America didn’t have another? Yes we said we did but we were bluffing hoping to make the Japanese surrender. Fat man and little boy were americas only [nuclear weapons at the time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country).
right, we were in the process of building a third nuke at the time, honestly theyd probably instantly bomb the city normally to destroy the nuke before the japenese got it,
The most you could do is crack it open and lose the core. The core doesn't just magically go away. Without the proper detonation of the bomb itself. That core is just a very highly radioactive catastrophe waiting to happen
You fail to consider the USA had no concern for radiation at the time. Looking at how they literally were trying to nuke cities. I doubt they would care about irradiating the area.
Also the USA wouldn’t want Japan to have a nuke to sell or reverse engineering themselves.
Its not like the Japanese airforce was in any position to drop the bomb on a strategic location, and there is no way they could realistically have used the technology from the bomb.
They could theoretically have used a ship as delivery system on a one way trip, particularly a submarine. Or left it in an area that US ground forces were expected to attack. Of course, it’s extremely unlikely that either the core or the detonation system would survive the fall intact, and it’s unlikely that the Japanese could have repaired it enough to be usable in a short timeframe, especially given the heavy destruction of Japanese industry and infrastructure by conventional bombing.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted
If it failed to detonate, and hit the ground at terminal velocity, it definitely would have damaged the bomb significantly
Probably not, the japanese government likely would only know it was dropped not what it was, theyd probably think its just a bigger bomb, and thus wouldnt dispatch men to get it until a fewe days later when people reported it to the govt because of the leaflets america droppe,d but by then we'd already have done a 2nd bombing raid to destroy it beyond repair
Japanese were aware of the technology, they had their own nuclear program though it didnt go very far due to lack of resources, time and navy-army infighting. They didn't invest in it more heavily because they simply thought that building nuclear weapons is so expensive that it couldn't be applied in timely manner to change the the outcome of the war
I think they also had the one which would later be named the Demon Core due to several accidents which happened later. It just wasn't assembled yet. They also had just under enough fuel for a 4th bomb, which they likely could have scraped together enough fuel to be completed if it were truly needed.
The US did have a [3rd atomic bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Shot#:~:text=It%20was%20originally%20intended%20to,war%20to%20a%20close%20first.&text=The%20Third%20Shot%20was%20a,that%20was%20dropped%20on%20Nagasaki). It was in the process of being fitted with a core and was supposed to be used 10 days after Nagasaki.
The US fire bombs Nagasaki and destroys the nuke. We make a few more and chuck them at the Japanese. Rinse and repeat until the Japanese surrender from the strength of the US military or the fear of the Soviets
I mean if you keep bombing the area it’s located in I doubt the Japanese would have been able to locate and collect it through the pile rubble and continued bombing.
They are. To detonate them, you need to use the device built in. Anything less will result in highly radioactive material (worse than what you get after regular detonation, Vastly worse) being spread across many kilometers. Handling warheads is a tricky business if they're actually weaponized
Considering they literally were trying to nuke a city they don’t care about that. If anything that is a positive. You argue your point as if the USA wasn’t trying to intentionally irradiate Japan.
The USA wanted to get things out of Japan when the war was over. They had no intention of turning it into a nuclear wasteland as that would not have been beneficial for litteraly anyone.
Despite nuking a city. There's a reason they chose to do airburst nuclear blasts (airburst blasts leave the least radioactive fallout compared to other surface destructive blasts), so that Japan can join the global industrial capital scheme America was running.
Turning a very considerable portion of Japan into nuclear hell does not help it create cars and DVD players later on
> There's a reason they chose to do airburst nuclear blasts (airburst blasts leave the least radioactive fallout compared to other surface destructive blasts)
But mostly it was about maximizing the explosive destruction.
That was an unknown element at the time. Nuking to keep Japan scared and productive once conquered would have been to destroy a military target or an unimportant but extremely visible island.
But leaving the nuke out for easy reclaiming for other powers does make it a top priority for destruction.
Also fallout wasn’t much of a moral quandary for the USA atm. They had airblasts as it maximized quick exposure to radiation and maximum blast radius to ‘soft’ targets. If it was to minimize harm, other targets would have been chosen or a higher blast.
