WI: Trinity Test Fails?

What if the Trinity Device ("The Gadget") failed to fuse on July 16th, 1945? An error in assembly, a defective component, a lightning strike, take your pick, but at 05:29:45 local, some very carefully designed explosives ALMOST properly compresses a little over 6kg of plutonium into a supercritical mass.

What results is not the world's first man-made nuclear detonation, but the world's first dirty bomb.

What happens next?

USS Indianapolis (CA-35) historically departed San Francisco on the 16th with the core for Little Boy, the Uranium bomb. Scientists had been quite sure this bomb would work, and didn't test it. Does the Trinity failure cause them to re-think this?
Fat Man's core historically was flown to Tinian July 24th. Does it go anyway? Is it used for a 2nd Trinity Test?
Does Truman decide this whole A-Bomb thing is a bust and put Operation Downfall back into the works?
 
For all the money they put into the Manhattan project they would simply test it again. It might effect the amount of bombs dropped on Japan, I don't know how many they had lying around.
How much radiation contamination over hoe big an area could be caused by Trinity going dirty? Enough to cause radiation poisoning? Or destroy crops?

Better yet, what if it was Little Boy that became the dirty bomb and sprayed a few kilos worth of weapon grade uranium over Hiroshima?
 
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ThE total was two bombs plus gadget, litthe boy of course was expected to work without a test, but if trinity fails the fat man would probably have to be used in a second test and the us would not have another bomb before early sept.

Lacking a repeat show Japan might hang in longer or quit when the USSR attacks (depending on which surrender theory you accept). If the latter the as OTL but the USSR gets a lot of credit and the US has slightly cleaner hands, also Stalin is gonna be pissed if his actions beat Japan and Russia is still locked out of the home islands ( par for course there then :) )

If the former then Japan waits to see if US can repeat and doesn't get the message ( Surrender or burn) until September, the soviets probably grab all of Korea, may push into China proper and are sure to attack North Japan. Japanese war 50-53 anyone?

As for the mess, small scale version of Chenobyl Radioactive crap spread for miles, lots of mystery deaths among locals and test crew and maybe the world gets the message about radiation effects a few years earlier.

( sorry for any dodgy spelling etc, above my computers down while I strip out a damn virus and I'm doing this in my phone.
 
There would be a detailed examination of the test location, and it's almost certain personnel would have some protection. People were fairly well aware of the dangers of direct contact with loose radioactive materials. What they were less aware of was the effects of gamma ray radiation from the explosion and radioactive fallout, neither of which would be a major problem from such as small explosion.

I would imagine the bulk of the analysis would focus on making sure that the TNT explosion functioned properly so as to trigger the nuclear chain-reaction. If the problem appeared to be a glitch, they'd get ready for another test ASAP. As has been noted, far too much effort had been expended to just throw up your hands and walk away.

On the other hand, it would be interesting to speculate what might happen if forensic analysis of the films and remains failed to show any clear fault in how the TNT explosion functioned. Could this bring some in the army to question the basic science behind the thing? My guess is they'd still try one more time, but this could make a good AH story to flesh out.

There would be no risk to surrounding crops or people from a small dirty explosion explosion in the middle of nowhere in the desert, New Mexico.
 
ThE total was two bombs plus gadget...


No.

The total was three nuclear weapons, one uranium and two plutonium, plus the Trinity device. After Trinity, Truman signed an executive order placing the weapons in military control to be used against the previously developed target list. After the Nagasaki drop and while still aboard the cruiser bringing him back from Potsdam, Truman signed another executive order removing the remaining weapon from military control.

...but if trinity fails the fat man would probably have to be used in a second test...

Two completed cores were available, the Nagasaki weapon and the weapon that wasn't used. Also. the US was already in serial production of more weapons.

... and the us would not have another bomb before early sept.

No. There would be more bombs available earlier because the US was planning on using as many as nine during the initial stages of Operation Olympic, an operation which would begin November 1st.

Lacking a repeat show...

No. If the Trinity fails, Little Boy won't be used. Instead and just in case the plutonium implosion design is somehow flawed, the uranium weapon will be held in reserve for the Olympic landings.

If the problem is quickly determined and another, successful, test takes place, the uranium weapon will be used before the landings.
 
On 15. August the operation August Storm took off. Given the results and it's effect on Kwantung Army, it is not improbable that Japan would surrender on schedule anyway. In the last week of august it became clear even to the most diehard members of the cabinet that they didn't have a choice of surrender or not, only to whom to surrender.
 
WI the 'use' of nuclear weapons came after the Soviet declaration of war. Might Japan have surrendered before the bomb?

IMO, no, they wouldn't have surrendered absent nukes or an invasion of the home islands that looked likely to succeed.

Of course, quite a lot of people, some of them quite knowledgeable, have a different opinion.

My opinion is based on the actions of the warlords, since I don't think the Emperor would have stepped in for anything short of nukes or the invasion.
 
After spending so much money the US government would cover up it's failure by massively firebombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and claim it was done by a single bomb, in order to scare the Soviets and give a reason for having wasted all that money.

There's also something about the Jews in there? I don't know. I went to public school and so I didn't learn about the conspiracy that thoroughly.
 
