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Black
sailors nuked by CONfederates in A-bomb test at Port Chicago!!
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The
first atomic explosion in the history of the world took place
at Port Chicago near San Francisco on July 17, 1944. |
The
first atomic bomb dropped on Japan was the NEVER-TESTED
gun-assembly device!!
If
you can believe it, the CONfederate
navy dropped a NEVER-TESTED gun-assembly atomic bomb on Hiroshima
on August 6, 1945. Officially the only nuclear device they tested was
the implosion type bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
If you believe that, then you can believe that the earth is rotating!!
The inventor of
the gun-assembly device was Navy Captain William "Deak" Parsons.
So confident was he of his invention that he felt that no test was necessary
of the most important part of the bomb: the nuclear chain reaction:
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Navy cadet William "Deak" Parsons (1901-1953), in his
1922 Naval Academy portrait. |
Eye-opening
biographical book by the Naval Institute Press reveals the connection
between Port Chicago, Los Alamos, and Hiroshima.
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Promoted
to rear admiral at the end of WWII, Deak Parsons led the technical
effort at Operation Crossroads and set the direction of much of
the Confederate navy's nuclear policy. |
Captain William
"Deak" Parsons was the inventor of the gun-assemby device
for Little Boy. He armed the bomb during the flight to Hiroshima and
was in charge of dropping the atomic bomb on the city.
"The limitation
on Little Boy was not its design but the slow, difficult process of
separating uranium-235 from ore-grade uranium. After millions of dollars
and months of work, the ability of the Oak Ridge plant to produce
enough uranium-235 for more than one bomb by August 1945 was problematical.
This meant no advance testing of a
complete uranium bomb; its first use would be against the enemy. Parsons
and his gun group were confident that no advance test was needed.
Much of this confidence stemmed from the rigorous tests Parsons had
demanded of all the non-nuclear components."(Christman,
Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb,
pp. 149-150).
That is like building
a rocket ship and testing every part . . . .except the engine. Or designing
a gun and never pulling the trigger with a bullet inside to see if it
works.... It's pure FICTION as we will PROVE by subsequent events!!
The
gun-assembly atomic device
The first bomb was
designed to work like the barrel of a gun:
The gun
barrel atomic assembly.
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In
the gun-assembly method, a sub critical mass of uranium-235 (the
projectile) is fired down a cannon barrel into another sub critical
mass of U-235 (the target), which is placed in front of the muzzle.
Both gun and target are encased in the bomb. When projectile and
target contact, they form a critical mass which explodes.
If the firing is not fast enough, the neutrons emitted by the projectile
will begin interacting with the target before the contact and before
the mass has become critical. In this case, a pre-detonation occurs. |
The first atomic
bomb was a gun-assembly device:
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"Little
Boy"— the first uranium bomb. |
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Plutonium
will NOT WORK with the gun-assembly device so only one bomb of
this type was used.
We are told
that the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan was this UNPROVEN
gun-assembly device which had never been tested before
Hiroshima.
The scientists
and the military had such confidence in their new super weapon
that they were certain that it would work the first time—without
time consuming tests.
Only in fairy
tales does a highly complex device work perfectly the first
time!!
This weapon
of mass destruction was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August
6, 1945. |
The
second bomb was a plutonium "implosive" device
"Fat
man" was a plutonium implosive bomb.
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The plutonium
was WRAPPED in explosives and the explosives IMPLODED inward.
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The
core of the implosion bomb was a plutonium globe of a size just below
the critical mass. Made of two hemispheres, it was placed in the center
of a larger sphere of explosives, like the pit in a peach. Several detonators,
arranged symmetrically on the outside surface and triggered simultaneously
by an electric circuit, were to set off the blast. The pressure was
expected to go inward and squash the core into a compressed critical
mass. The fission would start a fantastically fast chain reaction, splitting
the billions of plutonium nuclei and thus releasing destructive energy
never matched before.
This
weapon of mass destruction was tested on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo,
in the southern desert of New Mexico.
This
weapon of mass destruction was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August
9, 1945.
"Fat
man" was tested on July 16, 1945.
Trinity
A-bomb test is called the first atomic explosion in the world.
