Page 10 - Luke AFB Thunderbolt 7-17-15

July 17, 2015 NEWS
10 www.aerotechnews.com/lukeafb
This week in history
1945: Gadget detonated, history made
Hopeful observers stood in the dark 70 years ago at
a calculated safe distance of 10,000 yards from Trinity.
About a half an hour before dawn, at 5:30 a.m. July 16,
1945, a plutonium device named Gadget detonated over
a stretch of New Mexican desert known for centuries
as the Jornada del Muerto or “Expedition” or “Journey
of the Dead.”
For more than 300 years before the Santa Fe Trail
opened in 1821 all manufactured goods traveled over
that barren desert to reach the Spanish communities
north of what is now known as El Paso. Gadget produced
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sky and almost six miles away knocked those observers
to the ground.
Prof. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the technical director of
the Manhattan Project, picked Trinity as the name for
the site of the detonation. Trinity was on the Alamogor-
do Bombing Range, 60 miles north northwest of what is
now Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, the home
of the 56th Fighter Wing’s 54th Fighter Group. At the
time, the base was called Alamogordo Army Air Field.
Dropped from a 100-foot tower, Gadget released 18.6
kilotons of power. The explosion vaporized the tower
Thunderbolt
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and morphed the asphalt surrounding the tower into a Courtesy photo
thin layer of green glass. The massive, super-hot blast
wave scorched the desert and tumbled the observers. Today the Trinity Site is part of the White Sands Mis-
sile Range. In the center of a slightly depressed area
A mile-wide bright green ball of light lit up the desert several hundred yards across is a bronze plaque on an
for miles. obelisk of black lava rock marking ground zero. Most
of the green glass is gone.
As the seconds ticked by, the ball rose into the sky.
As it did, it began to change colors from deep purple Being an active test range, the site can only be visited
to orange. Observers compared its brightness to the by the public twice a year.
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But, what should they tell the public? Written ahead
of time, the prepared statement went out over the radio
that there had been an ammunition dump explosion.
The truth was the denotation and resulting explosion
was much larger than any ammunition dump explosion.
In fact, it was much greater than anyone expected.
Breaking the atom released more power than anyone
had imaged.
The success of Gadget led to the military use of
atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an effort
to shorten the war. It also colored the decisions that
followed during the Cold War.
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