Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U. S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which realigned American politics into the Fifth Party System and defined American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century, his third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II. Roosevelt is considered to be one of the most important figures in American history, as well as among the most influential figures of the 20th century. Though he has been subject to much criticism, he is rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.
S. presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, to a Dutch American family made well known by Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States and William Henry Aspinwall. FDR attended Groton School, Harvard College, Columbia Law School, went on to practice law in New York City. In 1905, he married his fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, they had six children. He won election to the New York State Senate in 1910, served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Roosevelt was James M. Cox's running mate on the Democratic Party's 1920 national ticket, but Cox was defeated by Warren G. Harding. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness, believed at the time to be polio, his legs became permanently paralyzed. While attempting to recover from his condition, Roosevelt founded the treatment center in Warm Springs, for people with poliomyelitis. In spite of being unable to walk unaided, Roosevelt returned to public office by winning election as Governor of New York in 1928.
He was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform Governor, promoting programs to combat the economic crisis besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide. Roosevelt took office while the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in the country's history. During the first 100 days of the 73rd United States Congress, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented federal legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce relief and reform, he created numerous programs to provide relief to the unemployed and farmers while seeking economic recovery with the National Recovery Administration and other programs. He instituted major regulatory reforms related to finance and labor, presided over the end of Prohibition, he harnessed radio to speak directly to the American people, giving 30 "fireside chat" radio addresses during his presidency and becoming the first American president to be televised.
The economy having improved from 1933 to 1936, Roosevelt won a landslide reelection in 1936. However, the economy relapsed into a deep recession in 1937 and 1938. After the 1936 election, Roosevelt sought passage of the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, which would have expanded the size of the Supreme Court of the United States; the bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented passage of the bill and blocked the implementation of further New Deal programs and reforms. Major surviving programs and legislation implemented under Roosevelt include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Social Security. Roosevelt ran for reelection in 1940, his victory made him the only U. S. President to serve for more than two terms. With World War II looming after 1938, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China as well as the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union while the U. S. remained neutral.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, an event he famously called "a date which will live in infamy", Roosevelt obtained a declaration of war on Japan the next day, a few days on Germany and Italy. Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins and with strong national support, he worked with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in leading the Allied Powers against the Axis Powers. Roosevelt supervised the mobilization of the U. S. economy to support the war effort and implemented a Europe first strategy, making the defeat of Germany a priority over that of Japan. He initiated the development of the world's first atomic bomb and worked with the other Allied leaders to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and other post-war institutions. Roosevelt won reelection in 1944 but with his physical health declining during the war years, he died in April 1945, just 11 weeks into his fourth term; the Axis Powers surrendered to the Allies in the months following Roosevelt's death, during the presidency of Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park, New York, to businessman James Roosevelt I and his second wife, Sara Ann Delano. Roosevelt's parents, who were sixth cousins, both came from wealthy old New York families, the Roosevelts, the Aspinwalls and the Delanos, respectively. Roo
Missile
In modern language, a missile known as a guided missile, is a guided self-propelled system, as opposed to an unguided self-propelled munition, referred to as a rocket. Missiles have four system components: targeting or missile guidance, flight system and warhead. Missiles come in types adapted for different purposes: surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles, anti-satellite weapons. All known existing missiles are designed to be propelled during powered flight by chemical reactions inside a rocket engine, jet engine, or other type of engine. Non-self-propelled airborne explosive devices are referred to as shells and have a shorter range than missiles. In ordinary British-English usage predating guided weapons, a missile is such as objects thrown at players by rowdy spectators at a sporting event; the first missiles to be used operationally were a series of missiles developed by Nazi Germany in World War II. Most famous of these are the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, both of which used a simple mechanical autopilot to keep the missile flying along a pre-chosen route.
Less well known were a series of anti-shipping and anti-aircraft missiles based on a simple radio control system directed by the operator. However, these early systems in World War II were only built in small numbers. Guided missiles have a number of different system components: Guidance system Targeting system Flight system Engine Warhead The most common method of guidance is to use some form of radiation, such as infrared, lasers or radio waves, to guide the missile onto its target; this radiation may emanate from the target, it may be provided by the missile itself, or it may be provided by a friendly third party. The first two are known as fire-and-forget as they need no further support or control from the launch vehicle/platform in order to function. Another method is to use a TV guidance, with a visible light or infrared picture produced in order to see the target; the picture may be used either by a human operator who steering the missile onto its target or by a computer doing much the same job.