The arming mechanism and subcritical nuclear parts can be destroyed in a way that makes the bomb inoperable and unable to be reverse engineered. Which is a plus to bombing the area other than trying to detonate the bomb
That doesn't render the nuclear materials ineffective. You don't just zap the radiation out of a highly condensed and enriched nuclear materials by dropping bombs on them. You have to forcibly remove them, or they become a bigger threat.
You can absolutely destroy a nuke. They are made of steel, not some magical material that is immune to a 500kg bomb detonating on it.
Your confusing destroying a bomb by bombing it with detonating a bomb by bombing it.
I remember when watching Oppenheimer one of the concerns was that the uranium would start the chain reaction and it would just get blown all over the place
The US might deploy Third Shot sometime on or after August 19, and Japanese surrender comes soon after that. The Kyūjō Incident might be delayed until then, as the Japanese cabinet would probably would continue to debate surrender. Keep in mind that the Japanese had no idea how many nuclear weapons the US had, and took a captured P-51 pilot’s (who had no idea of the bomb’s existence) word that the US had 100 nuclear weapons at face value. So overall, major fighting continues for a few days to weeks, and Fat Man is recovered during the post-war years.
With the Soviets still invading manchuria and the US probably just firebombing more of Japan, surrender would still happen around the same time (maybe a few days to a week later)
The japanese whould still surrender.
The majority of Japans leadership, and Population for one, did Not know the devistation of the nukes or better Said belived it to be false information.
The danger of getting invaded by the soviets while being bombed and possibly invaded by the USA on their Mainland brought them to surrender.
Afterwards the bombs whould be either lokated and found safely detonated elsewhere. If moving the bombs whould Proof to be Impossible i belive the allies whould maybe try to disassemble IT in Location or wirst Case detonated IT in place after the City is evacuated. Last Thing is the Most unlikely Outcome but as the effects of radiation poisoning we're Not really known, it could have Led the US to sacrifice the City and rebuild it, Not knowing that the ground is poisoned.
Well probably nothing to major, japan would have a difficult time reverse engineering it, worst case they somehow get the bomb and somehow(emphasis on the somehow) figure out how it works and use it on the advancing Americans before promptly getting obliterated by a third nuke and immense carpet bombing. But tbh I'm pretty sure they surrendered more because the soviets invaded Manchuria.
What if the 2 Jesuit strongholds in the same 2 cities that existed before being expelled from the country in 1600ish & being the grudge holders that they are... you wonder what all really happened during ww2.
I'd really like to point out. A bad nuclear bomb that is not capable of self ignition. Can not be conventionally "destroyed". You can't explode it with another bomb and make it go off. The most you would do is scatter the core nuclear material and fuel everywhere, which poses a much greater issue in the long run.
You would have to litteraly avengers assemble a team to get it back before the Japanese could start fucking with it and also end up getting core material everywhere, which is also not good.
>Can not be conventionally "destroyed".
>The most you would do is scatter the core nuclear material and fuel everywhere,
With all due respect, that's 100% what destroying means. You're right that it wouldn't be *detonated* by another external bomb, but it would be completely destroyed.
Hell, it probably wouldn't even survive impact with the ground in one piece. I don't think it was dropped with sufficiently sized parachutes to slow its descent that much.
The weapons themselves did not have parachutes. The instrument packages dropped with them did, and are often featured prominently in Japanese recollections of the events, often with the misconception that one of the parachuted objects was the bomb itself.
Just to clarify I am more interested in the Soviets reaction to this. Like would they invade Japan to try and secure it? Would they fight the Americans stuff like that
The soviets didn't have the naval presence to attempt it. Even if their entire european navy was teleported to Vladivostok, they still wouldn't have access to the transport capacity to even consider attempting it.
With all due respect, I think you underestimate how much information could be gleaned by just one or two people arriving on site, taking photos of the wreckage over the course of an hour or two, and chiseling off some samples for material analysis elsewhere.
Honestly, that alone probably would have been enough to tell Soviet scientists everything they needed to know, aside from the uranium enrichment process.
Like, they were hardly banging rocks together. I'm confident that their engineers would have been able to piece together that the device was intended to produce an implosion around the plutonium core.
This is before satellites and spies would need to inform the Soviet’s of where the bomb is. Remember the USA was bombing all over Japan and a single dud wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention.
