The Dropping of
the First Bomb

".. In the two and a half years [that scientists had been working on the bomb] all the bugs were ironed out. Components were put together at an isolated spot near Santa Fe, N.M. Tested on the desert on July 16, 1945, the bomb disintegrated a steel tower, sent a great cloud of smoke boiling up some 40,000 feet and knocked down two men more than five-and-a-half miles away. Then the bombs went to the Far East."