fall. Little Boy, the uranium/gun-type bomb, is going to work absent ASB intervention and will be used during an invasion by the US. The Fat Man type could possibly be used too if it's problems are worked out in time.

The ramifications of a Japanese surrender in the fall of '45 or spring of '46 come down to "little" more than many more dead Japanese, Americans, Russians, Brits, Chinese, Australians, New Zealanders, and others. The Home Islands are already starving, the war is going to continue being fought from Burma to the Philippines, to China, and something on the order of 250,000 civilians per month in the regions of Asia Japan occupies are going to die.

The result of Fat Man's failure is simply more death, more devastation, and a poorer post-war world.

Thank you very much for your detailed and generous answer to my questions. I'm sorry for my outburst and I am greatly pleased that you took the time to sit down and adress my points in the manner you have done. This has concisely answered all of my questions and I thank you for your once again generous consideration.

EnglishCanuck.
 

Flubber

Banned
Thank you very much for your detailed and generous answer to my questions. I'm sorry for my outburst and I am greatly pleased that you took the time to sit down and adress my points in the manner you have done. This has concisely answered all of my questions and I thank you for your once again generous consideration.


Thank you very much for your kind words and please don't continue to flog yourself over one outburst. Everyone loses their temper now and then. It's part of being human.

Let me also point out Cook's post regarding the relationship between the atomic bombings and Japan's surrender. It is better written and thus more accurate than my attempt.
 
The Japanese get hit by small but rather nasty dirty bombs.

Which (had it happened) would probably have killed many more people; since they'd be much simpler to construct there could be more deployed. Hard to imagine something worse than being nuked, but there it is.
 

Cook

Banned
Which (had it happened) would probably have killed many more people; since they'd be much simpler to construct there could be more deployed. Hard to imagine something worse than being nuked, but there it is.
The Red is saying that Little Boy and Fat Man would have effectively been Radialogical bombs if there was no Atomic detonation. And the dispersal of radioactive material would not have been as broad as the result of the atomic detonation was.
 
The Red is saying that Little Boy and Fat Man would have effectively been Radialogical bombs if there was no Atomic detonation. And the dispersal of radioactive material would not have been as broad as the result of the atomic detonation was.

I see. I thought he was suggesting the course that might have been taken in the highly unlikely case of two duds.
 
The ramifications of a Japanese surrender in the fall of '45 or spring of '46 come down to "little" more than many more dead Japanese, Americans, Russians, Brits, Chinese, Australians, New Zealanders, and others. The Home Islands are already starving, the war is going to continue being fought from Burma to the Philippines, to China, and something on the order of 250,000 civilians per month in the regions of Asia Japan occupies are going to die.

To say nothing of continued bombing, mining and bombardment of Japan itself. I was researching a possible alternate timeline myself last month, involving a successful coup in Japan and an extension of the war, but I just couldn't get past this. All an extension would amount to is many more dead people and an even more tragic finish.
 
Anyone interested in the Japanese nuclear program may want to check out the book The Day Man Lost, Hiroshima 6 August 1945. It is written by Japanese authors and covers the US, German, and Japanese programs.

The Japanese program redefines shoestring. On April 13th, 1945 (a Friday) the primary building in Tokyo survived a fire-bombing raid but, hours later, while the researchers who had fought the flames were eating lunch, burst into flames and burned to the ground.
 
i also can't stress enough that Little Boy can't be a dud. No matter what, the two subcritical masses will end up combining whether the detonator goes off or not. The only question is the resulting yield. Rather than combining at 934 m/s, in the case of a ground impact the two pieces would combine at 200+ m/s. So probably a few hundred tonnes TNT equivalent released instead of the ~13 kilotons.
 
Thank you very much for your kind words and please don't continue to flog yourself over one outburst. Everyone loses their temper now and then. It's part of being human.

Let me also point out Cook's post regarding the relationship between the atomic bombings and Japan's surrender. It is better written and thus more accurate than my attempt.

I would recommend saving that post and using it if this topic is ever broached again. It quite adequately addresses this question.
 
Let me first of all also comment on the chance of both being faulty.

If it is engineering, it can go wrong. A comment like "It simply cannot happen tht they will not work" is a bit of an overstatement.

it's like saying Edsel cars WILL sell because they are so well-engineered.

So, of course they can both fail. likelihood may be low, but...

Re-testing may not be possible. I read somewhere that the the stock pile of uranium/plutonium was basically used up on those first bombs and that more material would be a long way coming. Comments on this?