One of the more bizarre guidance methods instead used a pigeon to steer a missile to its target. Some missiles have a home-on-jam capability to guide itself to a radar-emitting source. Many missiles use a combination of two or more of the methods to improve accuracy and the chances of a successful engagement. Another method is to target the missile by knowing the location of the target and using a guidance system such as INS, TERCOM or satellite guidance; this guidance system guides the missile by knowing the missile's current position and the position of the target, calculating a course between them. This job can be performed somewhat crudely by a human operator who can see the target and the missile and guide it using either cable- or radio-based remote control, or by an automatic system that can track the target and the missile. Furthermore, some missiles use initial targeting, sending them to a target area, where they will switch to primary targeting, using either radar or IR targeting to acquire the target.
Whether a guided missile uses a targeting system, a guidance system or both, it needs a flight system. The flight system uses the data from the targeting or guidance system to maneuver the missile in flight, allowing it to counter inaccuracies in the missile or to follow a moving target. There are two main systems: aerodynamic maneuvering. Missiles are powered by an engine either a type of rocket engine or jet engine. Rockets are of the solid propellant type for ease of maintenance and fast deployment, although some larger ballistic missiles use liquid-propellant rockets. Jet engines are used in cruise missiles, most of the turbojet type, due to its relative simplicity and low frontal area. Turbofans and ramjets are the only other common forms of jet engine propulsion, although any type of engine could theoretically be used. Long-range missiles may have multiple engine stages in those launched from the surface; these stages may all be of similar types or may include a mix of engine types − for example, surface-launched cruise missiles have a rocket booster for launching and a jet engine for sustained flight.
Some missiles may have additional propulsion from another source at launch. Missiles have one or more explosive warheads, although other weapon types may be used; the warheads of a missile provide its primary destructive power. Warheads are most of the high explosive type employing shaped charges to exploit the accuracy of a guided weapon to destroy hardened targets. Other warhead types include submunitions, nuclear weapons, biological or radiological weapons or kinetic energy penetrators. Warheadless missiles are used for testing and training purposes. Missiles are categorized by their launch platform and intended target. In broadest terms, these will either be surface or air, t
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Of the fifty states, it is the 34th largest by area, the seventh most populous, the tenth most densely populated; the state's capital and largest city is Columbus. The state takes its name from the Ohio River, whose name in turn originated from the Seneca word ohiːyo', meaning "good river", "great river" or "large creek". Partitioned from the Northwest Territory, Ohio was the 17th state admitted to the Union on March 1, 1803, the first under the Northwest Ordinance. Ohio is known as the "Buckeye State" after its Ohio buckeye trees, Ohioans are known as "Buckeyes". Ohio rose from the wilderness of Ohio Country west of Appalachia in colonial times through the Northwest Indian Wars as part of the Northwest Territory in the early frontier, to become the first non-colonial free state admitted to the union, to an industrial powerhouse in the 20th century before transmogrifying to a more information and service based economy in the 21st.
The government of Ohio is composed of the executive branch, led by the Governor. Ohio occupies 16 seats in the United States House of Representatives. Ohio is known for its status as both a bellwether in national elections. Six Presidents of the United States have been elected. Ohio is an industrial state, ranking 8th out of 50 states in GDP, is the second largest producer of automobiles behind Michigan. Ohio's geographic location has proven to be an asset for economic expansion; because Ohio links the Northeast to the Midwest, much cargo and business traffic passes through its borders along its well-developed highways. Ohio has the nation's 10th largest highway network and is within a one-day drive of 50% of North America's population and 70% of North America's manufacturing capacity. To the north, Lake Erie gives Ohio 312 miles of coastline. Ohio's southern border is defined by the Ohio River, much of the northern border is defined by Lake Erie. Ohio's neighbors are Pennsylvania to the east, Michigan to the northwest, Lake Erie to the north, Indiana to the west, Kentucky on the south, West Virginia on the southeast.
