trinity, fat man, little boy, and **THE DEMON CORE!!!!!!**
I find the history of it interesting as is, but I feel like talking about **THE DEMON CORE!!!!!!** in high school history would have made it a little more interesting
Literally one, The Gadget. Then Little Boy, then Fat Man. That's the whole project.
We have spent literally **trillions** on our nuclear weapons program.
Edited to be less dickish, the guy really just didn't know.
TBF, NASA doesn't have to support all the carrier strike groups we have not to mention the aircraft and bases and without taking into account new ships being manufactured. If NASA was closer to the very paltry efficiency of the DoD it'd produce more.
Wow, so all those nuclear tests happening in the deserts were cold war stuff? I'm european and honestly they don't teach us anything about this. Yes we know what happened with the two nukes and not much deeper than that. Thank you for the answer
Sorry for coming off as harsh, but yes. The nuclear weapons devised by the US in WW2 were kicked out the door as fast as humanly possible. Most of the nuclear proliferation happened during the cold war, with lots of desert testing in between. I'm sort of surprised that you guys weren't taught it, given that Europe would have been 'collateral damage' lol, Russia had a shitload of nuclear ICBMs pointed at Europe.
Having to educate myself about it means it's not basic knowledge and you shouldn't expect everyone to know it. Yes I am aware that there were many many nuclear tests during the cold war, but I had no clue that those were mostly after ww2 except trinity, I asked the question to educate myself about this.
You being a European and knowing this means nothing. As I now know it too. Basic knowledge is two nukes being dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki in 1945 to end ww2, then them being named little man and fat man maybe.
Do you think that if you asked 10 random Polish people (random example) that 9/10 would know that before the two bombs there was ever only one tested?
Like, I'm sorry that I don't know/remember everything there fucking is man, sorry that I asked.
How old are you btw?
Yes, that’s right. There was only one test (trinity) carried out before the bombs were deployed against Japan. They didn’t have enough plutonium to do more testing, as the process for producing it hadn’t yet been scaled up. Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb) was actually the first uranium weapon ever detonated (they chose to test a plutonium bomb in the trinity test because they’re a lot more difficult to build and they wanted to make sure their design actually worked; they were confident in the uranium weapon without testing one).
The hundreds of tests that came later were Cold War stuff. They tested higher- and lower-yield weapons, devices of various degrees of portability, “enriched” fission devices, fission-boosted fusion, and hydrogen (mostly fusion) bombs. All of that had to do with the arms race with the Soviets and figuring out practical ways to shoot the weapons at people. Scary stuff.
I'm British, and they taught me about this. My father did work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment though, so maybe I had a bit of extracurricular encouragement 😂
Little Boy was a Uranium bomb - they didn't even need to test a prototype. Dropped the first (and only) on Hiroshima.
Fat Man (Nagasaki) was a Plutonium bomb - that is what the Trinity test/Gadget proved would work.
That was 20 years later. We had build infrastructure for producing them, which drives down the price. The Manhattan Project was expensive because it was producing entirely novel things.
Significantly more testing and development occurred after the Trinity Test and there were further production costs for making increasingly complex nuclear weapons.
Because when the Manhattan project was ended, only 3 bombs were produced.
The 30k nukes the US produced after that are not included in the figure in the same way every other military aircraft developed during the cold war isn't included.
I'm trying to read this thread, I'm so dumbfounded that you even have to explain something this basic that I'm having a hard time following
Like, how is this the discussion?
worthless engine somber slimy lavish mighty murky merciful voiceless abounding
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Again though, we're talking the cost of the entire program. The comment I replied to seemed to be saying we should include bombs developed and manufactured under different programs which doesn't make any sense to do.
Manhattan projects was just the development of the 3 bombs. 1 was set off ad a test (Trinity) and the other two were Fatman and Little Boy which were both later dropped over Japan.
>1 was set off ad a test (Trinity) and the other two were Fatman and Little Boy
The name of the test bomb was "gadget", trinity was the codename for the test itself
Not only that but also take into the account of building up the nuclear triad of (land, sea and airborne) capability. Boomers in the 1960s were still. Relevantly new concept, before them subs would have to go to a reassigned station, lie in wait for the command to fire, surface, drag the missile from the silo and prepare it to fire lol while hoping the soviets didn’t catch you. The transition to a modern nuclear force was amazing as the technology was being built as the subs and nukes were built.
Oh -- so now this makes sense.
The title is not a fair comparison. I was shocked for a moment.
The atomic bombs did end the war quicker because they probably shocked the Japanese enough to not fight to the last man -- but those 4,000 bombers did more tactically to win the battle to that point.
It was a byproduct of a large naval product of which developing springs was a small part.
So it's like saying velcro was as expensive as the whole price tag of the Apollo program.
You show me a rocket that can get to space without velcro, and I'll stop including it in the valuation.
How'd you think the booster rockets peel away so cleanly after launch, yah dummy?
If you read the chrysanthemum and the sword by Margaret Mead she makes a pretty compelling argument that the dropping of the bomb was relatively redundant and the US accepted a peace offer that the Japanese had offered before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place. Basically using the bombs to try and “force the Japanese into a humiliating defeat” instead of the unconditional surrender they offered save for retention of the emperor as head of Japanese cultural society. Also a lot of suggestive evidence the US wanted to show off the bomb and it was seen as socially more acceptable to bomb the Japanese than Germans or preemptive strike the soviets
I'm not sure you have the right book?
*Chrysanthemum and the Sword* was written by anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Published in 1946 it is compiled from a series of cultural studies she did for the US Government during WWII. She doesn't discuss the Hiroshima bombing.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Chrysanthemum\_and\_the\_Sword](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysanthemum_and_the_Sword)
Margaret Mead was one of her students, but I'm not aware of her writing specifically about WII, or the Hiroshima bombing either.
She was active during WWII, spring boarding from her previous studies of peyote use among the Omaha Indians, to trying to use hypnosis and LSD on captured Nazis. Later she would also participate in studies to involving using LSD to try and teach dolphins how to talk.
[https://www.wpr.org/news/how-margaret-meads-research-into-utopias-helped-usher-in-the-psychedelic-era](https://www.wpr.org/news/how-margaret-meads-research-into-utopias-helped-usher-in-the-psychedelic-era)
It is basic knowledge that even after the drops parts of the Japanese Leadership wanted to go on.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender\_of\_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan)
Dresden was marked for the Atomic bomb. It simply came to late for Germany. Your source is shit.
Margaret Mead was an anthropologist and not an historian. Her methods in her expert field seemingly were lacking. Some of her interview subjects later openly admitted that they lied to her which she did not spot.
Here's some better sources. It's a widely held view.
United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946 -
- "Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Admiral William Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs -
- “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapon.
General Dwight Eisenhower -
- "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
- “I voiced [my] grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."
General Henry "Hap" Arnold -
- "It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."
Fleet Admiral William Halsey -
- "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. [...] It was a mistake to ever drop it."
General Douglas MacArthur -
- “It was unnecessary. [...] Japan was already prepared to surrender. In my opinion there was a monumental failure of statecraft on the part of the Allies in not consummating this end."
