Fat Boy Blusters October 23, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryThe US bombing of Hiroshima went off, in operational terms, flawlessly. The bombing of Nagasaki was a different matter. For one thing, Nagasaki was not even the target: Fat Man was supposed to have been dropped on nearby Kokura but smoke from a conventional raid obscured the bombing run. Everything that could go wrong on […]
A Nineteenth-Century Hydrogen Bomb? August 13, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, ModernWas the first hydrogen bomb designed in the late nineteenth century in France? One contemporary newspaper suggests as much.
Could Japan Have Fought On? October 4, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryOn the 6 August 1945 American planes dropped their first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese would surrender within a month, arguably hundreds of thousands of US lives and very possibly hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives were saved by Little Boy and his elder brother Fat Man. The Japanese surrender came about because of […]
Did a Minnesota Bear Almost Cause World War III? September 28, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryThe story is often told because it is a thrilling and terrifying one. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 a bear triggered an alarm at a US base leading personnel to believe that their airfield was under attack by Soviet saboteurs. US nuclear bombers on the airfield were scrambled and were […]
Whoops, Apocalypse! October 18, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary***Dedicated to Andy the Mad Monk, who suggested this topic*** When, 6 August 1945, the pilot Paul Tibbets revved up Enola Gay on the island of Tinian everyone on the ground held their breath. Since the bomb, Little Boy, had arrived those in the know had understood that should it accidentally explode most human life […]
Llewellyn Thompson: Champion of the World June 20, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryBeach has pioneered on this blog ‘hinge moments’, those instances when world history changes. In any list of these moments, the Cuban Missile crisis is a must, because this is, of course, the closest the human race has come to mutually assured destruction. But what moment within the missile crisis was the key one? Almost […]
Electrifying Sheep June 3, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, ModernBeachcombing has a terrible secret. He is not very good at science. Yes, he receives emails about astronomy and nuclear physics, aviation and genetics on a daily basis. But, while being fascinated, he understands almost none of what he reads there. In the autumn of his years it is simply too late to put this […]