A consequence could have been that the intensified mining of the inland water-ways would happen, and that alone would have caused famine, etc on a rather catastrophic scale. That programme was only starting to get under way. Apparantly, the B-29 crews thought it a bit 'boring" to just fly around dumping mines in the canals.

The threat of soviet invasion could have been the deciding factor. However, the fist soviet attempts of sea-borne invasions were not particular successful, wherefore the Japanese government may have decided to carry on, based on the facts that:
1) Soviet invasion is not a serious threat
2) US invasion is years away
3) the bombs didn't work, meaning US would take time out to find out why (they must have known what the bombs were)
4) The fire bombing can be "contained" insofar as the population is concerned

Comments?
 
Fat man perhaps. Not little Boy. Barring a calculation error that would have to occur in the late 30s early 40s Little Boy's design was too simply to fail. I mean it came down to having one moving part.
 
So therefore, it is 100%? no way it can fail (i have heard it somewhere before, yes).

OK, let's get on from here. Of course they can both fail.

The interesting part is, if the first one fails, how much wil it impact on the launch of #2 insofar as the designs were vastly different?

If both should fail, is there no alternative to Coronet? mining of the water-ways? more fire-storms?

There is also a moral aspect here. The minig of the water-ways (together with the nuclear bombs after all), were deliberately targeting civilians. The human costs may weigh heavy on Truman?
 
If it is engineering, it can go wrong. A comment like "It simply cannot happen tht they will not work" is a bit of an overstatement.

it's like saying Edsel cars WILL sell because they are so well-engineered.

So, of course they can both fail. likelihood may be low, but...

Comments?

With Little Boy it is not like saying "Edsel will sell", its more like saying "I push this rock off the wall and it will hit the ground" . Once they dropped the bomb, it WILL go off in some way, maybe not a full nuke but the two sub-critical masses will hit each other and go critical and give a nuclear explosion. It may not be 12+ Ktons but it will be several hundred ton equivalent at worst case (least case?).

With Fat Man they tested the design first, it is more likely than Little Boy that Fat Man will fail but that does not make it likely and the question was both being duds. Based on how simple Little Boy was this is so unlikely as to be basically impossible.

So, no nothing is 100%, but this would take something on the order of a meteor strike on both B-29s half way to the target.

Tom.
 

Cook

Banned
However, the fist soviet attempts of sea-borne invasions were not particular successful, wherefore the Japanese government may have decided to carry on, based on the facts that:
1) Soviet invasion is not a serious threat
2) US invasion is years away
4) The fire bombing can be "contained" insofar as the population is concerned

1) The Japanese took South Sakhalin in a matter of days and overran the entire Kuril Islands chain in less than two weeks before putting men ashore on northern Hokkaido. They’d also simultaneously over-run all of Manchuria and half of Korea in 11 days; it is hard to imagine any Japanese not considering the threat of imminent Soviet invasion very real. And unlike what they thought of the Americans, the Japanese knew that the Soviets wouldn’t be concerned by the number of casualties they sustained in the process.

2) The Americans had recently completed their invasion of Okinawa; the latest in a steady progression of landings that led all the way back to Guadalcanal that at no time had shown any sign of slowing or halting, they had no doubts that the Americans were going to invade. However they were not intending to surrender because of the threat of American attack, they fully intended to fight for the sacred home islands and make the butcher’s bill just too horrendous for the Americans to continue, even if it cost 20 million Japanese civilian lives.

4) As far as the Supreme War Leadership Council was concerned the fire-bombing of Japanese cities was contained since they were totally indifferent to civilian casualties.

I would recommend saving that post and using it if this topic is ever broached again. It quite adequately addresses this question.
That’s very flattering. But if you are going to save a link though, make it to this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=5271557&postcount=42

For people looking for a misfired atomic bomb to delay the end of the way I suggest The Gadget at Trinity, New Mexico; after the gadget was in place at the base of the test tower the detonators for the explosive shaped charges were put in place and wired up and it was then winched to the top of the tower. After which it had to sit through a thunder storm! Here was a device consisting of multiple primed detonators in overlapping electrical circuits wired together, suspended at the top of a steel tower during an electrical storm. had the tower been struck, the possibility was there that the current could have caused the detonators on only one side of the device to detonate, or for them to detonate milliseconds before the detonators on the other side of the device; the result would have been an unbalanced implosion and no atomic detonation. The test would have to be repeated.
 
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