Many of the texts and descriptions addressing the end of the Pacific war read as if the New Mexico test was the culminating event for the Manhattan Project, proving atomic weapons were feasible. The narrative of the Trinity test near Alamogordo, New Mexico, is often misinterpreted in its importance. But before these atomic attacks occurred, the weapon designs had to be tested. Such technology was at the very cutting edge of scientific endeavor. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined with other events, helped convince Emperor Hirohito that the Japanese people would soon have to “endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable.” To some, these atomic events were seen as retributive justice for the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor a few years earlier. Delivered by Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers on August 6 and 9, 1945, use of atomic weapons was a symbolic crescendo at the end of the US Army Air Forces’ strategic bombing campaign. At the time, production of such a capability could only be accomplished by the United States. The accession of atomic power in the form of fission is a testament to human ingenuity, technical acumen, and intellectual prowess. The Trinity atomic explosion in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, was one of humanity’s most significant scientific achievements. Aeby, July 16, 1945, Civilian worker at Los Alamos laboratory, working under the aegis of the Manhattan Project., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Top Photo: "Trinity" shot, the first nuclear test explosion. Jack W.
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