Where did they build the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Question

Every one seems to assume that they were built in America, but I recently heard that they were built in Essex, England - I've been searching on Google all morning but to no avail! Does anyone know where they were built, and can you supply a link to back it up as this is to settle and argument!

Thanks in advance guys.

Answer 1

The 'Bomb' was developed in 3 main sites all in the USA

The Hanford Site occupies 1,517 km2 (586 mi2) in Benton County, south-central Washington and developed enriched plutonium

Oak Ridge is an incorporated city in Anderson and Roane Counties in East Tennessee, about 25 miles northwest of Knoxville here they developed and made enriched uranium

Perhaps the most important was Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory,
and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), located in Los Alamos, New Mexico

This last facility did the research and put the bomb together, tested it and prepared it for use.

All these places were some considerable distance from the UK.

Sorry.

Answer 2

The Bombs where assembled at The Los Alamos Laboratory.

Although some of the development work was carried out in England those scientist's (mainly German refugees incidentally) moves to Los Alamos to help in the building of the bombs.

Britain simply did not have the resources to refine weapons grade Uranium, America literally had to build a city (Oak Ridge in Tennessee) and the largest building in the world (K25) to refine enough weapons grade Uranium.

'Oak Ridge facilities covered more than 60,000 acres (243 km²) of several former farm communities in the Tennessee Valley area. Some Tennessee families were given two weeks' notice to vacate family farms that had been their home for generations. So secret was the site during WW2 that the state governor was unaware that Oak Ridge (what was to become the fifth largest city in the state) was being built. At one point Oak Ridge plants were consuming 1/6th of the electrical power produced in the USA, more than New York City. Oak Ridge mainly produced uranium-235.'

The two bombs where significantly different, the Hiroshima bomb (Little Boy) was a fairly simple device which could be engineered at a medium sized work shop. The Nagasaki device was a much more sophisticated piece of engineering.

Little boy was not actually made 'live' until several hours into the flight, when a technician climbed into the bomb bay and removed three 'dummy' fuses, and replaced them with three live ones.

Answer 3

The independant British efforts towards any sort of atomic energy came to a screeching halt when the Nazis invaded Norway and drove the scientists away from metallurgy facilities there that were supplied with massive amounts of hydro-electricity.When the US entered the war however, the British effort resumed in co-operation with the previously independant American effort to build atomic weapons (ironically the last national project to start among all the powers trying) Not long after this the Canadian government was included in the project as well.

As to where the bomb was developed, the only facilities that were involved in any level of the production of the American bombs outside of the US were found in Canada. The first of these was the mines that provided the majority of the project's raw uranium located on the northern shore of Lake Athabaska in Saskatchewan (the future Uranium City) and the second being Consolidated Mining and Smelting's (Cominco) Trail Smetler Complex in British Columbia where both the heavy water and base level refinement of the Uranium occurred. Everything else involved in the production of the bomb occurred in Tennessee, New Mexico, or Washington State.

Answer 4

It was designed and built in Los Alamos. In March a special team, known as Project A (Alberta) and led by future Nobel Laureate Norman Ramsey, was created to handle the transfer of the bomb’s components to Tinian Island, where it was assembled for use against Japan.

One of the very first tasks of General Leslie Groves and the Manhattan Project in early 1943 was to locate and acquire sites in the United States where uranium and plutonium could be produced, as well as a site where the atomic bomb actually would be constructed. Production of uranium and plutonium required vast amounts of power. Thus, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, were chosen because of proximity to major rivers. Oak Ridge could draw on the power of the hydroelectric plants on the Tennessee River. Hanford could use the power from the Columbia River. The cold waters of the Columbia also could be used to cool the plutonium production reactors at Hanford. A third site, with much different requirements, was needed where the atomic bomb would be designed and built.

In creating the wartime Los Alamos Laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer had the sole mission of designing and building an atomic bomb. Accordingly, he organized the laboratory into four technical divisions: Theoretical Physics (T) under Hans Bethe, Experimental Physics (P) under Robert Bacher, Chemistry-Metallurgy (CM) under Joseph Kennedy, and Ordnance Engineering (E) under Navy Captain William Parsons. Each division had a number of groups, with each group having a unique task. Throughout the wartime period, several committees also were used by Oppenheimer to help manage both the administrative and technical work. Among these committees were the Governing Board, which handled many administrative tasks, and the Cowpuncher Committee, which "rode herd" on the development of the implosion (Fat Man) weapon. As the complexities of the technical work increased, so too did the organizational structure.

The British contribution to the Manhattan Project cannot be overlooked. These scientists served diligently at Los Alamos throughout the war, and some even remained after its conclusion. Hans Bethe, chief of the Theory Division, stated:

"For the work of the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos Project during the war the collaboration of the British Mission was absolutely essential. . . It is very difficult to say what would have happened under different conditions. However, at least, the work of the Theoretical Division would have been very much more difficult and very much less effective without the members of the British Mission, and it is not unlikely that our final weapon would have been considerably less efficient in this case."

Although General Groves consistently lauded the efforts of the British, he was always quick to add that the US would have produced an atomic bomb without British assistance. In addition their valuable technical contributions, the British also offered many intangibles to the project. The diverse array of scientists - to Germans, Poles, and Brits - gave the project a larger sense of purpose. Even more critical, the European contingent offered new insights from a different perspective. The international nature of scientific research, so crucial to the field of physics in particular, had been desperately lacking since war broke out. The arrival of the British hearkened back to an era of excitement and free exchange. This indispensable contribution, so often overlooked, will remain the lasting legacy of the British Mission.

On July 16, 1945, an implosion bomb was successfully tested near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The production of this bomb, and its gun-type counterpart, ushered in the atomic age. The development of these weapons represented the culmination of more than three years of intense research and development effort. At Los Alamos, science and technology combined to produce a weapon of incredible power; enough even to end the most destructive war in history.

Answer 5

They were most definately not built in England. What on Earth makes you think that?

Search on Manhattan project and you should find something useful - i.e. the history of the development of the science, including where the labs were based, who worked on the project, etc.

Answer 6

Los Alamos. Where all "Manhattan" project devices were built.

Answer 7

Even if they were built in England this would never become public knowledge.

Answer 8

Maid in Manhattan.

Answer 9

go here
http://www.theenolagay.com/study.html#DECIDING%20TO%20BUILD%20THE%20BOMB

then scroll down to "A MOST SECRET PLACE"