Ohio's borders were defined by metes and bounds in the Enabling Act of 1802 as follows: Bounded on the east by the Pennsylvania line, on the south by the Ohio River, to the mouth of the Great Miami River, on the west by the line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami aforesaid, on the north by an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, running east after intersecting the due north line aforesaid, from the mouth of the Great Miami until it shall intersect Lake Erie or the territorial line, thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid. Ohio is bounded by the Ohio River, but nearly all of the river itself belongs to Kentucky and West Virginia. In 1980, the U. S. Supreme Court held that, based on the wording of the cessation of territory by Virginia, the boundary between Ohio and Kentucky is the northern low-water mark of the river as it existed in 1792. Ohio has only that portion of the river between the river's 1792 low-water mark and the present high-water mark.
The border with Michigan has changed, as a result of the Toledo War, to angle northeast to the north shore of the mouth of the Maumee River. Much of Ohio features glaciated till plains, with an exceptionally flat area in the northwest being known as the Great Black Swamp; this glaciated region in the northwest and central state is bordered to the east and southeast first by a belt known as the glaciated Allegheny Plateau, by another belt known as the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau. Most of Ohio is of low relief, but the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau features rugged hills and forests; the rugged southeastern quadrant of Ohio, stretching in an outward bow-like arc along the Ohio River from the West Virginia Panhandle to the outskirts of Cincinnati, forms a distinct socio-economic unit. Geologically similar to parts of West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania, this area's coal mining legacy, dependence on small pockets of old manufacturing establishments, distinctive regional dialect set this section off from the rest of the state.
In 1965 the United States Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act, an attempt to "address the persistent poverty and growing economic despair of the Appalachian Region." This act defines 29 Ohio counties as part of Appalachia. While 1/3 of Ohio's land mass is part of the federally defined Appalachian region, only 12.8% of Ohioans live there Significant rivers within the state include the Cuyahoga River, Great Miami River, Maumee River, Muskingum River, Scioto River. The rivers in the northern part of the state drain into the northern Atlantic Ocean via Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence River, the rivers in the southern part of the state drain into the Gulf of Mexico via the Ohio River and the Mississippi; the worst weather disaster in Ohio history occurred along the Great Miami River in 1913. Known as the Great Dayton Flood, the entire Miami River watershed flooded, including the downtown business district of Dayton; as a result, the Miami Conservancy District was created as the first major flood plain engineering project in Ohio and the United States.
Grand Lake St. Marys in the west-central part of the state was constructed as a supply of water for ca
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stage of World War II, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The United States dropped the bombs after obtaining the consent of the United Kingdom, as required by the Quebec Agreement; the two bombings killed 129,000 -- 226,000 people. They remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of armed conflict. In the final year of the war, the Allies prepared for what was anticipated to be a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland; this undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing campaign that devastated 67 Japanese cities. The war in Europe had concluded when Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8, 1945; as the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific War, the Japanese faced the same fate. The Allies called for the unconditional surrender of the Imperial Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945—the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction".
The Japanese ignored the war continued. By August 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs, the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces was equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Orders for atomic bombs to be used on four Japanese cities were issued on July 25. On August 6, one of the modified B-29s dropped a uranium gun-type bomb on Hiroshima. Three days on August 9, a plutonium implosion bomb was dropped by another B-29 on Nagasaki; the bombs devastated their targets. Over the next two to four months, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000–146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 people in Nagasaki. Large numbers of people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition, for many months afterward. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians. Japan announced its surrender to the Allies on August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war.
On September 2, the Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender ending World War II. The effects of the bombings on the social and political character of subsequent world history and popular culture has been studied extensively, the ethical and legal justification for the bombings is still debated to this day. In 1945, the Pacific War between the Empire of Japan and the Allies entered its fourth year. Most Japanese military units fought fiercely, ensuring that the Allied victory would come at an enormous cost; the 1.25 million battle casualties incurred in total by the United States in World War II included both military personnel killed in action and wounded in action. Nearly one million of the casualties occurred during the last year of the war, from June 1944 to June 1945. In December 1944, American battle casualties hit an all-time monthly high of 88,000 as a result of the German Ardennes Offensive. America's reserves of manpower were running out. Deferments for groups such as agricultural workers were tightened, there was consideration of drafting women.
