General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This Is What It's Like to Witness a Nuclear Explosion [View all]hunter
(38,302 posts)... were eager to see how well a plutonium bomb worked against a living city.
The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was a uranium bomb. Those bombs were too dangerous and too expensive for mass production.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941. At the latest, physicists and the military were convinced they could build plutonium bombs by 1943. In October, 1943, ground was broken for the construction of the B-Reactor at Hanford.
The plutonium production facilities at Hanford were built big, fully intended for the mass production of atomic bombs. After the success of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, Japan's fate was sealed. The plan was to keep dropping atomic bombs on Japan until they surrendered or there was nothing left of them. That would have been Germany's fate as well, had they not previously surrendered.
The "millions of lives saved" claim is a myth we tell ourselves after the fact to feel better. Atomic weapons were inevitable.
War is a horrible business. There's no balancing "lives saved" versus "lives lost."