RE: Sometimes ya just gotta nuke em

[Simon Spero <ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu>]

On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, Robert A. Rosenberg wrote:

> I agree - Not only were there two different separation methods but the two
> bombs dropped on Japan were of different designs (I think that the
> Hiroshima bomb was the same design as the land test version and the
> Nagasaki one was the untested design [so that if used, there would have
> been a tested design for the first drop]).

Actually, it was the other way round. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 
an enriched uranium gun type bomb; the devices exploded at Trinity and 
Nagasaki were imploded plutonium devices. The Little-Boy design was not 
tested before being dropped as 1) the design was so (theoretically) 
simple that if it didn't work, nothing would, and 2) there wasn't enough 
enriched uranium to make two of them.

Simon
p.s.
  Everybody interested in this subject should read "The making of the 
Atom Bomb" by Richard Rhodes; it's an amazing book, well worth its 
Pulitzer. The section dealing with Hiroshima in the seconds and days after 
the explosion is incredibly painful to read.