At the same time, the public was becoming war-weary, demanding that long-serving servicemen be sent home. In the Pacific, the Allies returned to the Philippines, recaptured Burma, invaded Borneo. Offensives were undertaken to reduce the Japanese forces remaining in Bougainville, New Guinea and the Philippines. In April 1945, American forces landed on Okinawa. Along the way, the ratio of Japanese to American casualties dropped from 5:1 in the Philippines to 2:1 on Okinawa. Although some Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Nearly 99% of the 21,000 defenders of Iwo Jima were killed. Of the 117,000 Okinawan and Japanese troops defending Okinawa in April–June 1945, 94% were killed; as the Allies advanced towards Japan, conditions became worse for the Japanese people. Japan's merchant fleet declined from 5,250,000 gross tons in 1941 to 1,560,000 tons in March 1945, 557,000 tons in August 1945. Lack of raw materials forced the Japanese war economy into a steep decline after the middle of 1944.
The civilian economy, which had deteriorated throughout the war, reached disastrous levels by the middle of 1945. The loss of shipping affected the fishing fleet, the 1945 catch was only 22% of that in 1941; the 1945 rice harvest was the worst since 1909, hunger and malnutrition became widespread. U. S. industrial production was overwhelmingly superior to Japan's. By 1943, the U. S. produced 100,000 aircraft a year, compared to Japan's production of 70,000 for the entire war. By the middle of 1944, the U. S. had a hundred aircraft carriers in the Pacific, far more than Japan's twenty-five for the entire war. In February 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe advised Emperor Hirohito that defeat was inevitable, urged him to abdicate. Before the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, plans were underway for the largest operation of the Pacific War, Operation Downfall, the Allied invasion of Japan; the operation had two parts: Operation Coronet. Set to begin in October 1945, Olympic involved a series of landings by the U.
S. Sixth Army intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyūshū. Operation Olympic was to be followed in March 1946 by Operation Coronet, the capture of t
Military Aviation Museum
The Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is home to one of the world's largest collections of warbirds in flying condition. It includes examples from Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, from both World War I and World War II, although the complete collection ranges from the 1910s to the early 1950s, its mission is to "preserve and fly these historic aircraft and to allow a new generation to experience and learn from what might have endured... in the skies so far from home."Unlike most other collections, which are displayed in a static museum environment all of the historic aircraft at the Museum have been restored to flying condition. In twice-yearly major airshows, as well as other special events, the aircraft fly again for the public to view and experience; the collection includes a large reference library, along with artifacts and materials to illustrate the historic context of the aircraft in the collection. The Museum was founded by Gerald "Jerry" Yagen in 2005, the museum's hangars were opened to the public in 2008.
He had been collecting and restoring warbirds since the mid-1990s, starting with the Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk, so the creation of a museum to share the collection with the public was the logical next step. In June 2013 it was reported that the museum and its collection of planes was to be sold off, due to some financial difficulties which Yagen's business was experiencing. An article in The Virginian-Pilot reported that Yagen had said "I'm subsidizing it every year and my business no longer allows me to do that financially, therefore I don't have a solution for it". However, the announced sale of the museum and aircraft was premature. Several aircraft were sold, see below, but both Yagen's businesses and the museum are now operating normally. Since the sales in 2013, additional aircraft are under restoration to fly; the museum is housed at its own small private grass airfield, the Virginia Beach Airport, in the Pungo area of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The complex includes two display hangars in one group of buildings, in another group, a replica World War I-era wooden hangar, a maintenance hangar, a restored authentic pre-WW II Luftwaffe metal hangar, a set of three identical storage hangars painted to resemble British World War II hangars.
The Luftwaffe hangar was built in 1934 at Cottbus Air Base. It was dismantled and shipped to Virginia Beach and construction started in 2010 and finished in fall of 2012 at the Museum where it now houses the Museum's Luftwaffe aircraft. Underway is a control tower, a re-erection of a genuine ex-8th AAF World War II tower from RAF Goxhill. A two-story brick and concrete structure, built to Air Ministry drawing 518/40, it was disassembled and shipped to Virginia, it is being assembled at the Museum's airfield where it will be used as an operational tower. In the UK, some similar towers are now protected; the complex includes a large orange and white checked water tower, visible from a considerable distance and provides a useful landmark for both ground and air travelers. At the entrance to museum there is a large dinosaur park, free to walk around; some of the aircraft obtained in an un-restored state are handled at the museum's related repair facility, the Fighter Factory. The current batch includes a Morane Saulnier AI, a Nieuport 11, a Nieuport 17, a Nieuport 24, a Sopwith Pup, a Sopwith Camel, a Sopwith 1½ Strutter, a deHavilland D.
