why did the united states drop an atomic bomb?
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President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
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The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only uses of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.
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Save this story for later. At 3:47 A.M. on August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress took off from the American airbase on the island of Tinian, in the North Pacific Ocean. Operation Centerboard II, the mission to drop the second atomic bomb on a Japanese city, had begun.
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Definition of drop a bomb. informal. : to do or say something that is very shocking and unexpected She dropped a bomb with her resignation. She dropped the bomb on her husband and asked for a divorce.
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It really boils down to the fact that Little Boy (the first atom bomb used in warfare) used Uranium-235 as filling and had a blast yield of 15 kilotons of TNT and was detonated over Hiroshima, while Fat Man used Plutonium as the filling and had a blast yield of 21 kilotons of TNT and was detonated over Nagasaki.
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The United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, bringing about the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II in the Pacific. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese people died when these bombs were dropped.
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Atomic bombs have been used only twice in war—both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A period of nuclear proliferation followed that war, and during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union vied for supremacy in a global nuclear arms race.
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Nuclear weapons have been used twice in war, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II. ... Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated over two thousand times for testing and demonstration.
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In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective. First, of course, was to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end and spare American lives.
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2 - Number of atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. 80,000 - People who died instantly in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, when the first ever atomic bomb was used in war. The code name of the uranium-based bomb was "Little Boy."
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Hiroshima was chosen because it had not been targeted during the US Air Force's conventional bombing raids on Japan, and was therefore regarded as being a suitable place to test the effects of an atomic bomb. It was also an important military base.
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Atomic bombs are made up of a fissile element, such as uranium, that is enriched in the isotope that can sustain a fission nuclear chain reaction. When a free neutron hits the nucleus of a fissile atom like uranium-235 (235U), the uranium splits into two smaller atoms called fission fragments, plus more neutrons.
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American bomber drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On this day in 1945, the United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
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Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 – a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as "Fat Man.” On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 ...
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An atomic or nuclear bomb is a fission bomb that relies on the splitting of atoms from either uranium or plutonium creating a runaway reaction. A nuke could be an atomic bomb or hydrogen bomb. ... An atomic bomb's heat can be as much as 10,000 degrees while a hydrogen bomb reaches several million degrees.
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—Different kinds of bombs were used on the two cities, that dropped over Hiroshima being a uranium-235 bomb, whereas the one used against Nagasaki was composed of plutonium-239.
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The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective. First, of course, was to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end and spare American lives.