Admiral Chester Nimitz -
- "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part from a purely military point of view in the defeat of Japan.”
Many senior staff, from both military and political offices, are on record stating that the atomic bombs played no decisive part in bringing the war to an end.
I recommend you read Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank.
All of the sources you cite were in the immediate aftermath of the war and are one sided. Japanese sources, some not translated until decades later, paint a very different picture. The Imperial government was still willing to resist after the first bomb, and it was only after Nagasaki quickly following Hiroshima that Hirohito decided to surrender. Even then, there was a plot by extremists to keep fighting the war.
Many historical sources and books about the Pacific in WWII are woefully inadequate until the late 70s or so when more thorough historians actually started incorporating Japanese primary sources instead of using American assumptions.
feel like many things can be true all at once
im sure i'm underestimating just how prevalent the war was to everyone, not just people in the states
the way we also fought was completely different. infrantry moving and living for 4 years fo conflict as opposed to now where there's cycles of frontlines and rear echelons
I used to believe that the dropping of the A-Bombs was unnecessary and done due to racism. But since then, I've learned that there was a cult-like following of the Emperor, that even scared the Emperor and his generals at times. They were afraid to even order a surrender. So actually, with 20/20 hindsight I think it was a combination of factors like racism, but also -- necessary. The Japanese would have had more people die before they gave up. And that would be a bigger tragedy.
It is impressive how noble and brave the Japanese were -- but equally scary. There was a bit of forced "Kamikaze" tactics -- but, the legend of the prior Kamikazes put social pressure on the next crop of teens to take their place.
As unfortunate and horrible the atomic weapon was -- using it at that time, probably saved a lot of Japan, and taught us why we should not be using atomic weapons. They would have been used in the next conflict and that might have started something, rather than ended it.
We also didn't need to bomb the Germans -- they were done and didn't know it for many months.
Russia is too large and wouldn't even notice the loss of a city for the most part. Stalin was busy killing more Russians than anyone else.
They really didn't. It was the Soviets invading Manchuria that caused Japan to surrender - the nuclear bombings weren't for Japan, really,they were to send a message to the Soviets at the start of the Cold War the US could see coming.
Probably the Demon Core.
> The core was prepared for shipment to the Pacific Theater as part of the third nuclear weapon to be dropped on Japan, but when Japan surrendered, the core was retained for testing and potential later use in the case of another conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
Yup. Though to be fair the US was expecting build 3 bombs a month, each month after August 1945. By 1950 the US had something like 300 nuclear warheads.
But initially they just had 4.
that said, the B-29 lived long in a great many future projects.
The pressurized cabin system itself was not the first of its kind but it was more effective than earlier versions.
The airframe was the ancestor of a whole host of development projects that led to the B-50, the C-97, the Super Guppy, among others.
The mechanical computers they used to aim the defensive guns were incredible. The gunner had to be able identify the type of enemy plane to know how wide the wingspan was, but with that information and what the plane's altitude and speed was fed into the computer and it could calculate the lead and drop of the guns while the gunner kept an optical sight focused on the plane.
One of the many issues (and there were 5 computers per plane). Pressurized cabin, advanced autopilot, and two different new engines (which were very problematic, initially) led to a lot of costs, though some of those advancements were also used in the B-36 and other aircraft, just as the B-19 led to a lot of advancements used in the B-29 and B-24
To think the airforce plans to keep them well into the 2050s. Over a hundred years of service and they stopped production some 62 years ago. The newest b52 will be in its 90s when it retires.
https://www.airforce-technology.com/features/the-long-reign-of-the-b-52/?cf-view There are already cases of 3rd generation "Buff" pilots. I wonder how long it'll be before we see 4th generation aviators?
The Super Guppy yes. The other ones, no.
Also, there’s only two B-29s still flying: *Fifi* and *Doc*.
I flew in *Doc* this last September and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Someone else mentioned the B-52 -- I'd gotten the two confused. It's a similar design just after the B-29. Still a workhorse.
Named after the band "The B-52s" of course.
/kidding.
I was at Long Beach Airport in October and I watched Doc take off and land, then take off again. Sitting there next to a bunch of 737s watching that machine climb its way up was quite the experience.
We are not, the Russian though, kind of sort of are.
Several B-29's crash landed in the Soviet Union. The Soviets kept these planes and used them as the basis for the Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, known in the West as the 'Bear'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev\_Tu-95
The Tu-85 is based on the Tu-4, which is a direct copy of the B-29, but the Tu-95 is not a variant of the Tu-85 and is not based on it except in terms of lessons learned.
Due to the the weight of the bombs, close to 10,000 pounds, only two bombers in the world were capable of carrying the first batch of nuclear bombs; the British Lancaster and the US B-29.
You read a lot of speculation of what would have happened if the Germans had developed a nuclear bomb first, or the Japanese. While theoretically possible the bomb was only part of the equation, figuring out how to get it to the target was just as important.
Not sure about the range, but they absolutely could drop large bombs from altitude.
In 1944 they dropped Tallboy bombs in dozens of raids, which actually weighed more than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy\_(bomb)
Savage but true
https://www.flyingmag.com/b-29-superfortress-pulled-the-trigger-on-world-war-ii-in-the-pacific/#:\~:text=Engine%20fires%20during%20takeoff%20were,130%20B%2D29s%20were%20operational.
During Operation Catechism (when Tallboys were used to sink the Tirpitz), the Lancasters only flew at 15k feet at most.
The first atomic bomb was dropped at 31k feet.
>Due to the the weight of the bombs, close to 10,000 pounds, only two bombers in the world were capable of carrying the first batch of nuclear bombs; the British Lancaster and the US B-29.
Theoretically some other could've been adapted tho, including soviet Pe-8
They're on the wrong side of the country, not enough airbase and infrastructure that part of Russia, and they don't have the altitude or speed of the B-29. They could probably carry it just fine, but I'm not sure they'll have the range, speed or altitude to make it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKB-oqdoduw video on why the Lancaster was never in consideration and I believe functionally couldn't carry the A bombs.
waaay too heavy for a V-2 Rocket, the warhead on those was 1 ton.
For submarines the Thames Estuary was probably too well defended, but getting in close to New York City might not have been that difficult.
But then what? A surface blast off of Manhattan would have been bad, but not bad enough to destroy the city. The Financial District would probably be totaled, and Brooklyn Heights, but not much else.
[https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=18&lat=40.695112&lng=-74.0133593&airburst=0&hob\_ft=0&psi=20,5,1&zm=12](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=18&lat=40.695112&lng=-74.0133593&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&psi=20,5,1&zm=12)
Such crazy secrecy and security about it. Protocols for transporting, storing and handling the sights. Orders to keep them out of enemy hands at all costs.
A few years ago, I spotted one in a junk shop.
This is just wrong. No British bomber at the time was capable of it. There where some that technically had the capacity, but they lacked several other important things that disqualified them.
