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It had a population of a hundred and seventy-eight thousand, about half that of Hiroshima, and was home to what U.S. After fifty minutes, Bockscar and the Great Artiste proceeded to their primary target, the city of Kokura. The plane beat its way through dark and stormy skies for six hours before it arrived over the small island of Yakushima, where it was to wait for two accompanying B-29s, the Great Artiste, which was outfitted with instruments to help assess the power of the bomb, and Big Stink, a camera plane. The pit crew who assembled it had signed their names on the casing, and some also wrote messages to the Japanese-“Here’s to you!” and “A second kiss for Hirohito.” On its nose, the bomb bore a stenciled acronym, JANCFU, which stood for Joint Army-Navy-Civilian Fuckup. At one end was a rigid, boxy tail fin known as a California parachute, designed to help keep it from spinning wildly once it was released. It was five feet around and eleven feet long and painted mustard yellow. Whereas the weapon dropped over Hiroshima had been a relatively squat cylinder, this one was shaped like a giant egg.
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Tinian time, the weaponeer made his way aft and removed two green safing plugs from the bomb, replacing them with red arming plugs: it was now live. Thirteen minutes after takeoff, at 4 A.M. As one of the scientists on Tinian wrote, “We all aged ten years until the plane cleared the island.” But clear the island it did.īockscar had been stripped of most of its armor and weaponry to accommodate its five-ton atomic payload, known as the Fat Man. Only the day before, four B-29s in succession had crashed on takeoff, causing extensive fuel fires. But Bockscar, the strike plane chosen for Centerboard II, had been delayed on the tarmac because of fuel-pump problems. The Enola Gay had reached its target and returned home without complication an announcement sent out under President Harry Truman’s name had trumpeted its success. That attack had been textbook-“operationally routine,” as a classified Army history later put it. Already things were not going as smoothly as they had three days earlier, in the run over Hiroshima. Operation Centerboard II, the mission to drop the second atomic bomb on a Japanese city, had begun. on August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress took off from the American airbase on the island of Tinian, in the North Pacific Ocean. Japan began its surrender the next day, August 10, 1945.At 3:47 A.M. The B-29 aircraft Bockscar dropped an atomic bomb three days later on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, where another thirty-five thousand people lost their lives. Another seventy thousand were seriously injured.ĭespite the resulting disaster, Japan refused to surrender. Resulting fires burnedĪnother 4.4 square miles, and over seventy thousand people died. The explosion destroyed everything in the immediate area. With a brilliant flash, the bomb devastated most of the city below. Tibbits (1915–2007), ordered the release of the atomic bomb, “Little Boy,” at 8:15 in the morning. The Enola Gay, named for the mother of the commander for the bombing mission, was sent on the first of two missions to Japan.
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Trying to avoid the expense of both money and lives with a conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland, President Truman ordered the bomb to be used. Truman (1884–1972 served 1945–53) decided to use the atomic bomb against Japan when it became clear that Japan was not going to end the war through diplomatic means. Germany surrendered from World War II (1939–45) in May 1945. By learning to harness the power from within the nucleus of a hydrogen cell, the scientists created a nuclear fission reaction and developed the world's most powerful bomb. government had gathered the world's leading scientists to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project to produce an atomic weapon. The atomic bomb had been developed during the previous four years. Its mission to drop the bomb on Hiroshima marked the first time that an atomic weapon was used in warfare and targeted at humans. It carried an atomic bomb that was developed and tested in the United States. B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay flew towards Hiroshima, Japan.