Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [112]
The four-paragraph letter further stated that “Additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready.”
Suitably insulated, Spaatz passed the order to Nathan Twining and Curtis LeMay at 20th Air Force.
Thus, following thirty-eight “pumpkin” sorties over Japan, the 509th was alerted for its first special mission. On August 4, Tibbets presided over a briefing with seven combat crews, stating only that the 509th would drop a bomb “of unimaginable destructive force.” Though he never alluded to atomic power, he said the weapon was expected to explode with the equivalent of perhaps 20,000 tons of TNT.
Commanding the 509th’s bomb squadron was Major Charles Sweeney, just twenty-five years old. He had learned to fly in high school and joined the AAF in 1941, receiving his wings that December. He had no previous combat experience but possessed considerable background in ordnance and flight testing.
Sweeney provided a colorful comparison to his group commander. Tibbets’s deadpan Midwest persona contrasted with Sweeney’s Irish gregariousness. For the upcoming mission, Tibbets would fly Dimples 82, which he named Enola Gay for his mother. Six other B-29s launched on August 6, including three weather reconnaissance planes and a spare that landed at Iwo Jima. Sweeney and Captain George Marquardt flew the other two with observers and monitoring equipment. The target was Hiroshima on southern Honshu, home to at least 255,000 people. The secondary was Kokura on Kyushu, 100 miles east.
Hiroshima contained several military facilities, most notably headquarters of the Second General Army. The shipyard and Mitsubishi tool and die factory were primary industrial targets. Aside from the Imperial Navy’s suicide boats and submarines, the port also was home to the Japanese army submarine school, which supported efforts to supply island garrisons bypassed by the Americans.
Before manning the Enola Gay, Tibbets’s crew posed for photographs in the midnight darkness. Then the eleven men climbed aboard. They took off at 2:42, an hour behind the weather scouts.
En route, Tibbets visited each crew station. As the CO exited the tail position, Staff Sergeant Robert Caron tugged his leg. “Colonel, are we splitting atoms today?” Tibbets nodded. “That’s about it.” Later Caron admitted he had only seen the phrase in a science fiction text.
Meanwhile, two ordnance officers huddled in the bomb bay with the device called Little Boy. Even by wartime standards, the Mark 1 was problematic because several things could go disastrously wrong. The biggest concern was a short circuit or stray voltage. But a sudden, violent stop—as in a crash—might impel the two uranium components together. It was unlikely to cause a detonation but could release deadly amounts of radiation. Lesser threats involved fire and lightning. Therefore, the weapon was armed in flight rather than before takeoff. Commander Deke Parsons, who had clashed with the intellects and egos at Los Alamos, was assisted by an Army second lieutenant, twenty-two-year-old Morris R. Jeppson. After an eleven-step process taking twenty minutes, both officers emerged from the bomb bay. Little Boy was armed; now it belonged to bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee.
Approaching Honshu, Tibbets learned from the weather scouts that Hiroshima was clear. Thus satisfied, he approached from the east at 31,000 feet. In the seconds before bomb away, most of the crew pulled on polarized goggles to protect them from the danger of blinding light.
In the nose Ferebee hunched over his Norden sight, tracking the crosshairs onto the aim point, a distinctive T-shaped bridge. The weapon fell from the bomb bay at 8:15 local time, six and a half hours from base. The crew immediately felt two sensations: a pronounced lift as Dimples 82 was freed of nearly five tons, and a sharp bank as Tibbets