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Obviously
the scientists and military did not have such confidence in #2
because they decided that maybe they weren't perfect after all
and may have made a few mistakes.
The test was
held in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945. It was a spectacular
success.
This second
more powerful plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on
August 9, 1945.
Although both
of these bombs used explosives to trigger the chain reaction; they
were radically different in design and operation. |
The
world was told Trinity A-bomb test was ammunition explosion!!
The
atomic explosion was visible over 200 miles away but the official line
was that ammunition exploded. The
commanding officer of the Alamogordo air base had been provided weeks
before with a news release in which each word had been numbered for
security. Groves now ordered the release to be distributed at once.
A copy of it was rushed to the AP office in Albuquerque. The wire service
story that appeared in a modest half-column on the front page of the
Albuquerque Tribune that afternoon carried the lead:
"An
ammunition magazine, containing high-explosives and pyrotechnics, exploded
early today in a remote area of the Alamogordo air base reservation,
producing a brilliant flash and blast which were reported to have been
observed as far away as Gallup, 235 miles northwest."
(Lamont, Day of Trinity, p.250).
First
atomic explosion took place at Port Chicago on July 17, 1944!!
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Port Chicago
was the site of an atomic test explosion at 10:17 p.m. on July
17, 1944. |
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The
armed forces of the U.S. were highly segregated in 1944. The
only positions open for blacks were in menial jobs. In Port
Chicago, they loaded ammunition onto ships 7 days a week in
three round-the-clock 8-hour shifts.
All
the overseers were Simon Legree type officers, while the back
breaking work was left to the black sailors.
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The scientists'
confidence in Little Boy seemed too good to be true....and it was....A
nuclear device was tested by the Navy at Port Chicago just north of
San Francisco at 10:19 P.M. on July 17:
"Seismograph
machines at the University of California at Berkeley recorded two
jolts with the force of a small earthquake. They occurred about seven
seconds apart shortly before 10:19 P.M. A first, smaller explosion
(which appeared to some witnesses to occur on the pier itself) was
followed by a cataclysmic blast as the E. A. Bryan exploded like one
gigantic bomb, sending a column of fire and smoke and debris climbing
twelve thousand feet into the night sky, with hundreds of exploding
shells making it look like a huge fireworks display.(Allen,
The Port Chicago Mutiny, p. 63).
A plane HAPPENED to
be flying over the area at that time:
"An
Army Air Force plane HAPPENED to be flying over at the time. The copilot
described what he saw: 'We were flying the radio range from Oakland
headed for Sacramento. We were flying on the right side of the radio
range when this explosion occurred. I was flying at the time and looking
straight ahead and at the ground when the explosion occurred. It seemed
to me that there was a huge ring of fire spread out to all sides,
first covering approximately three miles—I would estimate it
to be about three miles—and then it seemed to come straight
up. We were cruising at nine thousand feet above sea level and there
were pieces of metal that were white and orange in color, hot, that
went quite a ways above us. They were quite large. I would say they,
were as big as a house or a garage. They went up above our altitude.
The entire explosion seemed to last about a minute. These pieces gradually
disintegrated and fell to the ground in small pieces. The thing that
struck me about it was that it was so spontaneous, seemed to happen
all at once, didn't seem to be any small explosions except in the
air. There were pieces that flew off and exploded on all sides. A
good many stars and [it] looked like a fireworks display.'"(Allen,
The Port Chicago Mutiny, p. 63).
320
sailors were killed instantly!!
The
devastation to the town of Port Chicago was complete. Many were blinded
by the brilliant flash of light that accompanied the explosion:
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Aerial
view showing destroyed pier and oil slick from Quinalt Victory. |
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"Everyone
on the pier and aboard the two ships and the fire barge was killed
instantly—320 men, 202 of whom were black enlisted men.
(Only 51 bodies sufficiently intact to be identified were ever
recovered.) Another 390 military personnel and civilians were
injured, including 233 black enlisted men. This single stunning
disaster accounted for more than 15 percent of all black naval
casualties during the war."(Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny,
p. 64).
