Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [114]
At 2:45 A.M., flying Bock’s Car, Sweeney lifted off Tinian and set course northwest, hitting his first navigation checkpoint at Yakushima, one of the islands south of Kyushu. He circled for a frustrating forty minutes, awaiting the photo aircraft, which did not materialize. Concerned about fuel, Sweeney exclaimed, “The hell with it, we can’t wait any longer.” He headed almost due north to Kokura, but the target was obscured by smoke from the previous night’s attack on the city of Yawata. After three aborted runs through flak, with fighters in sight, Sweeney diverted to his secondary target.
Between the delay for the photo plane and multiple runs at Kokura, Bock’s Car was running ninety minutes late. To further complicate matters, Nagasaki was 80 percent obscured by low clouds. The crew was instructed to bomb visually but the weaponeer, Commander Fred Ashworth, could not bear to drop Fat Man in the ocean and consulted with Sweeney about attacking by radar. When the pilot assured him that the bomb would hit within 500 feet of the aim point, Ashworth consented to a radar approach.
Seconds from a radar release, Kermit Beahan—still on his sight—saw what he needed. “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed as the clouds broke. Later he said, “The target was there, pretty as a picture.”
In Nagasaki, shortly before eleven, two aircraft were sighted “at great altitude” approaching from the east. Following a previous alert, few people headed for shelter. The streets and buildings were fully occupied when a sun-bright light burst overhead at 11:01.
In bombing terms Beahan had taken a snapshot, with merely a twenty-five-second bomb run at 31,000 feet. The aim point was the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, and the weapon struck some 500 feet south of the plant. Actually, Fat Man detonated between two Mitsubishi facilities: the steel factory and an arsenal producing most of Japan’s aerial torpedoes. The enormous cloud rocketed to 30,000 feet in mere seconds as the crew felt five shock waves.
Producing at least 20 kilotons, Fat Man was more powerful than Little Boy in every way. It erupted in “a superbrilliant white,” producing a flash, shock wave, and mushroom cloud greater than Sweeney had seen three days before. The fliers estimated that the roiling, rising cloud crested at 45,000 feet.
The plutonium bomb destroyed about 60 percent of the city and killed perhaps 35,000 of at least 195,000 people. Fortunately for most residents, much of the blast was confined to the Urakami Valley, an urban-industrial area, rather than the docks and nearby city center.
Unable to transfer fuel from the bomb bay tank, Sweeney had no option but to head for Okinawa, over 400 miles south. His navigator calculated that they would fall at least fifty miles short, and there was no air-sea rescue plane owing to confusion in communications with Guam. Nevertheless, Fred Bock in The Great Artiste shepherded Sweeney, ready to provide ditching coordinates.
However, Chuck Sweeney had one last card to play. Recalling a conversation with Tibbets, he began “flying the step.” Beginning at 30,000 feet, he ratcheted his bomber down by stages, gaining incremental airspeed with each small descent. Expending his precious altitude with exquisite finesse, he got back the fifty to seventy-five miles he needed. It was a brilliant piece of flying.
Still, Sweeney barely squeaked into Yontan: one engine quit on landing approach and another on the runway. He shoved the props into reverse and stood on the brakes, stopping with yards to spare. Then the third engine died. With seven usable gallons, Bock’s Car had less than one minute of remaining flight time.
Refueled, Bock’s Car returned to Tinian at 10:30 that night, some twenty hours after departure. Then Sweeney and company proceeded to get blissfully drunk.
That same day two B-29s were dispatched to Wendover, Utah, to stand by for the third weapon. Only a Silverplate Superfortress could