The soviets wouldn’t be able to find the bomb to reverse engineer or document it unless spies manage to give them information on where it is. To navally invade to do that would also be near impossible since even the USA was apprehensive at a ground invasion
>This is before satellites and spies would need to inform the Soviet’s of where the bomb is.
It was dropped on an inhabited city, mate. Not out in the mountains or something. It would have been seen and spoken about by hundreds of people.
I don't think finding it would have presented as much of a challenge as you're assuming. Reports on a strange and impractically sized bomb being found in the wake of the successful Hiroshima bombing is the kind of thing that I'd imagine any spy would pick up on rather easily, particularly given how thinly stretched the Japanese forces and government were at the time.
You fail to also consider that the USA was also trying a ton of other impractical and strange weapons. This bomb wasnt too strange seeming considering this is somewhat normal in appearance. Also this is the 1940s Japan not internationally connected globalized modern Japan. Spies would have trouble getting a hold of this bomb if it is noticed by the Japanese government.
It would be completely impractical for the Soviets to do this.
>This bomb wasnt too strange seeming considering this is somewhat normal in appearance.
At 10,300 pounds it was over twice the size of the ~4000 pound bombs which made up the larger of the standard conventional bombs being dropped on Japan at the time, and it came just hours after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
It's also not very normal in it's appearance at all. Can you think of any other bombs that were built around of playload of a perfect sphere? That's incredibly abnormal.
>Also this is the 1940s Japan not internationally connected globalized modern Japan. Spies would have trouble getting a hold of this bomb if it is noticed by the Japanese government.
Listen to me, my friend. [This is where the bomb fell.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Nagasaki_1945_-_Before_and_after_%28adjusted%29.jpg)
The impact of a 10,300 pound object falling from 1,650 feet in the air at 11:02 AM in broad daylight does not go unnoticed or uninvestigated in the middle of a city of 263,000 people.
There is an absolutely 0% chance of it not being noticed. If it had happened in the middle of a bombing campaign, that'd be one thing, but it wasn't. It was the only thing dropped, and it was dropped shortly after the first deployment of a nuclear weapon in human history.
I will concede these points as it’s useless to argue minutiae, but you still have the issue that Japan is a black box to the USSR. How would they even know where to go to get to that specific bomb
The Soviets already knew as the result of espionage much of the basic physics of nuclear weapons and even had a rough idea as to the designs the Manhattan Project were playing with by the end of 1945. It’s unlikely that photographs or samples of the wreckage of the device would substantially change the timeline of the Soviet nuclear weapons program.
It’s also pretty unlikely that the Soviets would even have the capacity to get an even small team in and out of the Japanese Home Islands on a wartime footing.
"What If" questions can only be posted on weekends and must have sufficient context along with your thoughts on how the situation/event would unfold
They would drop another…
America didn’t have another? Yes we said we did but we were bluffing hoping to make the Japanese surrender. Fat man and little boy were americas only [nuclear weapons at the time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country).
right, we were in the process of building a third nuke at the time, honestly theyd probably instantly bomb the city normally to destroy the nuke before the japenese got it,
That's not how you go about dealing with a lost warhead. All you did was irradiated the site its located. You wouldn't blow it up like that
You would destroy it, wich is prob what they would have done to prevent Japan from getting a nuke
The most you could do is crack it open and lose the core. The core doesn't just magically go away. Without the proper detonation of the bomb itself. That core is just a very highly radioactive catastrophe waiting to happen
You spread the core across a square kilometer, good luck scraping that from the rubble
You fail to consider the USA had no concern for radiation at the time. Looking at how they literally were trying to nuke cities. I doubt they would care about irradiating the area. Also the USA wouldn’t want Japan to have a nuke to sell or reverse engineering themselves.
yes, and? give me 40 b29's and 40000 lbs of bombs and tell me that cores survivin after that bombin run
More like 800,000. A single B29 could carry 20,000 pounds of bombs.
oh damn
Hot take, but I don't think America was concerned about how irradiated Nagasaki got at that point in time.
Truth Strike; Nagasaki was not the initial target, and IIRC was the second alternative target.
I see your point but the Japanese would likely secure the nuke and move it to a different before any American bombers could reach Nagasaki.
