Part IV - Tibbets and the Enola Gay ride into history...

"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot

(Above: The race to build an Atomic bomb was rapidly drawing to a close. America and her Canadian and British allies had endeavored to build an Atomic weapon out of fear that Nazi Germany was already ahead of them. However, by the time the weapon was built and tested, Germany had surrendered and was out of the war. Japan remained; and, therefore became the focus of the new weapon.)            
            On the night of March 9-10, 1945, the United States fire bombed the capital of Japan, Tokyo. In three separate waves, flying at low altitude, covering approximately 6 hours of constant bombing, 334 B-29 Super-fortresses dropped 1,667 tons of incendiary bombs on the city. This ignited a fire storm that actually killed more people than the bomb dropped by Colonel Tibbets in the first use of an A-bomb five months later against Hiroshima.

            There is a great difference between the two bombing runs, though. While both bombing missions destroyed most of their targets; the Hiroshima Uranium-235 bomb “Little Boy” was one bomb that weighed slightly less than 5 tons. The Tokyo mission dropped 1,667 tons of incendiary bombs used against that target. Also, the Hiroshima A-bomb was carried by one plane. It took 334 planes used against Tokyo.
            The Enola Gay and “Little Boy” did virtually the same thing to Hiroshima that took 334 planes, 3 separate bombing raids - while dropping three million three hundred and thirty four thousand pounds of incendiary bombs – to do to Tokyo. Moreover, the Tokyo raids took place over a 6 hour time span; the Enola Gay & “Little Boy” were able to do it in approximately 8 seconds. 8 Seconds is all it took to doom the city.
            Hiroshima was a city of approximately 350 to 400,000 people in August of 1945; it was also headquarters to the Imperial 2nd General Army. When the Atomic bomb detonated, the fireball from "Little Boy" was 6 football fields wide; and, at its core, the heat matched that of the surface of the sun. Within the area on the ground directly under the epicenter (called the hypocenter) everything was vaporized. Literally, people burned like tissue paper; nothing was left. There was no pain; there was no dying process for these people; they simply ceased to exist. There were no charred remains, no bones, no teeth or dental remains, nothing.  This is the primary reason there remains - and will always remain - such a wide gap in the estimated total of deaths at Hiroshima... at the hypocenter, very near the heart of the city, there simply was nothing left to count.

(Above: Today, the Enola Gay hangs in the US Air & Space Museum located next to Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. In the 1990s a literal war between political peace activist and veteran’s groups erupted when the Enola Gay was slatted to be displayed at the Washington DC Smithsonian Museum. This caused an outcry from the peace activist and the government of Japan. When the idea was mothballed by US officials, veteran’s groups responded to insure the plane took its proper place in the museum. The eventual result was to have the plane fully restored and placed in the Air & Space Museum in Chantilly.)
 

(Above: The Enola Gay’s flight crew, training officer Colonel Paul Tibbets is standing 2nd from right. Navigator Theodore “Dutch” van Kirk - in the middle standing next to Tibbets - is the sole remaining survivor of either of the two historic flight crews that were responsible for the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
 

(Above: The science of killing… to insure the entire city was exposed to the weapon, “Little Boy” was detonated by altimeter at 1885 feet over the city of Hiroshima. That guaranteed an umbrella effect that would blanket most of the city.  The mission took place on 06 August 1945 and detonated at 0815. In order to give the pilot and crew enough time to escape, the bomb free-fell for 43 seconds before detonating. “Little Boy” weighed approximate 4.5 tons and had a 12.5 Kiloton yield. It was 12 feet long x 28 inches in diameter and was a Uranium bomb (U-235) comprised of 1/13^th of an ounce of fissionable material. Sited and dropped by hand, it was very close to “on target”. The aiming point was the T-shaped Aioi Bridge which was the main bridge close to the heart of the city.)

            The B-29 Enola Gay was named after the mother of pilot, Paul Tibbets. Due to the bomb's weight, Tibbets had to use all 1.8 miles of runway to get the weapon off the ground. Liftoff was 0245 from Tinian Island. It was a 13 hour round-trip flight. Tibbetts and other members of the crew, napped on the way to the bombing target.

            The mushroom cloud was visible from the air for almost 400 miles.

