Firmly gripped by the mind-set that their German allies called “cloud cuckoo land,” Japan’s leaders rejected the Allies’ July 26 Potsdam Declaration offering either surrender or “prompt and utter destruction.” In doing so Tokyo ensured an apocalyptic denouement to the saga it had initiated forty-five months before.
Hiroshima
The Manhattan Project represented only half of the equation necessary to deliver atomic bombs upon the Axis. The other half—the B-29—was already a proven factor by July 1945. Between them the two programs accounted for some $4.4 billion, with the Superfortress by far the greater share.
The unit responsible for dropping atomic bombs was unique in the world’s air forces. The 509th Composite Group comprised one bomb squadron and a transport squadron; with auxiliary units the roster only totaled 1,767 men. Activated at remote, windy Wendover, Utah, in December 1944, the 509th was created to deliver “special weapons” against Germany and Japan. The commander was twenty-nine-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, who had flown B-17s in North Africa and Europe. He displayed a low-key earnestness; a subordinate recorded his first impression: “His manner was reserved and soft spoken, yet he projected an air of professionalism and self assurance.”
The 509th received B-29s specially modified to carry atom bombs, though none of the fliers yet knew of their ordnance. Only forty-six “Silverplate” aircraft were produced during the war, and the group took fifteen to combat. Besides alterations to the bomb bays and removal of all turrets, the Silverplated B-29s had reversible propellers, permitting a shorter landing distance.
With Germany’s surrender in May 1945, Tibbets’s original orders to conduct a double strike in Europe and Japan were necessarily changed. His crews began landing in the Marianas in June, based on Tinian. Shrouded in secrecy—the Silverplate bombers bore markings of three other units—the group flew few missions, mostly to bypassed Japanese-occupied islands. Actually the 509th was sharpening its aim with five-ton “pumpkin bombs” of the same shape as the atomic weapons. But while other groups flew regularly and took losses, the newcomers seemed immune to routine chores. Eventually a bit of doggerel expressed the growing resentment:
Into the air the secret arose,
Where they’re going, nobody knows.
Tomorrow they’ll return again,
But we’ll never know where they’ve been.
Don’t ask us about results or such,
Unless you want to get in dutch.
But take it from one who is sure of the score,
The 509th is winning the war.
The weapon components completed their 6,590-mile journey from the wilds of New Mexico to the hardstand on Tinian on July 26. Meanwhile, orders were descending from Washington via General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces. Having seen what the 8th and 15th Air Forces had done to Germany, he still insisted that conventional bombing could topple Japan. But it was also possible that he was squeamish about wielding a new weapon of such incredible power.
In any case, “Tooey” Spaatz tried to have it both ways and largely succeeded. Apparently protecting himself from future criticism, he required a written order to use atomic bombs against Japanese cities. On July 25 he received a directive from Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Actually, General Marshall was attending the Potsdam Conference, and his directive was issued by his deputy. General Thomas T. Handy’s message to Spaatz said in part, “The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force, will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki.”
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 rolled into his evasive right turn.
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 delivered close together. Additionally, a download-upload sequence to move Fat Man to another B-29 was a nontrivial function. Sweeney decided to go.
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 transport an A-bomb by air, and it looked as if another might be needed. At least one more weapon would be available before month’s end, and three or four more in September.
On the 10th, the U.S. War Department stepped up its propaganda campaign, including leaflet drops and shortwave radio broadcasts. In a nine-day paper blitz the AAF was ordered to drop 16 million leaflets on forty-seven cities, potentially reaching 40 percent of the enemy population. Half a million Japanese-language newspapers were added to the aerial cascade, with articles and photos of the A-bomb attacks. However, “only” 6 million leaflets and an unspecified number of newspapers had been delivered by V-J Day.
American psychological warfare proved effective. Speaking of the leaflets and papers dispersed over urban areas, Rear Admiral Toshitane Takata acknowledged, “The dropping of pamphlets warning of impending raids caused
conditions close to panic in some cities.”
Additional Airpower
Even as the first atomic bombs neared delivery to the Marianas, more American airpower was assembling closer to Japan, around Okinawa.
The Pacific air forces rendezvoused in the Ryukyu Islands that summer. The 5th came up from the Southwest Pacific; the 7th via the Central route; and the 13th—least known of all the air forces that fought Japan—from the south.
Even before Okinawa was secured, aviation engineers and Seabees went to work on the airfields required to support the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu. Sites for twenty-two runways were examined and surveyed, including improvement of two existing Japanese fields. In all, the Ryukyus would support fifty-one groups, half expected to arrive as soon as facilities could support them. In early June more than twenty fields were allotted to designated units, including three Navy and Marine groups and an air depot at Naha.
As in the Marianas, construction crews came at a premium. When Okinawa was secured on June 22, barely one-third of the 80,000 engineers were ashore, but transport of the others was accelerated. Three weeks later MacArthur’s air commander marveled that new fields were “appearing like magic and construction is going on faster than I have ever seen before.”
Nor was construction limited to Okinawa proper. Nearby le Shima’s eleven square miles were crammed with airpower: at various times that summer it hosted five Army fighter groups, three bomb groups, and assorted units, plus a Marine air group. The rest of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing—fourteen squadrons—shoehorned itself onto Okinawa.
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