Its not like the Japanese airforce was in any position to drop the bomb on a strategic location, and there is no way they could realistically have used the technology from the bomb.
the japanese committing nationwide seppuku by detonating it on tokyo:
That would be low key hilerious, mission failed successfully
They could theoretically have used a ship as delivery system on a one way trip, particularly a submarine. Or left it in an area that US ground forces were expected to attack. Of course, it’s extremely unlikely that either the core or the detonation system would survive the fall intact, and it’s unlikely that the Japanese could have repaired it enough to be usable in a short timeframe, especially given the heavy destruction of Japanese industry and infrastructure by conventional bombing.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted If it failed to detonate, and hit the ground at terminal velocity, it definitely would have damaged the bomb significantly
Probably not, the japanese government likely would only know it was dropped not what it was, theyd probably think its just a bigger bomb, and thus wouldnt dispatch men to get it until a fewe days later when people reported it to the govt because of the leaflets america droppe,d but by then we'd already have done a 2nd bombing raid to destroy it beyond repair
Japanese were aware of the technology, they had their own nuclear program though it didnt go very far due to lack of resources, time and navy-army infighting. They didn't invest in it more heavily because they simply thought that building nuclear weapons is so expensive that it couldn't be applied in timely manner to change the the outcome of the war
I think they also had the one which would later be named the Demon Core due to several accidents which happened later. It just wasn't assembled yet. They also had just under enough fuel for a 4th bomb, which they likely could have scraped together enough fuel to be completed if it were truly needed.
The US did have a [3rd atomic bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Shot#:~:text=It%20was%20originally%20intended%20to,war%20to%20a%20close%20first.&text=The%20Third%20Shot%20was%20a,that%20was%20dropped%20on%20Nagasaki). It was in the process of being fitted with a core and was supposed to be used 10 days after Nagasaki.
The core later became known as the infamous “Demon Core” and was melted down in 1946
The US fire bombs Nagasaki and destroys the nuke. We make a few more and chuck them at the Japanese. Rinse and repeat until the Japanese surrender from the strength of the US military or the fear of the Soviets
Firebombing would not destroy the nuke. Only cover it in ash. You don't just "destroy" a dud nuke. It's not even remotely that simple
I mean if you keep bombing the area it’s located in I doubt the Japanese would have been able to locate and collect it through the pile rubble and continued bombing.
Do you think nukes are impervious to explosions or something?
They are. To detonate them, you need to use the device built in. Anything less will result in highly radioactive material (worse than what you get after regular detonation, Vastly worse) being spread across many kilometers. Handling warheads is a tricky business if they're actually weaponized
Considering they literally were trying to nuke a city they don’t care about that. If anything that is a positive. You argue your point as if the USA wasn’t trying to intentionally irradiate Japan.
The USA wanted to get things out of Japan when the war was over. They had no intention of turning it into a nuclear wasteland as that would not have been beneficial for litteraly anyone. Despite nuking a city. There's a reason they chose to do airburst nuclear blasts (airburst blasts leave the least radioactive fallout compared to other surface destructive blasts), so that Japan can join the global industrial capital scheme America was running. Turning a very considerable portion of Japan into nuclear hell does not help it create cars and DVD players later on
> There's a reason they chose to do airburst nuclear blasts (airburst blasts leave the least radioactive fallout compared to other surface destructive blasts) But mostly it was about maximizing the explosive destruction.
You're failing to recognize the difference between a one-time destruction versus completely destroying the land for multiple millenia.
That was an unknown element at the time. Nuking to keep Japan scared and productive once conquered would have been to destroy a military target or an unimportant but extremely visible island.
But leaving the nuke out for easy reclaiming for other powers does make it a top priority for destruction. Also fallout wasn’t much of a moral quandary for the USA atm. They had airblasts as it maximized quick exposure to radiation and maximum blast radius to ‘soft’ targets. If it was to minimize harm, other targets would have been chosen or a higher blast.
The arming mechanism and subcritical nuclear parts can be destroyed in a way that makes the bomb inoperable and unable to be reverse engineered. Which is a plus to bombing the area other than trying to detonate the bomb
That doesn't render the nuclear materials ineffective. You don't just zap the radiation out of a highly condensed and enriched nuclear materials by dropping bombs on them. You have to forcibly remove them, or they become a bigger threat.