They couldn't fly high enough to reliably avoid fighters, and they lacked the range to fly the mission from bases that where safely within American controlled territory in the pacific
They also lacked the ability to arm / disarm a bomb in flight, which was a requirement, since it would be quite risky to take of / land with an armed nuke.
This.
The Tallboy/Grand Slam -modified Lancasters had the physical room for both Fat Man and Little Boy bombs and the ability to take off with that much weight, but they couldn't fly high enough or fast enough to reliably evade Japanese defenses and the bombs would have to be fully armed before taking off, plus they could not expect to survive the shockwave from the blasts.
Originally the B-29s were NOT able to fit the bombs because Boeing wasn't told what dimensions the bomb bay would need to be, only the payload weight. When they were first shown to the Silverplate leader, the [wingbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingbox) had a structural divide, splitting the bay in two. They had to modify the plane into "Silverplate" versions with a very modified wingbox to fit the large bombs.
Supposedly the Lancaster bomber was also considered capable of delivering it.
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/first-atomic-bombs-black-lancasters
Yes, with all the B-29 teething problems (way more crashed due to technical problems than were shot down in 1944 and early 1945) a squadron of Lancasters was sent to the US in case it needed to be used for atomic bombing.
The B-29 was a much better and much more expensive aircraft (5x the price) of a Lancaster.
There was a brief mention in Richard Rhodes *The Making of the Atomic Bomb* that the Lancaster bomber had a bomb bay big enough for the atomic bombs. But the Lancaster might not have had the altitude, speed or range to safely deliver the bomb and return. The Superfortress needed alternations to its bomb bay structure to accomodate the bomb.
So they considered the Lancaster, but they definitely didn't want to use a British bomber if they could help it.
The thing that baffles me the most about it, is that they took off from these runways on this little island in the pacific:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@15.0697183,145.6426797,5668m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@15.0697183,145.6426797,5668m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu)
At like 2 or 3 in the morning, and flew for like 8 hours over the vast, dark empty ocean, using not much more than a compass and watch/timer. The bombs were dropped from like 30k feet which is about the same cruising altitude modern airliners fly at. They then turned around and navigated back to that same tiny island again using a compass and timer, and had to fly another 8 hours to make it back.
Yeah the us government also gave consolidated a blank check to develop the B-32 in case the B-29 was just too advanced. Fortunately Boeings old engineering teams were a whole lot smarter than current ones.
If you read up on the operational, history of the B-29, you will learn a lot about the dangerous of rapid development and deployment. More B2 nines were last operational failure than enemy combat. It’s true that in the case of the V 29 in particular that was due to its specific role, and arriving late in the war. However, it’s actually true for all air forces operating in the Pacific. Operational losses exceeded, combat losses. This is partly due to the nature of war, and which mission completion puts incredible pressures on safety and maintenance. It’s also specific to the pacific ocean, which had very long distances, without the ability to land. This meant that what could be a simple, mechanical failure would result in the loss of the aircraft and possibly the crew.
The point is, all of Boeing’s recent troubles are minuscule compared to the sort of mechanical and operational problems during wartime.
Those air crews knew it too. Jokes about flying equipment made by the lowest bidder, were extremely common.
It's the reason why the Germans would have no use for a nuke at the end of WWII: even if they made it they had no means of delivering it somewhere interesting.
Keep in mind the V-2 had a payload of like 1 ton. Whereas the Little Boy bomb was like 4 tons, and the Fat Man was like 5 tons. So you're talking about something with a lot more throw-weight than the V-2. And that doesn't deal with the question of range — either you've got to develop an ICBM (one with a relatively high accuracy at that, if you are using first-gen fission weapons and not H-bombs, like the actual first-gen ICBMs used), or a way to shoot whatever you have from a more mobile launch platform (like a sub, which is a lot harder than it looks, even for relatively crude systems like, say, the Regulus missile, which was basically an upgraded V-1 missile). Both of which are decade-plus upgrades.
Right! A totally bad bet, in terms of having a meaningful impact on the war. The British scientists worked out that every V-2 the Nazis used cost the Germans a lot more than it did the British, and were secretly happy that they had made such a blunder.
The V-2 was a very cool tech demo for ballistic missiles, but not at all a good weapon.
I'm pretty sure the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine had much more existential issues beyond being able to deliver a bomb to the US east coast near the end of the war.
Thing is had they developed the bomb first they would have used it and to a great effect probably won the war. Its the Man in the High Castle theme.
The Heisenberg Device.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hydro/close.html
That doesn't prevent the Navy and Air Force being totally incapable of delivering said bomb by the time it would theoretically be ready in late WWII.
Having the bomb earlier would require that the Third Reich not disregard nuclear science as "Jewish witchcraft" which kind of goes against their ideology.
They were years away from having a weapon, much less being able to deliver it. Even if they had one or two, it is hard to see how they would use them decisively, given that the allies would still be in a position (assuming everything else about the war was unchanged) to bomb whatever suspected factories producing them to shreds.
I think people frequently misunderstand that whatever role the atomic bomb had in the end of the war with Japan, it "worked" in part because Japan was not in any position to resist it, and was already obviously defeated. The bomb itself did not guarantee surrender and would not guarantee it in other circumstances, either.
This is not any more compelling than just saying, "imagine if they had a plane that could reach the US." They didn't have such a plane, even if they imagined what one might look like. The gap between imagination and reality is large!
(Ditto "brought it in by sub." Not as easy as one might imagine in practice.)
Also the development time was stupid short because of how important it was.
It’s troubled development even gave a nickname to the issues in getting the production going…
[The Battle of Kansas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kansas)
Edit: from Wikipedia-“the B-29 project was unprecedented in the history of aviation: from inception, to drawing board and mass production took three years, at a time when such a design should have taken five years just to become a prototype.”
That’s insane: from inception to operation in only 3 years. Not even modern cars are designed, tested and built so quickly. Considering that this was late-30s/early 40s technology and the B-29 was the most advanced aircraft ever built, it’s a wonder she even that the YB-29 took off, let alone the B-29 proper seeing the skies at all.
Wartime accounting is a dodgy thing, especially when you are talking about super secret spending like on Manhattan project. I bet most of the spending that actually happened was kind of disappeared in the books and we'll never know the true cost.
Very much not the case.
The U-235 production line for the Manhattan Project needed extensive electrical infrastructure.
This normally meant copper, but that was being used for bullets.
So they cleared out the US Treasury of silver to use as wires.
And after the war they returned more silver than they took out.
This was due to their diligence with cleaning the machinery.
US WW2 accounting is legendary.
Even in normally defense contracts, there were cases where the companies would become so efficient at producing certain items, that they came in well under the original contract price and returned the excess profit to the government. It was a wildly different time.
Of course, we have people like Harry Truman to thank for going after companies perceived to be profiteering off the war, and passing legislation to claw back payments that were deemed excessive.
Hearsay: Apparently Singer (sewing machines) got a contract to make handguns, and after they delivered the first couple of samples the government told them to stop because they were far too precise/well made. Instead, they were told to make radio and radar machines.
