Changes
Each release of this site has a number. This page lists what changed in each one, newest first. When a fact is corrected, the entry says what was wrong and what it says now.
Version 1.5.0
- A better header. It stays at the top of the screen as you read, with the site's name larger, the story's eight pages by name, and the page you are on underlined in its strand's colour. A small line under it says where you are, such as Context and debate · The physics, or 3 of 8 · Tinian on a phone. The two journeys run along its foot.
- The Sources page is now listed page by page, in the order of the menu, each page folded with a count of its sources and grouped by kind inside. A find box picks out a source by title, author or publisher, and each listing says which other pages cite it.
- Correction on The German bomb: the page said Rainer Karlsch stepped back from his book's claim of a German nuclear test in Thuringia in 1945. He revised it within months, saying there had been no large nuclear explosion and probably not even fission, but he has not dropped the subject. The page now says that, and gives more of the soil test: eight samples from the Ohrdruf training area, and what the testers said their methods could and could not show.
- The physics: how the first bombs worked, in plain words. Fission and the chain reaction, critical mass, why uranium-235 was so hard to separate and how Oak Ridge did it, how reactors made plutonium, why the pieces had to come together so fast, how implosion worked, how little of the fuel was used, and why it was all so hard, with four new diagrams.
Version 1.4.0
- Project Alberta: the Los Alamos team that put the bombs together on Tinian. Who they were, with a card for each of eighteen people, how they got there, how they assembled and tested Little Boy and Fat Man, and what became of them, with four National Archives photographs.
- A new header and footer. The Menu button opens every page in three groups, the story in reading order, context and debate, and using the site, each marked with its strand. On a phone it replaces the sideways-scrolling row of links. The footer has the same groups, a word about the site and the contact address.
- A link to any subject page, shared in a message or on social media, now shows that page's own card with its title, rather than the home page's.
- Britain and the bomb: Britain's whole part, from the Birmingham memorandum of 1940 and the MAUD Committee to the Quebec Agreement, the British Mission, Britain's formal consent to the use of the bomb, and the road to its own bomb and Polaris, with cards for fifteen people and six photographs.
- Correction on After 1945: the page said William Penney calculated the height of burst for the bombs over Japan. Others worked on it too, so it now says he helped calculate it.
- Choosing the targets: how Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki came to be named in the order to use the first bomb. The Target Committee and its reasons, the cities held back from the fire raids, how Stimson kept Kyoto off the list, how Nagasaki was added at the last stage, and the aiming points, with five National Archives photographs.
- Japan's surrender: what happened in Tokyo from the Potsdam Declaration to the signing aboard USS Missouri. The six men who ran the war and the Emperor's place, the two imperial conferences from the records of men who were there, the American reply, the attempted coup, the broadcast and what followed, with nine photographs.
- The atomic spies: how Soviet intelligence reached inside the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, the Greenglasses, Theodore Hall, George Koval and Alan Nunn May, the Venona codebreakers who found them out, the Rosenbergs with the evidence on Ethel set out in order, and how much the spying helped the Soviet bomb, with eight photographs.
- Correction on Britain and the bomb: the page said Klaus Fuchs spied until his confession in 1950. He stopped when he was exposed in 1949, and confessed in January 1950.
- Correction on The missions: the card for 9 August said the vote at the imperial conference was tied three to three. No vote was taken; the council was split three to three, and the Prime Minister asked the Emperor to decide.
- Correction on The decision and the debate: the page said Groves told Truman on 25 April 1945 that the target had always been Japan. The words come from a report Groves wrote for that briefing, and the page now says so.
- Correction on Tinian: the page said the Army built Project Alberta's buildings and that there were seven warehouses. The Seabees built them, and the seven were warehouse-type buildings: five warehouses, a shop and an administration building.
Version 1.3.0
- Search: the magnifying glass at the top of every page searches the whole site as you type, and shows the sections that match. It runs in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Version 1.2.0
- A glossary of the words, code names and units the site uses, from 509th Composite Group to weaponeer, each linked to where the site tells more.
- Nine more photographs from the National Archives on The crews: the briefing and debriefing for Hiroshima, Sweeney and Tibbets before Nagasaki, Parsons, Enola Gay's ground crew, and the 509th's headquarters, tents and assembly building on Tinian.
Version 1.1.0
- The crews: every man aboard Enola Gay and Bockscar and his job, with where he sat and what he did after the war where the records say, with a diagram of the B-29's crew sections; the other aircraft and their commanders; the scientists, the reporter and the two British observers; the rest of the 509th; and what became of them.
Version 1.0.0
- The home page: the two journeys, Tinian, the two missions, the machines, the cost and where to see them today. Every date, time and figure is checked and cited.
- The bomb: how the first atomic bombs were made, from Einstein's letter to Project Alberta on Tinian.
- The plane: the B-29, Silverplate, the 509th Composite Group and the nine aircraft that flew the two missions.
- Tinian: the island, the battle, North Field, the 509th and Project Alberta, the loading pits then and now, and Tinian today.
- The missions: Hiroshima and Nagasaki minute by minute, as cards, with a route map of each.
- The cost: the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as each count gives them, the survivors and their health, how the war ended, the debate set out without taking a side, and how the cities remember.
- Visit: the museums and memorials of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, North Field on Tinian, the Manhattan Project towns and Trinity Site, and where to see Enola Gay, Bockscar and the B-29s that still fly.
- Books and films: documentaries, feature films, books and online archives, each checked, with notes on accuracy and on graphic content, and a filter by page.
- The decision and the debate: who decided, the papers behind it quoted from the originals, the choices that were open, the main schools of thought, law and morality, and opinion then and now, without a verdict.
- The German bomb: why the Allies feared it, how far Germany got and why it stopped, Vemork, Haigerloch, the Alsos mission, what the German scientists said at Farm Hall, and Japan's own programmes.
- After 1945: how the United States broke its wartime atomic partnership with Britain, the Soviet bomb, the hydrogen bomb and the Lucky Dragon, the B-29 after the war, the arms race in numbers, the treaties, and nuclear weapons today.
- Myths and mistakes: widely repeated claims about the bombs, the B-29s and the missions set against the records, with verdicts in plain words, and slips found in reliable sources.
- A Sources page listing every source and the pages that cite it, Privacy and Terms of use pages, and this Changes page.