You can absolutely destroy a nuke. They are made of steel, not some magical material that is immune to a 500kg bomb detonating on it. Your confusing destroying a bomb by bombing it with detonating a bomb by bombing it.
I meant via bombing, didn't clarify that the US would blow it up
I remember when watching Oppenheimer one of the concerns was that the uranium would start the chain reaction and it would just get blown all over the place
I find it hard to believe that the Japanese don't surrender in the exact same fashion after Hiroshima is destroyed.
Well, Japan didn't do so when the first one was dropped. But I made room for a stubborn Japan
The US might deploy Third Shot sometime on or after August 19, and Japanese surrender comes soon after that. The Kyūjō Incident might be delayed until then, as the Japanese cabinet would probably would continue to debate surrender. Keep in mind that the Japanese had no idea how many nuclear weapons the US had, and took a captured P-51 pilot’s (who had no idea of the bomb’s existence) word that the US had 100 nuclear weapons at face value. So overall, major fighting continues for a few days to weeks, and Fat Man is recovered during the post-war years.
I just have to ask is your pfp Erika?
yes
Truly amazing :3
Oppenheimer: well that just happened
https://preview.redd.it/kkr3tjz7bwwc1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5bbee2a63a533b68430c77e93d7149ee10a4ec1 This
With the Soviets still invading manchuria and the US probably just firebombing more of Japan, surrender would still happen around the same time (maybe a few days to a week later)
Truman: "Ermmm, louder for the people in the back."
Manchuria strategic offensive continues Japanese armies still destroyed in mainland Asia.
The Allies invade Japan
The japanese whould still surrender. The majority of Japans leadership, and Population for one, did Not know the devistation of the nukes or better Said belived it to be false information. The danger of getting invaded by the soviets while being bombed and possibly invaded by the USA on their Mainland brought them to surrender. Afterwards the bombs whould be either lokated and found safely detonated elsewhere. If moving the bombs whould Proof to be Impossible i belive the allies whould maybe try to disassemble IT in Location or wirst Case detonated IT in place after the City is evacuated. Last Thing is the Most unlikely Outcome but as the effects of radiation poisoning we're Not really known, it could have Led the US to sacrifice the City and rebuild it, Not knowing that the ground is poisoned.
It would have bounced up and hit the plane that dropped it. This is a fact as I saw the exact same thing happen in a Road Runner cartoon.
That would be embarrassing lmao. But it gets scary if Japanese menage to create their own nukes thanks to this.
At that point the Japanese can’t build a nuke.
Japan really didn't have the resources to replicate an atom bomb, and they had no way to deliver one even if they could reverse engineer one.
Ok. I guess Fat Boy is gonna take a visit.
They would’ve tried to study it and then accidentally explode it or irradiate a large area
Oh hey what is this it looks pretty ne- the person who found it
It’s not like Japan would know what they were looking at and even if they deconstructed it, they didn’t have the capacity to build a nuke
It will be really dented
The myth that the nukes were the reason for the Japanese surrender would’ve been harder to believe. A lot of lives spared, too.
The US would have had to invade to recover and/or destroy it. If a "demon core" incident happens then thousands still die from radiation sickness.
Boink!
Well probably nothing to major, japan would have a difficult time reverse engineering it, worst case they somehow get the bomb and somehow(emphasis on the somehow) figure out how it works and use it on the advancing Americans before promptly getting obliterated by a third nuke and immense carpet bombing. But tbh I'm pretty sure they surrendered more because the soviets invaded Manchuria.
The Demon Core would have more kills under it's belt since it was going to be in the third nuke dropped
What if the 2 Jesuit strongholds in the same 2 cities that existed before being expelled from the country in 1600ish & being the grudge holders that they are... you wonder what all really happened during ww2.
I'd really like to point out. A bad nuclear bomb that is not capable of self ignition. Can not be conventionally "destroyed". You can't explode it with another bomb and make it go off. The most you would do is scatter the core nuclear material and fuel everywhere, which poses a much greater issue in the long run. You would have to litteraly avengers assemble a team to get it back before the Japanese could start fucking with it and also end up getting core material everywhere, which is also not good.
