Our scientists balked at the prospect of nuking Japan. Scientists do not make US policy. Truman, who did make US policy, nuked Japan despite the protestations of the Scientific community.

Twice.

monday morning quarterbacking is what the internet is all about.

there was no fear of accidental detonation. it's a myth, like the idea that we were going to set the sky on fire.

explain how the russian sacrifice in service of a brutal dictator translates into ownership of poland, estonia, latvia, lithuania, czechoslovakia, or a huge chunk of finland.

Yalta was in Feb 1945 and we did not know the bomb would really work.

The scientists knew the Mk II plutonium device would work, so it was never tested. It was dropped on Japan with no actual test firing because the design was believed to be 100% sound. Only the uranium Mk I Littleman was test fired (actually, it was not an actual Mk I, only 1 Mk I was ever built), because scientists did not know if the design was viable, and they needed to prove the entire concept of a nuclear initiation to begin with.

gee, can you think of another non-sequiter. What has that to do with Yalta and what we knew at the time.

analysis and 5 cents will buy you a cup of coffee.

We knew who Stalin was in Yalta. He'd already killed millions of his own people by then. What would make us think that he'd do anything but bring the same totalitarian-communist rule of terror to all the places we allowed him to take control of after WWII?

Nothing.

Doesn't change the fact that we knew the Mk II was a viable weapon and that we had the parts on hand to manufacture 8 of them by the start of 1946...with the means to deliver them deep into Soviet Territory.

Hey, could someone pass me my rose colored glasses?

I'm not advocating a nuclear option in 1945 against the Soviets. Stalin had the remnants of a huge army that he could scarcely feed, let alone conquer eastern Europe. Going to war against the Soviets was entirely unnecessary.

Yalta was a cataclysmic failure for democracy. Just for fun, try to find a book about "FDR's Triumph at Yalta". :rolleyes:

no, we don't know until we test. then we know by similarity.

The Mk II Fat Man bomb was first 'tested' on Nagasaki.

The design was considered so sound, that no testing was deemed necessary, and indeed, prior to Nagasaki, no test was conducted.

I guess, just for fun, put yourself at Yalta in February and tell me what you would have done differently.

no, fat man type was one tested at trinity
little boy had no test and was used first
and it is detonation, where did initiation come from?

Nuclear devices do not explode or detonate, they initiate.

PS, you're right, i had mixed up which design was tested and which wasn't. It was "gadget", similar to the Fatman that was tested at Trinity.

Been a few years since i had any sort of detailed discussion about this topic. It's also the Mk III fatman, not Mark II. My apologies.

Additional bomb availability:

"8.1.5 Availability of Additional Bombs

The date that a third weapon could have been used against Japan was no later than August 20. The core was prepared by August 13, and Fat Man assemblies were already on Tinian Island. It would have required less than a week to ship the core and prepare a bomb for combat. "

"Production estimates given to Sec. Stimson in July 1945 projected a second plutonium bomb would be ready by Aug. 24, that 3 bombs should be available in September, and more each month - reaching 7 or more in December (1945)."

http://www.milnet.com/nukeweap/Nfaq8.html

At the time of the conference, Stalin's spies would have already confirmed that the U.S. was deploying huge forces to Europe. I would have told Stalin that we were prepared to attack Russia if necessary, but would stop our war preparations the minute he withdrew his troops from Soviet occupied eastern Europe.

Probably a bluff, but given how bad things soured historically anyway, it was surely worth a shot.

I did not think he actually ran, I do vaguely remember something about that from the distant,dim, dark days of high school
The Soviets could have just used the nuclear material and technical information and materials they siezed from the Japanese at their site in N Korea

If you bluff someone, and they don't have the chips to call you, what happens?

They fold. FDR totally screwed the pooch at Yalta.

Where is it I can get a cup of joe for a nickel?

Things did not sour historically. The world divided into the free, nonalined and controled by dictator camps. We deliberately practices a doctrine called containment, developed on the theory that the strength of our free system would prevail over dictatorships over time, without the need for hundreds of millions to die in global thermonuclear war. In a mere 45 years, a blink of the historical eye and less time than it took the 20th Century to produce and consume the World Wars, the Communist world collapsed under its own weight and containment was vindicated. In fewer months than it took Patton to dash from France to Berlin, the Eastern European countries broke the yoke of Communism, the Soviet Union was no more, and even Russia was considering joining NATO. That we fumbled this voctory won without firing a shot in a hot war does not detract from the magnifigance of the victory. In retrospect. FDR could have done better, but war with the SU would not have created a world that was as good as it turned out to be circa 1990.

I am not even remotely convinced that we would have had to start shooting at them.

It took 45 years for Patton to dash from France to Berlin?

How much more quickly would the fall of the Soviet Empire have transpired if they were not given all those satellite countries, or even given half?

Would Ike have been able to get elected and get his ugly mug on a coin? Would Kennedy have been the one to open China in the 1960's instead of Nixon in the '70's? Would JFK have even gotten shot, and would it be good or bad if he served until '68?

We could have had three Kennedys in a row sitting in the Oval Office, think about that schit.