Q 01/05

Which city did B-29s firebomb on 9–10 March 1945, burning out sixteen square miles overnight?

A) Osaka

B) Tokyo

C) Nagoya

D) Kobe

Answer · why

B) Tokyo

Tokyo: General Curtis LeMay sent the bombers in low at night with incendiaries because so much of Japan's war production was scattered through small w...

Q 02/05

What was the code name of the gun-type bomb dropped on Hiroshima?

A) Fat Man

B) Little Boy

C) Thin Man

D) Gadget

Answer · why

B) Little Boy

Little Boy's gun design, which fired one piece of its nuclear fuel into another, was thought so sure to work that it was never fully tested before it ...

Q 03/05

Announcing Hiroshima, Truman said the US had spent how much on 'the greatest scientific gamble in history'?

A) $20 million

B) $200 million

C) $2 billion

D) $20 billion

Answer · why

C) $2 billion

$2 billion, Truman said, 'and won'. He added that few of the workers knew what they had been producing: they saw great quantities of material going in...

Q 04/05

Which US Army Air Forces unit under Colonel Paul Tibbets was created to deliver the bombs?

A) The 100th Bomb Group

B) The 8th Air Force

C) The 332nd Fighter Group

D) The 509th Composite Group

Answer · why

D) The 509th Composite Group

The 509th Composite Group was 'composite' because it had its own transports and support units, which kept outsiders away from its secret. Most of its ...

Q 05/05

From which island in the Marianas did the atomic missions take off?

A) Guam

B) Tinian

C) Saipan

D) Iwo Jima

Answer · why

B) Tinian

Tinian had been turned by Navy Seabees into the biggest air base in the world within months of its capture. Each atomic bomb was loaded from a pit, wi...