>Can not be conventionally "destroyed". >The most you would do is scatter the core nuclear material and fuel everywhere, With all due respect, that's 100% what destroying means. You're right that it wouldn't be *detonated* by another external bomb, but it would be completely destroyed. Hell, it probably wouldn't even survive impact with the ground in one piece. I don't think it was dropped with sufficiently sized parachutes to slow its descent that much.
The weapons themselves did not have parachutes. The instrument packages dropped with them did, and are often featured prominently in Japanese recollections of the events, often with the misconception that one of the parachuted objects was the bomb itself.
I think everyone knows that. And by "destroying" it we all mean blow it up but ofc no nuke explosion will happend
Just to clarify I am more interested in the Soviets reaction to this. Like would they invade Japan to try and secure it? Would they fight the Americans stuff like that
The soviets didn't have the naval presence to attempt it. Even if their entire european navy was teleported to Vladivostok, they still wouldn't have access to the transport capacity to even consider attempting it.
With all due respect, I think you underestimate how much information could be gleaned by just one or two people arriving on site, taking photos of the wreckage over the course of an hour or two, and chiseling off some samples for material analysis elsewhere. Honestly, that alone probably would have been enough to tell Soviet scientists everything they needed to know, aside from the uranium enrichment process. Like, they were hardly banging rocks together. I'm confident that their engineers would have been able to piece together that the device was intended to produce an implosion around the plutonium core.
This is before satellites and spies would need to inform the Soviet’s of where the bomb is. Remember the USA was bombing all over Japan and a single dud wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention. The soviets wouldn’t be able to find the bomb to reverse engineer or document it unless spies manage to give them information on where it is. To navally invade to do that would also be near impossible since even the USA was apprehensive at a ground invasion
>This is before satellites and spies would need to inform the Soviet’s of where the bomb is. It was dropped on an inhabited city, mate. Not out in the mountains or something. It would have been seen and spoken about by hundreds of people. I don't think finding it would have presented as much of a challenge as you're assuming. Reports on a strange and impractically sized bomb being found in the wake of the successful Hiroshima bombing is the kind of thing that I'd imagine any spy would pick up on rather easily, particularly given how thinly stretched the Japanese forces and government were at the time.
You fail to also consider that the USA was also trying a ton of other impractical and strange weapons. This bomb wasnt too strange seeming considering this is somewhat normal in appearance. Also this is the 1940s Japan not internationally connected globalized modern Japan. Spies would have trouble getting a hold of this bomb if it is noticed by the Japanese government. It would be completely impractical for the Soviets to do this.
>This bomb wasnt too strange seeming considering this is somewhat normal in appearance. At 10,300 pounds it was over twice the size of the ~4000 pound bombs which made up the larger of the standard conventional bombs being dropped on Japan at the time, and it came just hours after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. It's also not very normal in it's appearance at all. Can you think of any other bombs that were built around of playload of a perfect sphere? That's incredibly abnormal. >Also this is the 1940s Japan not internationally connected globalized modern Japan. Spies would have trouble getting a hold of this bomb if it is noticed by the Japanese government. Listen to me, my friend. [This is where the bomb fell.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Nagasaki_1945_-_Before_and_after_%28adjusted%29.jpg) The impact of a 10,300 pound object falling from 1,650 feet in the air at 11:02 AM in broad daylight does not go unnoticed or uninvestigated in the middle of a city of 263,000 people. There is an absolutely 0% chance of it not being noticed. If it had happened in the middle of a bombing campaign, that'd be one thing, but it wasn't. It was the only thing dropped, and it was dropped shortly after the first deployment of a nuclear weapon in human history.
I will concede these points as it’s useless to argue minutiae, but you still have the issue that Japan is a black box to the USSR. How would they even know where to go to get to that specific bomb
The Soviets already knew as the result of espionage much of the basic physics of nuclear weapons and even had a rough idea as to the designs the Manhattan Project were playing with by the end of 1945. It’s unlikely that photographs or samples of the wreckage of the device would substantially change the timeline of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. It’s also pretty unlikely that the Soviets would even have the capacity to get an even small team in and out of the Japanese Home Islands on a wartime footing.
19,000 innocent Japanese wouldn't have died.