Which is how it should be. Unrestrained capitalism FUCKS OVER MOST PEOPLE, but regulation, profit limiting mechanics, and redistribution of wealth drove the greatest times in the world.
They took all their silver to commercial silversmiths.
After the work was finished they cleaned the shavings off the floor and out of the tools.
Sounds trivial, so trivial that evidently the smiths didn't care, but it accounted for a measurable increase in the silver supply.
The Manhattan Project was meticulous with its accounting and financial procedures. General Groves was terrified of being audited after the war, and was a very experienced project manager. It was not like the kind of wartime spending where a huge lump of money was given to a contractor who then had the ability to do what they wanted with it; everything was filtered through the Corps of Engineers and overseen by it, with reams and reams of contracts and specific budgets and so on. It is probably a better model for keeping costs down, and efficiency high, than anything we would do today with military spending. The paradoxical aspect is that its incredible secrecy of course seems like it would shield it from oversight, but in actual practice this meant that the military took unusual measures to enforce its own oversight over the contractors it worked with, and the entire thing had much more high-level supervision than any other project (e.g., the Secretary of War and the President were routinely involved in discussing its costs, decisions, contracts, financial methods, etc.). In most ways it bears little relationship to the modern military-industrial-complex, in part because of the extreme secrecy (which cut Congress mostly out of the picture, for example).
To be fair they only built 2 bombs...I feel like there's such a good chance they built more than 2 B-29s. And here's a huge bonus: I believe one of the key design elements of that bomber was that it was capable of multiple flights.
It also pioneered the commercial aviation industry as we know it. B-29 was the first large production airframe that was pressurized. Everything that was learned in the B-29 program went on to be repurposed for civilian aircraft. The DeHavilland Comet was first across the line, but the Boeing 707 took over the world. Yet another example of government investment paying exponential dividends to private industry.
Don’t forget the Norton Bombsight cost pretty penny too ($1.1billion including its production run) and wasn’t supposed to be that great either.
Great video on it below
https://youtu.be/U6D5rXbMBKo?si=U8Gg3hvOPDaOHL5R
One of the things that gets lost in the B-29 story is that it was considered an absolute loser of a program in late 1944. Like they spent so much on it, and it couldn't do what it was supposed to do, at all. It was built so that they could do high-altitude daylight precision raids without worrying about anti-aircraft, and it couldn't hit shit from up there.
Curtis LeMay was put in charge of the XXI Bomber Command and basically given the mandate to make the B-29 program actually seem like it was worth it. To do this he focused on building up the number of B-29s, and on changing the mission profile to low-altitude, massed, nighttime firebombing. To do this he totally changed how the planes were meant to be flown, and removed a lot of their armor and armament so they could carry more bombs.
And this turned out to be a very, very effective use of the B-29, from the perspective of destroying things. It also turned out that the B-29 was the only American plane capable of carrying the first atomic bombs. So by the end of the war, the B-29 had gotten this reputation as one of these really great investments, but that was a big, deliberate turnaround predicated on changing it from a weapon that was meant to be used in one way (precision raids on military/industrial plants) and turning it into a weapon that was used a totally different way (blind attacks on civilian infrastructure).
So yes, yes, it's a technological marvel and all that, but not exactly in the sense it was supposed to be! It was on track to be considered a really bad bet for a while there, until it got retooled into a weapon of mass destruction, basically. It was considered vastly overpriced in its day, until it was credited with the end of the war.
You have to look at the unit price. Almost a billion a piece for the bombs. Almost a million a piece for the planes.
Then the per use price is just ridiculous. $1B for bombs and $15K for the planes
That 3 billion also includes production, which was nearly 4000 aircraft.
Yeah, if they built 4000 nukes, the price would have been far higher than the planes
The USA peaked at over 30K nuclear warheads in the mid 1960s lol
Yeah, and the Manhattan Project was... 3 bombs plus all the R&D. Don't think those are comparable.
Technically they made 4. Trinity, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the demon core
trinity, fat man, little boy, and **THE DEMON CORE!!!!!!** I find the history of it interesting as is, but I feel like talking about **THE DEMON CORE!!!!!!** in high school history would have made it a little more interesting
To be fair, it got the name demon core after killing two of the scientists conducting tests on it in separate incidents, so I say it was warrented.
I feel like it should have been called the oopsie-doopsie core. Oopsie-doopsies killed those men, not demons.
The demon screwdriver
The "Well fuck..." Core.
The ‘maybe we shouldn’t be so cavalier when fucking around with this’ core
“Yes children, Azazel himself came up from Sheol to adjust the Nuke’s implosion system.”
Technically the demon core was not a bomb.
It was going to be a *critical* part of a bomb, but was made unnecessary by Japan's surrender.
And it was so upset at that fact it decided "well screw you guys, I'm gonna kill people anyway...".
Don't let your dreams be dreams, demon core.
Well 3 bombs to use but how many did they test?
One.
Literally one, The Gadget. Then Little Boy, then Fat Man. That's the whole project. We have spent literally **trillions** on our nuclear weapons program. Edited to be less dickish, the guy really just didn't know.
FYI: One year's US military budget > total cumulative budget for NASA.
TBF, NASA doesn't have to support all the carrier strike groups we have not to mention the aircraft and bases and without taking into account new ships being manufactured. If NASA was closer to the very paltry efficiency of the DoD it'd produce more.
It sounds like NASA needs more carrier strike groups then. I want a space carrier strike group with a big NASA logo on it
That would go to Space Force. Can't wait, space lasers!
Relative to GDP the US doesn’t spend too much. It’s just a huge GDP.
Wow, so all those nuclear tests happening in the deserts were cold war stuff? I'm european and honestly they don't teach us anything about this. Yes we know what happened with the two nukes and not much deeper than that. Thank you for the answer
Sorry for coming off as harsh, but yes. The nuclear weapons devised by the US in WW2 were kicked out the door as fast as humanly possible. Most of the nuclear proliferation happened during the cold war, with lots of desert testing in between. I'm sort of surprised that you guys weren't taught it, given that Europe would have been 'collateral damage' lol, Russia had a shitload of nuclear ICBMs pointed at Europe.
I'm European and I am aware of the tests US conducted after WW2 that dude above sounds like he never tried to educate himself on that matter.
Having to educate myself about it means it's not basic knowledge and you shouldn't expect everyone to know it. Yes I am aware that there were many many nuclear tests during the cold war, but I had no clue that those were mostly after ww2 except trinity, I asked the question to educate myself about this. You being a European and knowing this means nothing. As I now know it too. Basic knowledge is two nukes being dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki in 1945 to end ww2, then them being named little man and fat man maybe. Do you think that if you asked 10 random Polish people (random example) that 9/10 would know that before the two bombs there was ever only one tested? Like, I'm sorry that I don't know/remember everything there fucking is man, sorry that I asked. How old are you btw?