H.2. Both the Morane Saulnier AI and the Sopwith 1½ Strutter have arrived at the museum. Associated with the museum is an aircraft restoration and maintenance organization, called The Fighter Factory, started in 1996 to restore the collection's first aircraft, it was located at Norfolk Airport, moved to premises at the Suffolk Municipal Airport in Suffolk, Virginia. It operates two facilities: the one in Suffolk, a new facility at the museum. Visitors to the museum can take a guided tour of the Fighter Factory hangar during weekdays, view the team of maintenance technicians performing tasks such as regular maintenance and minor restoration work; the museum offers guest to have the chance to go up in one of their airplanes. You can book an airplane ride in the Waco YMF-5 or the museum's Stearman N2S-3. Both of the aircraft are open cockpit biplanes. Beechcraft T-34A Mentor - The Museum's instance, serial number G-778, was produced in 1956, passed out of military service in 1966. Over the years it has been upgraded with a new engine.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American army general and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was a five-star general in the United States Army and served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, he was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. Born David Dwight Eisenhower in Denison, Texas, he was raised in Kansas in a large family of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, his family had a strong religious background. His mother was born a Lutheran, married as a River Brethren, became a Jehovah's Witness. So, Eisenhower did not belong to any organized church until 1952, he cited constant relocation during his military career as one reason. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and married Mamie Doud, with whom he had two sons. During World War I, he was denied a request to serve in Europe and instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews.
Following the war, he served under various generals and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1941. After the U. S. entered World War II, Eisenhower oversaw the invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany. After the war, Eisenhower served as Army Chief of Staff and took on the role as president of Columbia University. In 1951–52, he served as the first Supreme Commander of NATO. In 1952, Eisenhower entered the presidential race as a Republican to block the isolationist foreign policies of Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO and wanted no foreign entanglements, he won that election and the 1956 election in landslides, both times defeating Adlai Stevenson II. He became the first Republican to win since Herbert Hoover in 1928. Eisenhower's main goals in office were to contain the expansion of the Soviet Union and reduce federal deficits. In 1953, he threatened the use of nuclear weapons until China agreed to peace terms in the Korean War.
China did agree and an armistice resulted that remains in effect. His New Look policy of nuclear deterrence prioritized inexpensive nuclear weapons while reducing funding for expensive Army divisions, he continued Harry S. Truman's policy of recognizing the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, he won congressional approval of the Formosa Resolution, his administration provided major aid to help the French fight off Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War. After the French left he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam, he supported local military coups against democratically-elected governments in Guatemala. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Eisenhower condemned the Israeli and French invasion of Egypt, he forced them to withdraw, he condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but took no action. During the Syrian Crisis of 1957 he approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria's pro-Western neighbours.
After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Eisenhower authorized the establishment of NASA, which led to the Space Race. He deployed 15,000 soldiers during the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Near the end of his term, his efforts to set up a summit meeting with the Soviets collapsed when a U. S. spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. He approved the Bay of Pigs invasion, left to his successor, John F. Kennedy, to carry out. On the domestic front, Eisenhower was a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security, he covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism by invoking executive privilege. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders that integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, his largest program was the Interstate Highway System. He promoted the establishment of strong science education via the National Defense Education Act. Eisenhower's two terms saw widespread economic prosperity except for a minor recession in 1958.
In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers. Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of U. S. presidents. The Eisenhauer family migrated from Karlsbrunn in Nassau-Saarbrücken, to North America, first settling in York, Pennsylvania, in 1741, in the 1880s moving to Kansas. Accounts vary as to when the German name Eisenhauer was anglicized to Eisenhower. Eisenhower's Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, who were farmers, included Hans Nikolaus Eisenhauer of Karlsbrunn, who migrated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1741. Hans's great-great-grandson, David Jacob Eisenhower, was Eisenhower's father and was a college-educated engineer, despite his own father Jacob's urging to stay on the family farm. Eisenhower's mother, Ida Elizabeth Eisenhower, born in Virginia, of German Protestant ancestry, moved to Kansas from Virginia, she married David on September 23, 1885, in Lecompton, Kansas, on the campus of their alma mater, Lane University.