"The
E. A. Bryan was literally blown to bits—very little
of its wreckage was ever found that could be identified. The Quinalt
Victory was lifted clear out of the water by the blast, turned
around, and broken into pieces. The stern of the ship smashed
back into the water upside down some five hundred feet from where
it had originally been moored. The Coast Guard fire barge was
blown two hundred yards upriver and sunk. The locomotive and boxcars
disintegrated into hot fragments flying through the air. The 1,200
foot-long wooden pier simply disappeared."(Allen, The
Port Chicago Mutiny, p. 64). |
Navy Captain William
"Deak" Parsons visited Port Chicago after the explosion!!
Soon
after the explosion, "Deak" Parsons left Los Alamos and
visited Port Chicago to see how his invention worked:
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Capt. William
"Deak" Parsons at his desk in Los Alamos where he worked
with General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer to perfect the uranium
bomb.
According
to his biographer, he left nothing to chance....testing
every component over and over!! (Christman, p. 149). |
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"Parsons
could not avoid the extra responsibilities that went with being
the senior naval officer at Y, but many of the tasks that he took
on were self-imposed. In July 1944 he did
not have to personally investigate the explosion of two ammunition
ships at Port Chicago, northeast of San Francisco. It was, however,
something he felt he had to see for himself. As the chief planner
for the military delivery of an explosion of unprecedented size,
he recognized the Port Chicago disaster as a chance to examine
the effects of the largest explosion ever to occur in the United
States.
"On 20
July, accompanied by a Los Alamos officer and a scientist, Parsons
joined his brother-in-law Capt. Jack Crenshaw (a member of the
official inquiry into cause) at Mare island, and they went together
to the Port Chicago site. There they observed what had happened
when over 1, 500 tons of high explosives and additional tons of
shells, smokeless powder, and incendiary clusters exploded in
a harbor: the USS E. S. Bryan "fragmented and widely
distributed"; the USS Quinalt (waiting to be loaded) torn
into large pieces; three hundred and twenty men killed (of which
two-thirds were African-American seamen loading ammunition); nothing
left of the pier within four hundred feet of the detonation; a
wood-frame shop demolished; freight cars buckled. Of the persons
killed, all but five were at the center of the explosion. All
of the serious damage took place within a one-mile radius."(Christman,
Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic
Bomb, p. 154). |
Major
reorganization at Los Alamos in August
1944!!
Even though the
nuclear explosion at Port Arthur was a spectacular success, the scientists
at Los Alamos soon discovered that there was not enough uranium-235
available for many
more bombs and plutonium would not work in the gun-assembly device:
"Emilio Segré
was perplexed. The handsome Italian physicist, a colleague and great
friend of Enrico Fermi, was one of the discoverers of plutonium, and
he felt he knew the element and its bizarre properties as well as
anyone in the world. (Hard as glass under some conditions, plutonium
was as soft as plastic under others; even stranger, it actually contracted
when heated.) But in midsummer of 1944, as he conducted tests on a
tiny sample from the prototype pile at Clinton, Segré found
something that seemed to stand his knowledge on its head. His tests
showed that the sample contained unmistakable traces of a new plutonium
isotope whose atomic weight, at 240, was one unit greater than the
Pu-239 with which he and everyone else had been working.
The discovery was chilling. If Pu-240 emitted alpha particles on its
own, Pu-239 would be "contaminated" by an excess of unattached
neutrons. Because a gun-type bomb—a sort of adaptation of a
reliable standard model then in wide use in other bombs—would
be triggered by a mechanism that was relatively slow-moving, the plutonium
would detonate in advance of the trigger, rendering the bomb a harmless
fizzle. Only in an implosion bomb—in which, theoretically at
least, the mechanics were so fast that the explosion would take place
before the contaminating isotope had time to cause predetonation—could
the crippling effects of Pu-240 be overcome. Segré's next round
of tests confirmed his worst fear: Pu-240 was indeed an emitter of
alpha particles. The chances of using plutonium successfully in a
gun-type weapon were now virtually zero."(Lawren, The General
and the Bomb, p. 171).
The OLD RELIABLE
gun-assembly bomb was kept as a standby as work proceeded on a new design
called the implosion bomb:
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Robert Oppenheimer
and General Groves had a major reorganization at Los Alamos in
August 1944!!