IMO, no, they wouldn't have surrendered absent nukes or an invasion of the home islands that looked likely to succeed. [\QUOTE]

Manchuria was Japanese empire's industrial heartland - not the home islands. Occupation of Manchuria by the Soviets (completed by the end of august) deprived Japanese military of most of the options they still had when they were only up against USA, and convinced them that the Soviet landing on the home island was imminent (whether it was or not). While the IJA piled up enormous amounts of materiel at the probable landing sites of Overlord/Coronet, the Soviets would have landed somewhere completely different and these sites were not prepared for defense at all. So, the government had to face the fact that Manchukuo was rolled over without every Japanese there fighting invaders to death, and that it would likely not be that different on the home islands.

Nukes played a partial role but, absent additional bombs, obviously not the decisive one.
 
Manchuria was Japanese empire's industrial heartland - not the home islands. Occupation of Manchuria by the Soviets (completed by the end of august) deprived Japanese military of most of the options they still had when they were only up against USA, and convinced them that the Soviet landing on the home island was imminent (whether it was or not). While the IJA piled up enormous amounts of materiel at the probable landing sites of Overlord/Coronet, the Soviets would have landed somewhere completely different and these sites were not prepared for defense at all. So, the government had to face the fact that Manchukuo was rolled over without every Japanese there fighting invaders to death, and that it would likely not be that different on the home islands.

Nukes played a partial role but, absent additional bombs, obviously not the decisive one.

I've heard most of this before, but it fails to address the level of... let's call it willpower, that the powers-that-were running Japan had. If they'd been rational by US standards they'd have surrendered after Okinawa, or the Tokyo firebombings. They didn't. By mid-1945 the US submarine campaign was close to strangling military production anyway. What's one more defeat? What's one more industrial area lost? These were all expected blows; IMO (again, this is a case where I'm happy to concede that there are other valid opinions to be had), it would take either an unexpected blow (Fat Man and Little Boy), or a knockout punch (invasion of the home islands) to break that will.

I'm interested by the idea that Manchuria was an industrial heartland; source? What aircraft, ships, and vehicles were produced there vs. the home islands?
 
I'm interested by the idea that Manchuria was an industrial heartland; source? What aircraft, ships, and vehicles were produced there vs. the home islands?

Very little...but it did produce a great deal of steel that was further processed in Japan. It is, in any case, completely irrelevant in 1945, when any industry outside of Honshu can contribute nothing at all to the war effort.

Rational concerns really had nothing to do with it by the end of the war. The Soviet invasion shook some of the leadership out of the delusional hope that the Soviets can broker a negotiated peace with the WAllies. (one that involves Japan keeping everything it had before 1941 to boot) It would have been much the same even if the Soviets had done nothing but still declared war.

The Atomic bomb shook other elements of the leadership out of the delusional belief that they could force an invasion and bleed it enough to get a conditional peace. There's no way to know if only one of the events is enough.
 
I've heard most of this before, but it fails to address the level of... let's call it willpower, that the powers-that-were running Japan had. If they'd been rational by US standards they'd have surrendered after Okinawa, or the Tokyo firebombings. They didn't. By mid-1945 the US submarine campaign was close to strangling military production anyway. What's one more defeat? What's one more industrial area lost? These were all expected blows; IMO (again, this is a case where I'm happy to concede that there are other valid opinions to be had), it would take either an unexpected blow (Fat Man and Little Boy), or a knockout punch (invasion of the home islands) to break that will.

I'm interested by the idea that Manchuria was an industrial heartland; source? What aircraft, ships, and vehicles were produced there vs. the home islands?

Manchuria was the place where Japanese coal came from, and coal-related heavy industry. They didn't have much oil left, but coal and the products you make at coal deposits (steel etc.). No Manchuria = no coal, no energy, no steel for the home islands. It's not about losing a shipyard or a tank factory: it's about losing the energy source to power any of these wherever they are located. The home islands have no coal and almost no iron ore deposits, as well as no oil.

As to your comment "what's one more defeat"... well, the same argument can be turned against atomic bombs as the force that turned Japan to surrender. Otherwise, the Tokyo firebomb raids which killed more Japanese civilians than either of the nukes would have sufficed too.

Actually the operation August Storm was also a VERY unexpected blow. The bulk of Soviet armoured forces went through a terrain which was was considered impassable for any sizable force by the IJA - the eastern Altai, a mountain chain full of glaciated 3000ers and 4000ers. They caught the Kwantung Army from the back. The IJA sat there fully prepared for an attack coming down the coastal plain (where the Soviets also came along - but only as a diversion), and were rolled up with little resistance. The Soviets lost less men and materiel fighting the Japanese than they lost during the (mostly unopposed) mountain passage.
 
Manchuria was the place where Japanese coal came from, and coal-related heavy industry. They didn't have much oil left, but coal and the products you make at coal deposits (steel etc.). No Manchuria = no coal, no energy, no steel for the home islands. It's not about losing a shipyard or a tank factory: it's about losing the energy source to power any of these wherever they are located. The home islands have no coal and almost no iron ore deposits, as well as no oil.

Ah, OK, yes, Manchuria was a resource source. OTOH, how much of that was getting through to the home islands by mid/late 1945? Not much. Resources you can't use because you can't transport them to your factories aren't much more useful than resources you can't use because your enemies occupy the territory producing them.

I agree that Soviet intervention was important (as mentioned above, among other things it eliminated hopes that they might broker a favorable peace treaty). On the rest, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. :)
 
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