Trinity, Gadget, and Ground Zero: New Mexico’s Atomic History
Since World War II, New Mexico has been at the center of nuclear technology. The atomic bomb was developed in a lab at Los Alamos. The bomb was then tested in the desert near Alamogordo. How did New Mexico come to play this central role?
As World War II raged, the United States was in a race with Germany to develop an atomic bomb. General Leslie R. Groves was in charge of putting together a team to design, build, and test the bomb. The mission was called the Manhattan Project. Groves chose physicist Robert Oppenheimer to head up his team of scientists.
It was largely because of Oppenheimer that the project came to New Mexico. He had gone to boarding school in New Mexico. He knew about a tiny town called Los Alamos, located northwest of Santa Fe. It was an isolated town, resting on a remote mesa in the Jemez Mountains. The government took over a school and several other buildings in the town to create a research headquarters.
Work on the bomb project began in early 1943 at Los Alamos. For two and a half years, 6,000 scientists and support personnel worked there and elsewhere to produce the bomb. By the spring of 1944, Oppenheimer and Groves were searching for a test site. They chose a corner of the Alamogordo Air Base, 200 miles (322 km) south of Los Alamos. It was a remote stretch of desert far from any town. They needed a place that was distant to maintain secrecy. Fears of the effects of radiation released by the bomb also meant the bomb needed to be tested a long way from any people.
The test site, named Trinity, was prepared. Test personnel began to gather at Trinity in March 1945. Parts of the bomb were sent south from Los Alamos. A small adobe ranch house in the desert was turned into an assembly room for the bomb, which was nicknamed “Gadget.” Two days before the test, a similar bomb named “Little Boy” was sent to a small island in the South Pacific. If the bomb test in New Mexico was successful, Little Boy would be dropped on Japan. Germany had surrendered in the spring of 1945, but Japan was still fighting.
A small ranch house in the desert of New Mexico. The house is one-story with many windows and made of adobe brick and stone.
The plutonium core of the atomic bomb was assembled in this small ranch house near the Trinity test site. The McDonald family was forced to leave when the army took their ranch in the 1930s for a bombing range. It was then used as the site of the first atomic bomb test. The restored house is now a National Historic Landmark and museum.
There were great fears before the bomb was tested—even among the scientists. Some feared the bomb would not work. Others worried about safety. Would the bomb ignite the atmosphere? What about radiation? How dangerous was it for New Mexico? How far would it spread after the blast? No one really knew the answers to these questions.
On the morning of July 16, 1945, “Gadget” sat atop a 100-foot (30 m) steel tower in the desert. This spot was named Ground Zero. The bomb was detonated at 5:30 a.m. Watching through dark glasses, observers first saw a brilliant flash of light. It was followed by an orange and yellow fireball. Seconds later, they heard the roar of the blast—and felt a shock wave and heat. The blast sucked tons of sand and dust from the surface at Ground Zero. Another dark column spread into a huge, mushroom-shaped cloud that rose 38,000 feet into the atmosphere.
An explosion of an atomic bomb in the 1940's near Alamogordo. The detonated bomb sends a mushroom-shaped cloud into the air with a bright flash of light.
The explosion of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity site near Alamogordo
The blast tore a crater half a mile (.8 km) wide and eight feet (2.4 m) deep into the desert floor at Ground Zero. In that instant, all animal and plant life in the area were vaporized. The intense heat fused sand at the blast site into a glass-like rock. The light and shock wave from the blast were experienced in a 160-mile (258 km) area around the Trinity site.
The successful test gave the green light to the United States to drop atomic bombs on Japan. “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The two bombs destroyed huge areas of both cities. More than 200,000 people died. The death and destruction the bombs caused had the intended effect. Just a few days after the bombs were dropped, Japan surrendered.
Today Los Alamos National Lab is still a center of scientific research. Visitors to Los Alamos National Historical Park can learn about New Mexico’s part in the development of the bomb—and glimpse a moment in American history.
after reading answer the question, Describe the testing of the atomic bomb in New Mexico? 2-3 sentences
1 answer