'I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'

the first explosion of tha atomic bomb, on July 16, 1945, was summed up by Robert Oppenheimer with these words from a Hindu poem.

In the foothills of the New Mexican mountains, on a dusty desert plain known as the Jornada del Muerto-dead Man's Journey-camped the greatest collection scientic brains in earth. They were men who wolud redefine the 20th century: Robert Oppenheimer (American), Enrico Fermi (Italian), George Kistiakowski (Ukrainian), Otto Frisch (Austrian), General Leslie Groves (American), Edward Teller (Hungarian) and Klaus Fuchs (born in Germany, but a naturalized Briton).
Better than any man in the world, they should have own what to expect in those still minutes before dawn in the desert. But none of them knew for sure what would happen. The explosion at 05.29 on the morning of July 16, 1945, stunned its creators and changed the world: the atomic bomb worked.
There were several eye-witness accounts of that firts atomic explosion. 'It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you. It saw a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It seemed to last forever. You longed for it to stop. Altogether it lasted about two seconds. Finally it was over'. Another observer wrote: it was like a ball of fire, too bright to look at directly.
The whole surface pf the ball was covered with a purple luminosity'. His report ends:'I am sure that all who witnessed this test went away with a profound feeling taht they had seen one of the great events in history'.
Los Alamos today supports a community of just over 18.000 people. One first impressions it is like many other small towns in wstern America: full of low twostorey buildings, dusty, with rather dingy shopping halls, a couple of banks, filling stations, Mexican and Chinese fast-food joints, a motel, and a McDonald's. but there are olenty of indications that this is no ordinary town, Big blue sings along State Highway 84advice travellers that the road and land on either side belong to the US government, A notice declares that it is ?forbidden to remove a twenty-foot babedwire fence.
Before 1942, however, Los Alamos had no history bacause it didn't exist. It was created for one purpose only, to house anyone the technicians who would make the bomb before anyone else did. All mail was censored, and everyone was sworn to secrecy. The US government did not even trust its own proteges.
Oppenheimer, who had mixed with left-wing groups in his yout, was tailed by FBI men, Einstein ì, who had written ti President Roosvelt in 1939 urging him ti develop the atomic bomb, was ruled out because of his outspoken pacifism and Zionism. Yet the real villain went undetected. Klaus Fuchs was revealed in 1950 as Stalin's spy.
What is interesting is that the scientists were much more interested in sharing the bomb with the Russins that the politicans were. Some physicists dreamed of the bomb as an end to all wars, a possible means of estabilishing global government. As it progressed froma a theorical possibility to an experimental reality, concern grew among some of those onvolved about how it would be used. By early 1945, Germany, the origianl target, no longer needed an atomic exploison to force its surrender. Attention switched to Japan.
In 1943 Harold Argo was a graduate from Washington University when he was summoned ti New Mexico. Now over 80, he describes his time at Los Alamos as 'the most exciting two years of my life'. He dimisses those whose consciences troubled them. 'I don't understand all those sceptics who had second thoughts. I had two brothers out there in the Pacific. If Harry Truman hadn't dropped the bomb, the war could have gone on forever'.
Carson Mark is more reflective.'At the time, we thought it would put an end to organized war, because no one can put up with destruction on that scale. But we didn't know how imminent was that the Japanese would have to call it quits. Why kill all those people if you don't need to?'
In May 1945 nobody was sure just how devasting the bomb would be. There was general agreement that the simpler type of bomb would work, but the more complicated plutonium implosiom device would need testing. Oppenheimer named this test Trinity, partly because of the Christian concept of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but mainly because of the Hindu three-in-one godhead of Vishnu, Brahma, and Siva, the power of life, the creator, and the destroyer.

The site selected was 33 miles from the nearest town. The VIP odservation site was located 20 miles away. The scientists had a bet with each other to guess how many tonnes' equivalent of TNT their bomb would produce. So imprecise was their knowledge that Oppenheimer consevatively suggested 300. Teller, wiser, speculated an incredible 45,000. Radiochemical analysis revelated the blast had equalled 18,600 tonnes of TNT, four times of those involved on the project had guessed.
Even as they were celebrating at Los Alamos, hours after the explosion, the warship Indianapolis sailed out of San Francisco harbour, carrying the atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy on its fateful voyage to the islad of Titian in the Pacific. After unloading its deadly cargo, the ship sailed on towards the Philippines. On July 29 it was sunk by a Japanase submarine; of the 850 who survived the sinking, more than 500 were eaten alive by sharks.
On Titan, group commander Paul Tibbets had his B-29 bomber repainted, and he gave it his mother's name, Enola Gay. In Hiroscima and Nagasaki, the citizens slept.
Just three weeks after the test, the bomb was used for real. As the historian Richard Rhodes wrote in his book The Making of the Atomic Bomb; 'Once Trinity proved that the atomic bomb worked, men discovered reasons to use it.'

                                  written by Colpo Stefano and Gonzo Nicola