WOW another little know fact!

[I-25]

Lookie what i found...

Old Japanese army tests A-bomb in sea off Korea

Pyongyang, August 8 (KCNA) -- The Japanese Tokyo Shimbun August 6 disclosed that the old Japanese army tested an A-bomb in the sea off Hungnam on the east coast of Korea just before the end of World War II. According to a secret document of the U.S. Army quoting the Jiji news from the U.S. National Archives, the U.S. Army was informed of the fact that a test related to the atomic power took place at a chemical factory in Hungnam in 1945 and ordered investigation into it. It also said in an investigation report worked out on January 16, 1947, that the Japanese army made an explosion test with the help of a boat in waters off the east coast of the North Korea, the result of which was like an A-bomb.
The U.S. forces received information from an intelligence officer of the old Japanese army that it tested an A-bomb in waters 30 km away from Hungnam at the dawn of August 12, 1945, and huge mushroom-like clouds rose at that time. Tokyo Shimbun said that Japan began an A-bomb research in secrecy on the order of the army headquarters from about 1940.

http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/jp-hung.htm

[STEED]

Interesting bit of info.

[SUBMAN1]

I doubt there wasn't a single country major country not trying to devlope something like this in the 1940's. Good thing the US did it first!

-S

[Egan]

The same sort of stories exist for germany too, of course. They were suppossed to have tested one in the closing months of the war, using death camp inmates as guinea pigs.

[STEED]

From what I know Germany never built one, due to the fact they got there sums badly wrong.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by STEED

From what I know Germany never built one, due to the fact they got there sums badly wrong.

They didn't get it wrong, they just were not on the path of a bomb due to it being a low priority research project.

-S

[Egan]

Originally Posted by STEED

From what I know Germany never built one, due to the fact they got there sums badly wrong.

To be honest, I would have thought that if they had built one, testing would have been done by dropping it on the nearest allied unit and seeing what happened rather than messing around with KZ inmates. It's not like they were in much of a position to take it slow and careful by that time.

In his autobiography, Albert Speer makes some interesting comments about the German research program. I'll have to rake them out. I seem to remember he claims that it was something other than mathematics that held them up - but then I tend to take anything that Speer claims in his book with a huge pinch of salt.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Egan

The same sort of stories exist for germany too, of course. They were suppossed to have tested one in the closing months of the war, using death camp inmates as guinea pigs.

Yeah, I saw Germany's reactor project on Discovery when they were researching Germany's importation of Heavy Water from Norway. They were no where near a bomb, or even a reactor for that matter. It was almost a joke to look at what was actually completed.

The real problem - Hitler didn't make it a high priority because the idea came from a Jew.

-S