Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [113]
Scientists had calculated that the bomber would achieve optimum distance from the blast with 155 degrees of tangency. Therefore, Tibbets held the steep, diving right-hand turn, recovering east-northeast.
The flash lit up Enola Gay’s interior.
Then came the shock wave from ten miles astern. To Tibbets it felt as jolting as a near miss by a German 88mm shell. He and copilot Robert A. Lewis leveled the wings, took stock, and, confirming that the plane was performing normally, turned back to observe the results.
Hiroshima had disappeared beneath a looming, roiling mushroom-shaped cloud. Gaping at the spectacle, Bob Lewis was initially exultant. Then he jotted, “My god, what have we done?”
In the city, the explosion occurred forty-five minutes after the all-clear from a false alarm. Citizens and soldiers were going about their morning routine until the Mark 1 erupted overhead. Those structures and people not vaporized at ground zero were subjected to near supersonic winds that swept away many remaining structures. Two-thirds of the city’s buildings were destroyed or left untenable.
The initial fireball measured 1,200 feet across, eventually spreading flames over two miles. Ironically, the powerful shock wave extinguished some of the initial fires.
The actual toll will never be known but perhaps 70,000 people were killed outright, roughly one-third of them military.
Parsons sent a strike report to base, describing results as “Clear cut. Successful in all respects.”
On Tinian the party started early and was getting underway when Tibbets landed twelve hours after takeoff. General Spaatz pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on Tibbets, then walked off without speaking a word. The debriefing of Special Mission 13 proceeded more cordially, enhanced by beer and bourbon.
On the cruiser Augusta, bearing Harry Truman from the Yalta Conference in Russia, the president received word of the atomic strike. He declared, “This is the greatest thing in history.”
That evening Tibbets told Sweeney to prepare for a second Silverplate mission. Sweeney doubted that it would be necessary, as he thought that Japan would now capitulate. Nearly everyone agreed that Hiroshima meant an end to the war. General Groves did not—he had always insisted it would take two bombs.
In Japan the air division responsible for Hiroshima reported in part that “a violent, large, special-type bomb, giving the appearance of magnesium, was dropped over the center of the city. . . . There was a blinding flash and a violent blast.
“The flash was instantaneous, burning objects in the immediate vicinity, burning the exposed parts of people’s bodies as far as three kilometers away, and setting fire to their thin clothing.
“The blast leveled completely or partially as many as 60,000 houses within a radius of three kilometers, and smashed glass blocks, etc.”
Japanese scientists who examined the incinerated city realized that the Americans had indeed used an atomic weapon.
Nagasaki
With no word from Tokyo on August 7 or 8, the next mission launched early on the 9th. It wielded the plutonium weapon nicknamed Fat Man—the type tested spectacularly at the Trinity site three weeks before. Tibbets assigned the mission to Chuck Sweeney, who thus became the only pilot on both atomic missions. Sweeney’s bombardier was Captain Kermit Beahan, a former football star who had logged forty missions in Europe. His priority target was Kokura; the alternate was Nagasaki.
Sweeney’s regular plane, The Great Artiste, was still configured to monitor bomb results so his usual crew, plus two Navy ordnance officers and a radar specialist, shifted to Captain Fred Bock’s plane. However, Bock’s Car began the mission with a serious deficiency: an inoperable fuel pump trapped 600 gallons that would be unusable. The dangerously low gasoline reserve prompted Tibbets to give Sweeney the option of canceling the mission. But the squadron commander decided to proceed: the several hours lost repairing the problem might erode the psychological effect of two A-bombs