This Day in History: 16 July 2020
16 July 1945
75 years ago, today, the first atomic bomb was successfully exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Plans for the creation of a uranium bomb had been conducted by the Allies in 1939, when Italian physicist Enrico Fermi met with US Navy officials to discuss the use of fissionable materials for military purposes. The research, however, was only funded a year later, with a more active interest growing in 1942. The United States were now at war with the Axis powers, and fear was increasing of the possibility that Germany were working on their own uranium bomb, so limits on resources for the project were removed.
The Manhattan Project, engineered by Brigadier-General Leslie R. Groves, would move through different locations during the early periods, most importantly at the University of Chicago, where Enrico Fermi set off the first fission chain reaction. However, the desert of New Mexico is where the Project took its final form, where theory and practise came together to create a nuclear explosion. The first atomic bomb was detonated, causing the first mushroom cloud that stretched 40,000 feet into the air. The tower on which the bomb sat was vaporised. Even though Germany was the original target of the bomb, they had already surrendered. This left Japan as the only enemy power remaining and therefore the bomb's first target.
Want to find out more about the history of the atomic bomb? Click here for more information, or here for a video with more on the Manhattan Project.
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