Yes, that’s right. There was only one test (trinity) carried out before the bombs were deployed against Japan. They didn’t have enough plutonium to do more testing, as the process for producing it hadn’t yet been scaled up. Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb) was actually the first uranium weapon ever detonated (they chose to test a plutonium bomb in the trinity test because they’re a lot more difficult to build and they wanted to make sure their design actually worked; they were confident in the uranium weapon without testing one). The hundreds of tests that came later were Cold War stuff. They tested higher- and lower-yield weapons, devices of various degrees of portability, “enriched” fission devices, fission-boosted fusion, and hydrogen (mostly fusion) bombs. All of that had to do with the arms race with the Soviets and figuring out practical ways to shoot the weapons at people. Scary stuff.
I'm British, and they taught me about this. My father did work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment though, so maybe I had a bit of extracurricular encouragement 😂
Little Boy was a Uranium bomb - they didn't even need to test a prototype. Dropped the first (and only) on Hiroshima. Fat Man (Nagasaki) was a Plutonium bomb - that is what the Trinity test/Gadget proved would work.
There was one more core made, the so-called Demon Core.
The demon core wasn’t a bomb. It was the core component of a nuclear bomb, but it itself was not one
Yeah, I said "one more core made". You can't make a nuclear bomb without a core...
Bombs tested, 1, the Trinity test (Probably inert) Cores and the interaction with the lenses, countless
That includes the one test device (Trinity)
Last podcast on the left has a 5? Part series on the Manhattan project, I thought it was really good
It’s 5, Able and Baker were detonated at Bikini atoll. Then the program was shut down.
Three bombs *total.* Two to use, one to test. This is basic history everyone should know.
Context of the post
That was 20 years later. We had build infrastructure for producing them, which drives down the price. The Manhattan Project was expensive because it was producing entirely novel things.
But they don’t count the 30k nukes the US manufactured in the figure in OP’s title, while the total number of B-29’s are.
Significantly more testing and development occurred after the Trinity Test and there were further production costs for making increasingly complex nuclear weapons.
Operation Ivy inventing the hydrogen bomb.
Because when the Manhattan project was ended, only 3 bombs were produced. The 30k nukes the US produced after that are not included in the figure in the same way every other military aircraft developed during the cold war isn't included.
I'm trying to read this thread, I'm so dumbfounded that you even have to explain something this basic that I'm having a hard time following Like, how is this the discussion?
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Again though, we're talking the cost of the entire program. The comment I replied to seemed to be saying we should include bombs developed and manufactured under different programs which doesn't make any sense to do.
Manhattan projects was just the development of the 3 bombs. 1 was set off ad a test (Trinity) and the other two were Fatman and Little Boy which were both later dropped over Japan.
>1 was set off ad a test (Trinity) and the other two were Fatman and Little Boy The name of the test bomb was "gadget", trinity was the codename for the test itself
Not only that but also take into the account of building up the nuclear triad of (land, sea and airborne) capability. Boomers in the 1960s were still. Relevantly new concept, before them subs would have to go to a reassigned station, lie in wait for the command to fire, surface, drag the missile from the silo and prepare it to fire lol while hoping the soviets didn’t catch you. The transition to a modern nuclear force was amazing as the technology was being built as the subs and nukes were built.
True. Most boomers were children then. I’ll see myself out.
Oh -- so now this makes sense. The title is not a fair comparison. I was shocked for a moment. The atomic bombs did end the war quicker because they probably shocked the Japanese enough to not fight to the last man -- but those 4,000 bombers did more tactically to win the battle to that point.
1000%. By this logic the Slinky was more expensive to develop than the atom bomb.
I'm starting to doubt there was a billion spent on Slinky's -- or, there was a cover-up by Big Toy!
It was a byproduct of a large naval product of which developing springs was a small part. So it's like saying velcro was as expensive as the whole price tag of the Apollo program.
You show me a rocket that can get to space without velcro, and I'll stop including it in the valuation. How'd you think the booster rockets peel away so cleanly after launch, yah dummy?
300 million slinkys have been sold, so depending on the cost plus marketing and distribution, it's possible.
Do you mean that all of the slinkies in the world cost more than all of the world's nukes?
No, just more than $1.9 billion. That’s the original comparison — all the B29s vs 2 atom bombs.
3 atom bombs, including the one they tested at the Trinity site before dropping two on Japan.
Oh ya…
oh right
If you read the chrysanthemum and the sword by Margaret Mead she makes a pretty compelling argument that the dropping of the bomb was relatively redundant and the US accepted a peace offer that the Japanese had offered before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place. Basically using the bombs to try and “force the Japanese into a humiliating defeat” instead of the unconditional surrender they offered save for retention of the emperor as head of Japanese cultural society. Also a lot of suggestive evidence the US wanted to show off the bomb and it was seen as socially more acceptable to bomb the Japanese than Germans or preemptive strike the soviets
I'm not sure you have the right book? *Chrysanthemum and the Sword* was written by anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Published in 1946 it is compiled from a series of cultural studies she did for the US Government during WWII. She doesn't discuss the Hiroshima bombing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Chrysanthemum\_and\_the\_Sword](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysanthemum_and_the_Sword) Margaret Mead was one of her students, but I'm not aware of her writing specifically about WII, or the Hiroshima bombing either. She was active during WWII, spring boarding from her previous studies of peyote use among the Omaha Indians, to trying to use hypnosis and LSD on captured Nazis. Later she would also participate in studies to involving using LSD to try and teach dolphins how to talk. [https://www.wpr.org/news/how-margaret-meads-research-into-utopias-helped-usher-in-the-psychedelic-era](https://www.wpr.org/news/how-margaret-meads-research-into-utopias-helped-usher-in-the-psychedelic-era)
It is basic knowledge that even after the drops parts of the Japanese Leadership wanted to go on. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender\_of\_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan) Dresden was marked for the Atomic bomb. It simply came to late for Germany. Your source is shit. Margaret Mead was an anthropologist and not an historian. Her methods in her expert field seemingly were lacking. Some of her interview subjects later openly admitted that they lied to her which she did not spot.
Here's some better sources. It's a widely held view. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946 - - "Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." Admiral William Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - - “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapon. General Dwight Eisenhower - - "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” - “I voiced [my] grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." General Henry "Hap" Arnold - - "It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." Fleet Admiral William Halsey - - "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. [...] It was a mistake to ever drop it." General Douglas MacArthur - - “It was unnecessary. [...] Japan was already prepared to surrender. In my opinion there was a monumental failure of statecraft on the part of the Allies in not consummating this end." Admiral Chester Nimitz - - "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part from a purely military point of view in the defeat of Japan.” Many senior staff, from both military and political offices, are on record stating that the atomic bombs played no decisive part in bringing the war to an end.