(Above: The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima about one hour after the bombing. The photo was taken from a U.S. observer plane over the Seto Inland Sea about 80 miles from the hypocenter. U.S. Army photo courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation)

            After dropping the bomb, in order for the Enola Gay to escape from being knocked out of the sky, Tibbets had to pick up as much speed as possible. This required the Enola Gay to turn into a 159 degree, steep banking dive. 43 Seconds after dropping the bomb, a tingling in Tibbets' teeth told him of the successful detonation. The bomb's radioactive forces were interacting with the lead fillings in his teeth. As the plane raced away, the shockwave from the blast raced toward them at 1,100 feet per second. When the shockwave hit, the plane was approximately 9 to 10 miles away from the point of detonation. Then, a second shockwave slammed them. This was the result of the force of the blast emanating back off the surface of the Earth; and, it was almost as powerful as the initial shockwave.

            The mushroom cloud boiled up over 45,000 feet high, 8 miles into the atmosphere. The city had completely disappeared, incinerated under a blanket of smoke and fire. They radioed back to Tinian that the primary target had been bombed visually with good results. Upon arriving back at Tinian, they were debriefed and given a quick medical checkup. The interviewers were skeptical of their accounts of the blast.

(Above: This video clip features archival footage that is woven together with a BBC production dealing with the Hiroshima bombing of 06 August 1945.)
 



(Above: Comments by retired Brigadier General Paul Tibbets made for the Smithsonian TV production, “The Men Who Brought the Dawn”.)

            The news of the atomic bomb was promptly announced to the world by President Truman. The Japanese were given an ultimatum, to accept the Potsdam call for unconditional surrender, or face further atomic attacks. Having failed to surrender, three days later, on August 9th, Major Chuck Sweeney, in Bock's Car, dropped the second atomic bomb, Fat-Man on Nagasaki.
 

(Above: Dropped on Nagasaki on 09 August 1945 at 1102, “Fat Man” was named after Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, an ally whose mother was an American. The approximate weight of the weapon was 4.5 tons; it was a Plutonium bomb (P-239) with a 22.1 Kiloton Yield. The weapon was delivered by the B-29 flying super fortress, Bock’s Car & piloted by Major Charles Sweeney. “Fat man” was detonated by altimeter at 1635 feet; however, it completely missed the city - the epicenter was over a valley adjacent to Nagasaki but outside the city. The weapon still destroyed approximately 2/3s of the city and killed approximately 70,000 people. Unlike Hiroshima, due to the vegetation in the valley over the epicenter, there was no firestorm visited on Nagasaki.)
 

(Above: Bock’s Car; currently on permanent display at the US Air Force Museum located at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.)

(Above: The crew of another B-29, The Great Artiste, flew Bock’s Car and was commanded by Major Charles W. Sweeney (top right, standing). This crew also piloted the scientific plane on the mission that annihilated Hiroshima and thus were among the select few to witness the destruction of both cities.)

            It should be noted that Nagasaki was not the primary target; Kokura was the primary drop site. When Major Sweeney arrived over Kokura, it was clouded over. Having waited as long as possible, he eventually decided to move to the secondary target, Nagasaki.

            Nagasaki was home to the Mitsubishi Steel works and also was home to one of the Japanese war production torpedo factories. Both industrial targets placed the city high on the list of atomic targets.

            Once Sweeney arrived over Nagasaki, it too was clouded over. Nonetheless, he could not make it back to Tinian Airfield carrying a 10,000 lb. atomic bomb in the belly of the aircraft.  To attempt to land in such a state could have led to the incineration of the island.

            To add to Sweeney’s problems, his fuel became critically low. Having spent more time than he should have afforded, Sweeney eventually took Bock’s Car to an area where there was a partial break in the cloud cover over Nagasaki; the bombardier quickly sited the bomb and released the payload. Literally “out of fuel”, Sweeny eventually had to perform an emergency landing at Okinawa. This happened even though there was no tower clearance to land the craft and the runway was designated as too short to accept the huge B-29.  He was nonetheless successful landing the aircraft.
 

(Above: This photo was taken very near the exact moment of detonation of "Fat Man" over Nagasaki. This photograph truly captures the remarkable event. Notice the three people in the foreground, as yet unaware that anything has happened. The destruction of Nagasaki followed that of Hiroshima by three days and compelled Japan to surrender, ending World War II.   Photo: Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum/Corbis)

 

(Above: Dr. Harold Agnew, with the plutonium core of the Nagasaki bomb. Most of the case's housing consists of lining to protect its currier, Dr. Agnew.)

 

(Above: Historical archival footage of the Nagasaki blast taken by one of the escort planes. The video appears so clean (no clouds in the sky) because of the effect made by the blast pressure shockwave. The shockwave instantly removed all cloud cover from the range of the blast area. A closer look at the previous photograph gives the reader a good idea of cloud conditions over Nagasaki that morning.)

(Above: Archival footage of "Fat Man" and the Nagasaki bombing which were taken by elements on the ground at Tinian and in the air by one of the trail planes. The video used here is by way of the BBC)