Parsons was allowed
to go with his uranium bomb but work began on a new design: the
implosive plutonium bomb. |
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"In
the "August reorganization," Oppenheimer created two
associate directors: Parsons for ordnance, engineering, assembly,
and delivery, and Enrico Fermi for research and theoretical work.
In addition to being named associate director, Parsons remained
in charge of the Ordnance Division. He retained direct responsibility
for the uranium gun, off-site production for the total laboratory,
final weapon design, and combat delivery preparations for both
bombs. However, parts of the old Ordnance Division, which had
outgrown itself, split into two newly created divisions. The Gadget
Division for the applied physics' of the implosion weapon went
to Robert F. Bacher, former head of the Experimental Physics Division
and a forceful manager. The Explosives Division for the explosive
components of the bomb, including the explosive lenses, went to
Kistiakowsky."(Christman, Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons
and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb, p. 148).
Because of
the shortage of uranium-235, more copies of Parson's pet uranium
bomb could not be made. The gun-assembly device would not work
with plutonium so that led to the invention of the implosive bomb.
The implosive
design was the work of Dr.
George B. Kistiakowsky and Seth Neddermeyer and featured lenses
to direct the explosion inward to initiate the chain
reaction.
This device
was tested on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico and was
dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. |
Parsons
was promoted to Commodore after the successful A-bomb test!!
Within a week of the
test of his gun-bomb, Captain Parsons was promoted to the rank of Commodore
and assigned to Los Alamos as Deputy Director under J. Robert Oppenheimer.
After Hiroshima, Parsons was elevated to the rank of rear admiral.
Parsons
flew with his "baby" all the way to Hiroshima!!
Even though he was a "NAVY"
man, Parsons FLEW with his "baby" all the way to Hiroshima.
He had given birth to the MONSTER and was not about to let it out of
his sight until the mission was accomplished:
Commodore
Parsons and Colonel Paul Tibbets briefing crews for the Hiroshima
mission.
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Commodore
Deak Parsons (right) was awarded the Silver Star by the Army
Strategic Air Forces while still wearing the shirt stained by
sweat and blackened by graphite from his making the final assembly
of the bomb during the Enola Gay's flight to Hiroshima.
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Commodore Parsons
left Tinian Island in the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, bound
for the Japanese city of Hiroshima:
B-29 bombers
of the 509th Composite Group on Tinian with an assembly of military
and Project Alberta technical personnel before the bombing of
Hiroshima.
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Bomb compartment
on the Enola Gay where Parsons watched and
prayed over his "baby" on the long flight
from Tinian to Hiroshima.
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Atomic
destruction of Hiroshima
Deak
Parsons arrived over the city of Hiroshima just before 8:15 a.m. on
August 6, 1945. The bomb was dropped by parachute and exploded a few
thousand feet above the city. He left nothing to chance and
obviously it worked perfectly as he had planned:
The mushroom
cloud rising over Hiroshima, Japan. The city of Hiroshima was
the target of the world's SECOND atomic bomb on August 6, 1945.
The cloud rose to over 60,000 feet in about ten minutes.
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As in the
case of Port Chicago, almost everything was destroyed for about
a mile in every direction.
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Only a few concrete
buildings were left standing as almost everything was destroyed within
a radius of 1 mile:
"The
area devastated at Hiroshima, was 1.7 square miles, extending out
a mile from ground zero. The Japanese authorities estimated the casualties
at 71,000 dead and missing and 68,000 injured." (Groves,
Now It Can Be Told, p. 319).
References
Alperovitz, Gar.
The Decision to Use the Bomb. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1995.
Allen, Robert L.
The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial
In U.S. Naval History. Warner Books, New York, 1989.
Christman, Al.
Target
Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb .Naval
Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1998.
Groves, Leslie R.
Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. Harper
& Brothers, New York, 1962.
Groueff, Stephane.
Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic
Bomb. Little, Brown & Co., New York, 1967.
Lawren, William.
The General and the Bomb. A Biography of General Leslie R. Groves.
Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1988.
Lamont, Lansing,
Day of Trinity. Atheneum, New York, 1965.
Norris, Robert S.
Racing for the Bomb. Steerforth Press, South Royalton, Vermont,
2002.
Rhodes, Richard.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Schuster, New
York, 1986.
Copyright
© 2007 by Niall Kilkenny
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