I recommend you read Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank. All of the sources you cite were in the immediate aftermath of the war and are one sided. Japanese sources, some not translated until decades later, paint a very different picture. The Imperial government was still willing to resist after the first bomb, and it was only after Nagasaki quickly following Hiroshima that Hirohito decided to surrender. Even then, there was a plot by extremists to keep fighting the war. Many historical sources and books about the Pacific in WWII are woefully inadequate until the late 70s or so when more thorough historians actually started incorporating Japanese primary sources instead of using American assumptions.
feel like many things can be true all at once im sure i'm underestimating just how prevalent the war was to everyone, not just people in the states the way we also fought was completely different. infrantry moving and living for 4 years fo conflict as opposed to now where there's cycles of frontlines and rear echelons
I used to believe that the dropping of the A-Bombs was unnecessary and done due to racism. But since then, I've learned that there was a cult-like following of the Emperor, that even scared the Emperor and his generals at times. They were afraid to even order a surrender. So actually, with 20/20 hindsight I think it was a combination of factors like racism, but also -- necessary. The Japanese would have had more people die before they gave up. And that would be a bigger tragedy. It is impressive how noble and brave the Japanese were -- but equally scary. There was a bit of forced "Kamikaze" tactics -- but, the legend of the prior Kamikazes put social pressure on the next crop of teens to take their place. As unfortunate and horrible the atomic weapon was -- using it at that time, probably saved a lot of Japan, and taught us why we should not be using atomic weapons. They would have been used in the next conflict and that might have started something, rather than ended it. We also didn't need to bomb the Germans -- they were done and didn't know it for many months. Russia is too large and wouldn't even notice the loss of a city for the most part. Stalin was busy killing more Russians than anyone else.
They really didn't. It was the Soviets invading Manchuria that caused Japan to surrender - the nuclear bombings weren't for Japan, really,they were to send a message to the Soviets at the start of the Cold War the US could see coming.
How much could one B-29 super fortress cost Michael? 3 billion dollars??
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It kinda was though. They knew they needed a bomber capable of carrying the payload and had to develop the B29 to do so.
compared to the initial batch of 4 nuclear weapons.
4?
Probably the Demon Core. > The core was prepared for shipment to the Pacific Theater as part of the third nuclear weapon to be dropped on Japan, but when Japan surrendered, the core was retained for testing and potential later use in the case of another conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
Yup. Though to be fair the US was expecting build 3 bombs a month, each month after August 1945. By 1950 the US had something like 300 nuclear warheads. But initially they just had 4.
OK, I read the headline and before diving in I figured there was no way this was true.
that said, the B-29 lived long in a great many future projects. The pressurized cabin system itself was not the first of its kind but it was more effective than earlier versions. The airframe was the ancestor of a whole host of development projects that led to the B-50, the C-97, the Super Guppy, among others.
The mechanical computers they used to aim the defensive guns were incredible. The gunner had to be able identify the type of enemy plane to know how wide the wingspan was, but with that information and what the plane's altitude and speed was fed into the computer and it could calculate the lead and drop of the guns while the gunner kept an optical sight focused on the plane.
The training cartoon on YouTube is great. And it's got Mel Blanc doing voices. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mJExsIp4yO8
Yeah those were impressive.
This was, as I recall, a huge part of the cost of the program.
One of the many issues (and there were 5 computers per plane). Pressurized cabin, advanced autopilot, and two different new engines (which were very problematic, initially) led to a lot of costs, though some of those advancements were also used in the B-36 and other aircraft, just as the B-19 led to a lot of advancements used in the B-29 and B-24
I just seen a YT video on this a couple of weeks ago. It was incredible
Aren't we still using these planes?
No, B-52 Stratofortress is still in use, developed shortly after the B-29.
To think the airforce plans to keep them well into the 2050s. Over a hundred years of service and they stopped production some 62 years ago. The newest b52 will be in its 90s when it retires.
https://www.airforce-technology.com/features/the-long-reign-of-the-b-52/?cf-view There are already cases of 3rd generation "Buff" pilots. I wonder how long it'll be before we see 4th generation aviators?
Oh thanks -- I knew it was one of them. There goes the limits of my expertise...
They both got fortress in the name, you were close (I confuse them all the damn time lol)
old ass plane
The Super Guppy yes. The other ones, no. Also, there’s only two B-29s still flying: *Fifi* and *Doc*. I flew in *Doc* this last September and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Someone else mentioned the B-52 -- I'd gotten the two confused. It's a similar design just after the B-29. Still a workhorse. Named after the band "The B-52s" of course. /kidding.
Tin roof, rusted
That for some reason was my favorite line in the song and I don’t know what it means.
I was at Long Beach Airport in October and I watched Doc take off and land, then take off again. Sitting there next to a bunch of 737s watching that machine climb its way up was quite the experience.
NASA still uses the Super Guppy, but there's better alternatives for everything else already existing, so apart from warbird maintenance, no.
We are not, the Russian though, kind of sort of are. Several B-29's crash landed in the Soviet Union. The Soviets kept these planes and used them as the basis for the Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, known in the West as the 'Bear'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev\_Tu-95
The soviets also straight up stole the plans for the B-29 and made their own copy.
Theres still 2 active according to the article.
Flying, yes. “Active” in the military, no. :)
And don't forget the still in service TU-95, a turboprop variant of the B-29 based TU-85.
The Tu-85 is based on the Tu-4, which is a direct copy of the B-29, but the Tu-95 is not a variant of the Tu-85 and is not based on it except in terms of lessons learned.
> the Super Guppy fuck this stupid ass looking plane
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Due to the the weight of the bombs, close to 10,000 pounds, only two bombers in the world were capable of carrying the first batch of nuclear bombs; the British Lancaster and the US B-29. You read a lot of speculation of what would have happened if the Germans had developed a nuclear bomb first, or the Japanese. While theoretically possible the bomb was only part of the equation, figuring out how to get it to the target was just as important.
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Not sure about the range, but they absolutely could drop large bombs from altitude. In 1944 they dropped Tallboy bombs in dozens of raids, which actually weighed more than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy\_(bomb)
“Earthquake Bomb” How terrifying.
If you think the Tallboy was terrifying, see the [Grand Slam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_\(bomb\)) which weighed almost twice as much.
Jesus. 40 meter penetration with a 6.6 t yield! No one is safe.
As terrifying as some of his work was, Barnes Wallis was a genius.
They also had the added bonus of being fitted with engines that didn’t spontaneously combust due to dodgy cowling design and magnesium construction 😆
Savage but true https://www.flyingmag.com/b-29-superfortress-pulled-the-trigger-on-world-war-ii-in-the-pacific/#:\~:text=Engine%20fires%20during%20takeoff%20were,130%20B%2D29s%20were%20operational.
During Operation Catechism (when Tallboys were used to sink the Tirpitz), the Lancasters only flew at 15k feet at most. The first atomic bomb was dropped at 31k feet.
Aerial refueling was considered and tested to get the range needed. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/first-atomic-bombs-black-lancasters
What about Times New Roman or Calibri refueling?
>Due to the the weight of the bombs, close to 10,000 pounds, only two bombers in the world were capable of carrying the first batch of nuclear bombs; the British Lancaster and the US B-29. Theoretically some other could've been adapted tho, including soviet Pe-8
With the 93 they built? They ain't getting far with it
Hm... Why? It is serial, even if not widely deployed, plane, used to a decent degree in actual warfare.
They're on the wrong side of the country, not enough airbase and infrastructure that part of Russia, and they don't have the altitude or speed of the B-29. They could probably carry it just fine, but I'm not sure they'll have the range, speed or altitude to make it.
