His impression of the atomic bomb, shared by almost everyone he discussed it with at the time, was that it was just a large bomb. Frightening in its power, particularly in that one bomb could do the same job entire bombing groups were needed to accomplish over Dresden, but still just "an explosive of enormous power". And it wasn't that interesting to him, because it instinctively seemed like a trick weapon; you could never safely send one bomber over a hard target, and more than one of those bombs would be a waste, so you wouldn't normally need them.
The exception that he recalls was a friend of his who was a postdoc in physics. His comment, as he related it, was "this changes everything." But he didn't understand why his friend felt that way for several years. [ Parent ]