David owned a general store in Hope, but the business failed due to economic conditions and the family became impoverished. The Eisenhowers lived in Texas from 1889 until 1892, returned to Kansas, with $24 to their name at the time. David worked as a railroad mechanic and at a creamery. By 1898, the parents provided a suitable home for their large family; the future pr
Fat Man
"Fat Man" was the codename for the nuclear bomb, detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history, it was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, it was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney. The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the bomb because it had a round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core; the first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. Two more were detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946, some 120 were produced between 1947 and 1949, when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb.
The Fat Man was retired in 1950. Robert Oppenheimer held conferences in Chicago in June 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime atomic research, in Berkeley, California, in July, at which various engineers and physicists discussed nuclear bomb design issues, they chose a gun-type design in which two sub-critical masses would be brought together by firing a "bullet" into a "target". Richard C. Tolman suggested an implosion-type nuclear weapon; the feasibility of a plutonium bomb was questioned in 1942. Wallace Akers, the director of the British "Tube Alloys" project, told James Bryant Conant on 14 November that James Chadwick had "concluded that plutonium might not be a practical fissionable material for weapons because of impurities." Conant consulted Ernest Lawrence and Arthur Compton, who acknowledged that their scientists at Berkeley and Chicago knew about the problem, but they could offer no ready solution. Conant informed Manhattan Project director Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. who in turn assembled a special committee consisting of Lawrence, Oppenheimer, McMillan to examine the issue.
The committee concluded that any problems could be overcome by requiring higher purity. Oppenheimer reviewed his options in early 1943 and gave priority to the gun-type weapon, but he created the E-5 Group at the Los Alamos Laboratory under Seth Neddermeyer to investigate implosion as a hedge against the threat of pre-detonation. Implosion-type bombs were determined to be more efficient in terms of explosive yield per unit mass of fissile material in the bomb, because compressed fissile materials react more and therefore more completely. Nonetheless, it was decided that the plutonium gun would receive the bulk of the research effort, since it was the project with the least amount of uncertainty involved, it was assumed that the uranium gun-type bomb could be adapted from it. The gun-type and implosion-type designs were codenamed "Thin Man" and "Fat Man" respectively; these code names were created by Robert Serber, a former student of Oppenheimer's who worked on the Manhattan Project. He chose them based on their design shapes.
The Fat Man was round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in The Maltese Falcon. Little Boy came last as a variation of Thin Man. Neddermeyer discarded Serber and Tolman's initial concept of implosion as assembling a series of pieces in favor of one in which a hollow sphere was imploded by an explosive shell, he was assisted in this work by Hugh Bradner, Charles Critchfield, John Streib. L. T. E. Thompson was brought in as a consultant, discussed the problem with Neddermeyer in June 1943. Thompson was skeptical. Oppenheimer arranged for Neddermeyer and Edwin McMillan to visit the National Defense Research Committee's Explosives Research Laboratory near the laboratories of the Bureau of Mines in Bruceton, where they spoke to George Kistiakowsky and his team, but Neddermeyer's efforts in July and August at imploding tubes to produce cylinders tended to produce objects that resembled rocks. Neddermeyer was the only person who believed that implosion was practical, only his enthusiasm kept the project alive.
Oppenheimer brought John von Neumann to Los Alamos in September 1943 to take a fresh look at implosion. After reviewing Neddermeyer's studies, discussing the matter with Edward Teller, von Neumann suggested the use of high explosives in shaped charges to implode a sphere, which he showed could not only result in a faster assembly of fissile material than was possible with the gun method, but which could reduce the amount of material required, because of the resulting higher density; the idea that, under such pressures, the plutonium metal itself would be compressed came from Teller, whose knowledge of how dense metals behaved under heavy pressure was influenced by his pre-war theoretical studies of the Earth's core with George Gamow. The prospect of more-efficient nuclear weapons impressed Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe, but they decided that an expert on explosives would be required. Kistiakowsky's name was suggested, Kistiakowsky was brought into the project as a consultant in October 1943; the implosion project remained a backup until April 1944, when experiments by Emilio G. Segrè and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos on the newly reactor-produced plutonium from the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge and the B Reactor at the Hanford site showed that it contained impurities in the form of the isotope plutonium-240
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Aerial photo of the museum in its previous location