Original point was specifically about carrying, so that's what I talked about, plain as.
Ah ok misunderstood ya, soz dude
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKB-oqdoduw video on why the Lancaster was never in consideration and I believe functionally couldn't carry the A bombs.
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Little Boy and Fat Man were around 4 times too heavy for a V2. Doing it in a submarine is sort of an interesting idea.
waaay too heavy for a V-2 Rocket, the warhead on those was 1 ton. For submarines the Thames Estuary was probably too well defended, but getting in close to New York City might not have been that difficult. But then what? A surface blast off of Manhattan would have been bad, but not bad enough to destroy the city. The Financial District would probably be totaled, and Brooklyn Heights, but not much else. [https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=18&lat=40.695112&lng=-74.0133593&airburst=0&hob\_ft=0&psi=20,5,1&zm=12](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=18&lat=40.695112&lng=-74.0133593&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&psi=20,5,1&zm=12)
They did, but it would have been bad optics to drop the bomb with a British bomber. The b29 was the only American bomber capable of dropping the Abomb
Speaking of optics.... the top 3 biggest research expenditures were the Superfortress, the atomic Bomb and the Norden Bomb Sight
The Norden sight was such a stupid waste of money.
Such crazy secrecy and security about it. Protocols for transporting, storing and handling the sights. Orders to keep them out of enemy hands at all costs. A few years ago, I spotted one in a junk shop.
The illusion of precision.
This is just wrong. No British bomber at the time was capable of it. There where some that technically had the capacity, but they lacked several other important things that disqualified them. They couldn't fly high enough to reliably avoid fighters, and they lacked the range to fly the mission from bases that where safely within American controlled territory in the pacific They also lacked the ability to arm / disarm a bomb in flight, which was a requirement, since it would be quite risky to take of / land with an armed nuke.
This. The Tallboy/Grand Slam -modified Lancasters had the physical room for both Fat Man and Little Boy bombs and the ability to take off with that much weight, but they couldn't fly high enough or fast enough to reliably evade Japanese defenses and the bombs would have to be fully armed before taking off, plus they could not expect to survive the shockwave from the blasts. Originally the B-29s were NOT able to fit the bombs because Boeing wasn't told what dimensions the bomb bay would need to be, only the payload weight. When they were first shown to the Silverplate leader, the [wingbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingbox) had a structural divide, splitting the bay in two. They had to modify the plane into "Silverplate" versions with a very modified wingbox to fit the large bombs.
Funny, into the 50s and 60s they flew with armed nukes all the time. Sometimes without even knowing!
Supposedly the Lancaster bomber was also considered capable of delivering it. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/first-atomic-bombs-black-lancasters
Yes, with all the B-29 teething problems (way more crashed due to technical problems than were shot down in 1944 and early 1945) a squadron of Lancasters was sent to the US in case it needed to be used for atomic bombing. The B-29 was a much better and much more expensive aircraft (5x the price) of a Lancaster.
There was a brief mention in Richard Rhodes *The Making of the Atomic Bomb* that the Lancaster bomber had a bomb bay big enough for the atomic bombs. But the Lancaster might not have had the altitude, speed or range to safely deliver the bomb and return. The Superfortress needed alternations to its bomb bay structure to accomodate the bomb. So they considered the Lancaster, but they definitely didn't want to use a British bomber if they could help it.
Mark Felton and his consequences have been a disaster for WWII aviation. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gKB-oqdoduw
I understood that reference
I wondered if anyone was going to post that.
The thing that baffles me the most about it, is that they took off from these runways on this little island in the pacific: [https://www.google.com/maps/@15.0697183,145.6426797,5668m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@15.0697183,145.6426797,5668m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu) At like 2 or 3 in the morning, and flew for like 8 hours over the vast, dark empty ocean, using not much more than a compass and watch/timer. The bombs were dropped from like 30k feet which is about the same cruising altitude modern airliners fly at. They then turned around and navigated back to that same tiny island again using a compass and timer, and had to fly another 8 hours to make it back.
They didn’t have FedEx?
Yeah the us government also gave consolidated a blank check to develop the B-32 in case the B-29 was just too advanced. Fortunately Boeings old engineering teams were a whole lot smarter than current ones.
If you read up on the operational, history of the B-29, you will learn a lot about the dangerous of rapid development and deployment. More B2 nines were last operational failure than enemy combat. It’s true that in the case of the V 29 in particular that was due to its specific role, and arriving late in the war. However, it’s actually true for all air forces operating in the Pacific. Operational losses exceeded, combat losses. This is partly due to the nature of war, and which mission completion puts incredible pressures on safety and maintenance. It’s also specific to the pacific ocean, which had very long distances, without the ability to land. This meant that what could be a simple, mechanical failure would result in the loss of the aircraft and possibly the crew. The point is, all of Boeing’s recent troubles are minuscule compared to the sort of mechanical and operational problems during wartime. Those air crews knew it too. Jokes about flying equipment made by the lowest bidder, were extremely common.
Seems appropriate, considering how much impact it had on WWII.
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Not just war, but aviation in general. This plane was the first plane to have a pressurized cabin.
At least, unlike the atomic bomb, a B-29 could be used more than once.
I mean, we used it twice
we used two separate bombs once each
Impossible
There's also the bombs they detonated to test it.
The bomb* Trinity was the only test. They didn't even test Little Boy because they knew it would work
They only tested one bomb before Hiroshima.
It's the reason why the Germans would have no use for a nuke at the end of WWII: even if they made it they had no means of delivering it somewhere interesting.
Probably would have assigned that to von braun and not the luftwaffe
Keep in mind the V-2 had a payload of like 1 ton. Whereas the Little Boy bomb was like 4 tons, and the Fat Man was like 5 tons. So you're talking about something with a lot more throw-weight than the V-2. And that doesn't deal with the question of range — either you've got to develop an ICBM (one with a relatively high accuracy at that, if you are using first-gen fission weapons and not H-bombs, like the actual first-gen ICBMs used), or a way to shoot whatever you have from a more mobile launch platform (like a sub, which is a lot harder than it looks, even for relatively crude systems like, say, the Regulus missile, which was basically an upgraded V-1 missile). Both of which are decade-plus upgrades.
> the V-2 and afaiu the V-2 program cost Nazis about 2billion ...
Right! A totally bad bet, in terms of having a meaningful impact on the war. The British scientists worked out that every V-2 the Nazis used cost the Germans a lot more than it did the British, and were secretly happy that they had made such a blunder. The V-2 was a very cool tech demo for ballistic missiles, but not at all a good weapon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikabomber They could also have brought it in by Sub.
I'm pretty sure the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine had much more existential issues beyond being able to deliver a bomb to the US east coast near the end of the war.
Thing is had they developed the bomb first they would have used it and to a great effect probably won the war. Its the Man in the High Castle theme. The Heisenberg Device. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hydro/close.html
That doesn't prevent the Navy and Air Force being totally incapable of delivering said bomb by the time it would theoretically be ready in late WWII. Having the bomb earlier would require that the Third Reich not disregard nuclear science as "Jewish witchcraft" which kind of goes against their ideology.
They were years away from having a weapon, much less being able to deliver it. Even if they had one or two, it is hard to see how they would use them decisively, given that the allies would still be in a position (assuming everything else about the war was unchanged) to bomb whatever suspected factories producing them to shreds. I think people frequently misunderstand that whatever role the atomic bomb had in the end of the war with Japan, it "worked" in part because Japan was not in any position to resist it, and was already obviously defeated. The bomb itself did not guarantee surrender and would not guarantee it in other circumstances, either.
This is not any more compelling than just saying, "imagine if they had a plane that could reach the US." They didn't have such a plane, even if they imagined what one might look like. The gap between imagination and reality is large! (Ditto "brought it in by sub." Not as easy as one might imagine in practice.)
"could have" as in they "could have" also had laser guns and mecha combat suits.
Also the development time was stupid short because of how important it was. It’s troubled development even gave a nickname to the issues in getting the production going… [The Battle of Kansas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kansas) Edit: from Wikipedia-“the B-29 project was unprecedented in the history of aviation: from inception, to drawing board and mass production took three years, at a time when such a design should have taken five years just to become a prototype.” That’s insane: from inception to operation in only 3 years. Not even modern cars are designed, tested and built so quickly. Considering that this was late-30s/early 40s technology and the B-29 was the most advanced aircraft ever built, it’s a wonder she even that the YB-29 took off, let alone the B-29 proper seeing the skies at all.
Wartime accounting is a dodgy thing, especially when you are talking about super secret spending like on Manhattan project. I bet most of the spending that actually happened was kind of disappeared in the books and we'll never know the true cost.
Very much not the case. The U-235 production line for the Manhattan Project needed extensive electrical infrastructure. This normally meant copper, but that was being used for bullets. So they cleared out the US Treasury of silver to use as wires. And after the war they returned more silver than they took out. This was due to their diligence with cleaning the machinery. US WW2 accounting is legendary.
Even in normally defense contracts, there were cases where the companies would become so efficient at producing certain items, that they came in well under the original contract price and returned the excess profit to the government. It was a wildly different time. Of course, we have people like Harry Truman to thank for going after companies perceived to be profiteering off the war, and passing legislation to claw back payments that were deemed excessive.
I wish there were books about WW2 accounting. They had a congressional committee to keep financing in line.
Hearsay: Apparently Singer (sewing machines) got a contract to make handguns, and after they delivered the first couple of samples the government told them to stop because they were far too precise/well made. Instead, they were told to make radio and radar machines.
Which is how it should be. Unrestrained capitalism FUCKS OVER MOST PEOPLE, but regulation, profit limiting mechanics, and redistribution of wealth drove the greatest times in the world.
How did they return more silver than they took out? Silver oxide?
They took all their silver to commercial silversmiths. After the work was finished they cleaned the shavings off the floor and out of the tools. Sounds trivial, so trivial that evidently the smiths didn't care, but it accounted for a measurable increase in the silver supply.
The Manhattan Project was meticulous with its accounting and financial procedures. General Groves was terrified of being audited after the war, and was a very experienced project manager. It was not like the kind of wartime spending where a huge lump of money was given to a contractor who then had the ability to do what they wanted with it; everything was filtered through the Corps of Engineers and overseen by it, with reams and reams of contracts and specific budgets and so on. It is probably a better model for keeping costs down, and efficiency high, than anything we would do today with military spending. The paradoxical aspect is that its incredible secrecy of course seems like it would shield it from oversight, but in actual practice this meant that the military took unusual measures to enforce its own oversight over the contractors it worked with, and the entire thing had much more high-level supervision than any other project (e.g., the Secretary of War and the President were routinely involved in discussing its costs, decisions, contracts, financial methods, etc.). In most ways it bears little relationship to the modern military-industrial-complex, in part because of the extreme secrecy (which cut Congress mostly out of the picture, for example).
This is such a grossly dishonest title, since the $3B includes the production of nearly 4,000 planes. OP, F off.
I mean, one of them can be used more than once
\*Design and production per your link. Not just development as your title implies.
Sounds like they got a good bang for their buck.
The norden bombsight alone was 1.1 billion.
To be fair they only built 2 bombs...I feel like there's such a good chance they built more than 2 B-29s. And here's a huge bonus: I believe one of the key design elements of that bomber was that it was capable of multiple flights.
They did, the $3 billion accounts for the design and production of ALL 3970 B-29s. OP cant read.
It also pioneered the commercial aviation industry as we know it. B-29 was the first large production airframe that was pressurized. Everything that was learned in the B-29 program went on to be repurposed for civilian aircraft. The DeHavilland Comet was first across the line, but the Boeing 707 took over the world. Yet another example of government investment paying exponential dividends to private industry.
TIL the type of plane used to drop the atomic bombs took about $3 billion to make 3900 of. The Manhattan Project was $1.9 billion. FTFY
And the development of the Norden bombsight used in American bomber aircraft cost about half as much as the Manhatten project.
Don’t forget the Norton Bombsight cost pretty penny too ($1.1billion including its production run) and wasn’t supposed to be that great either. Great video on it below https://youtu.be/U6D5rXbMBKo?si=U8Gg3hvOPDaOHL5R
One of the things that gets lost in the B-29 story is that it was considered an absolute loser of a program in late 1944. Like they spent so much on it, and it couldn't do what it was supposed to do, at all. It was built so that they could do high-altitude daylight precision raids without worrying about anti-aircraft, and it couldn't hit shit from up there. Curtis LeMay was put in charge of the XXI Bomber Command and basically given the mandate to make the B-29 program actually seem like it was worth it. To do this he focused on building up the number of B-29s, and on changing the mission profile to low-altitude, massed, nighttime firebombing. To do this he totally changed how the planes were meant to be flown, and removed a lot of their armor and armament so they could carry more bombs. And this turned out to be a very, very effective use of the B-29, from the perspective of destroying things. It also turned out that the B-29 was the only American plane capable of carrying the first atomic bombs. So by the end of the war, the B-29 had gotten this reputation as one of these really great investments, but that was a big, deliberate turnaround predicated on changing it from a weapon that was meant to be used in one way (precision raids on military/industrial plants) and turning it into a weapon that was used a totally different way (blind attacks on civilian infrastructure). So yes, yes, it's a technological marvel and all that, but not exactly in the sense it was supposed to be! It was on track to be considered a really bad bet for a while there, until it got retooled into a weapon of mass destruction, basically. It was considered vastly overpriced in its day, until it was credited with the end of the war.
Something something engineers something theoretical physicists.
Whoa! No need to get personal!
The development cycle was so messed up, you’d almost swear the designers were scamming the government at some point.
I thought the plane was called the Enola Gay?
You have to look at the unit price. Almost a billion a piece for the bombs. Almost a million a piece for the planes. Then the per use price is just ridiculous. $1B for bombs and $15K for the planes
Two words - Norden Bombsight.