The Manhattan Project

by Cynthia C. Kelly

  I noticed a strange eerie light coming through the window high above in the Navigator’s cabin and as I peered through the dark all around us I saw a startling phenomenon. The whirling giant propellers had somehow become great luminous discs of blue flame. The same luminous blue flame appeared on the plexiglass windows in the nose of the ship, and on the tips of the giant wings it looked as though we were riding the whirlwind through space on a chariot of blue fire.

  It was, I surmised, a surcharge of static electricity that had accumulated on the tips of the propellers and on the dielectric material in the plastic windows. One’s thoughts dwelt anxiously on the precious cargo in the invisible ship ahead of us. Was there any likelihood of danger that this heavy electric tension in the atmosphere all about us may set it off?

  I express my fears to Captain [Frederick] Bock, who seems nonchalant and imperturbed at the controls. He quickly reassures me:

  “It is a familiar phenomenon seen often on ships. I have seen it many times on bombing missions. It is known as St. Elmo’s Fire.”

  On we went through the night. We soon rode out the storm and our ship was once again sailing on a smooth course straight ahead, on a direct line to the Empire.

  Our altimeter showed that we were traveling through space at a height of 17,000 feet. The thermometer registered an outside temperature of 33 degrees below zero Centigrade (about 30 below Fahrenheit). Inside our pressurized cabin the temperature was that of a comfortable air-conditioned room, and a pressure corresponding to an altitude of 8,000 feet. Captain Bock cautioned me, however, to keep my oxygen mask handy in case of emergency. This, he explained, may mean either something going wrong with the pressure equipment inside the ship or a hole through the cabin by flak.

  The first signs of dawn came shortly after 5:00 o’clock. Sergeant [Ralph] Curry, who had been listening steadily on his earphones for radio reports while maintaining a strict radio silence himself, greeted it by rising to his feet and gazing out the window. “It’s good to see the day,” he told me. “I get a feeling of claustrophobia hemmed in this cabin at night.”

  He is a typical American youth, looking even younger than his 20 years. It takes no mind reader to read his thoughts.

  “It’s a long way from Hoopeston, Illinois,” I find myself remarking.

  “Yep,” he replies, as he busies himself decoding a message from outer space.

  “Think this atomic bomb will end the war?” he asks hopefully.

  “There is a very good chance that this one may do the trick,” I assure him, “but if not then the next one or two surely will. Its power is such that no nation can stand up against it very long.”

  This was not my own view. I had heard it expressed all around a few hours earlier before we took off. To anyone who had seen this man-made fireball in action, as I had less than a month ago in the desert of New Mexico, this view did not sound over-optimistic.

  By 5:50 it was real light outside. We had lost our lead ship but Lieutenant [Leonard] Godfrey, our Navigator, informs me that we had arranged for that contingency. We have an assembly point in the sky above the little island of Yakoshima, southeast of Kyushu, at 9:10. We are to circle there and wait for the rest of our formation.

  Our genial Bombardier, Lieutenant [Charles] Levy, comes over to invite me to take his front row seat in the transparent nose of the ship and I accept eagerly. From that vantage point in space, 17,000 feet above the Pacific, one gets a view of hundreds of miles on all sides, horizontally and vertically. At that height the vast ocean below and the sky above seem to merge into one great sphere. I was on the inside of that firmament, riding above the giant mountains of white cumulous clouds, letting myself be suspended in infinite space. One hears the whirl of the motors behind one, but soon becomes insignificant against the immensity all around and is before long swallowed by it. There comes a point where space also swallows time, and one lives through eternal moments filled with an oppressive loneliness, as though all life had suddenly vanished from the earth and you are only one left, a lone survivor traveling endlessly through interplanetary space.

  My mind soon returns to the mission I am on. Somewhere beyond these vast mountains of white clouds ahead of me there lies Japan, the land of our enemy. In about four hours from now one of its cities, making weapons of war for use against us will be wiped off the map by the greatest weapon ever made by man. In one-tenth of a millionth of a second, a fraction of time immeasurable by any clock, a whirlwind from the skies will pulverize thousands of its buildings and tens of thousands of its inhabitants.

  Our weather planes ahead of us are on their way to find out where the wind blows. Half an hour before target time we will know what the winds have decided.

  Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? Not when one thinks of Pearl Harbor and of the death march on Bataan.

  Captain Bock informs me that we are about to start our climb to bombing altitude.

  He manipulates a few knobs on his control panel to the right of him and I alternately watch the white clouds and ocean below me and the altimeter on the Bombardier’s panel. We reached our altitude at 9 o’clock. We were then over Japanese waters, close to their mainland. Lieutenant Godfrey motioned to me to look through his radar scope. Before me was the outline of our assembly point. We shall soon meet our lead ship and proceed to the final stage of our journey.

  We reached Yakoshima at 9:12 and there, about 4,000 feet ahead of us, was “The Great Artiste” with its precious load. I saw Lieutenant Godfrey and Sergeant Curry strap on their parachutes and I decided to do likewise.

  We started circling. We saw little towns on the coastline, heedless of our presence. We kept on circling, waiting for the third ship in our formation.

  The winds of destiny seemed to favor certain Japanese cities that must remain nameless. We circled about them again and again and found no opening in the thick umbrella of clouds that covered them. Destiny chose Nagasaki as the ultimate target.

  We had been circling for some time when we noticed black puffs of smoke coming through the white clouds directly at us. There were 15 bursts of flak in rapid succession, all too low. Captain Bock changed his course. There soon followed eight more bursts of flak, right up to our altitude, but by this time we were too far to the left.

  We flew southward down the channel and at 11:33 crossed the coastline and headed straight for Nagasaki about a hundred miles to the west. Here again we circled until we found an opening in the clouds. It was 12:01 and the goal of our mission had arrived.

  We heard the pre-arranged signal on our radio, put on our ARC welder’s glasses and watched tensely the maneuverings of the strike ship about half a mile in front of us.

  “There she goes!” someone said. Out of the belly of the Artiste what looked like a black object came downward.

  Captain Bock swung around to get out of range, but even though we were turning away in the opposite direction, and despite the fact that it was broad daylight in our cabin, all of us became aware of a giant flash that broke through the dark barrier of our ARC welder’s lenses and flooded our cabin with an intense light.

  We removed our glasses after the first flash but the light still lingered on, a bluish-green light that illuminated the entire sky all around. A tremendous blast wave struck our ship and made it tremble from nose to tail. This was followed by four more blasts in rapid succession, each resounding like the boom of cannon fire hitting our plane from all directions.

  Observers in the tail of our ship saw a giant ball of fire rise as though from the bowels of the earth, belching forth enormous white smoke rings. Next they saw a giant pillar of purple fire, 10,000 feet high, shooting skyward with enormous speed.

  By the time our ship had made another turn in the direction of the atomic explosion the pillar of purple fire had reached the level of our altitude. Only about 45 seconds had passed. Awe-struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more aliv
e as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.

  At one stage of its evolution, covering missions of years in terms of seconds, the entity assumed the form of a giant square totem pole, with its base about three miles long, tapering off to about a mile at the top. Its bottom was brown, its center was amber, its top white. But it was a living totem pole, carved with many grotesque masks grimacing at the earth.

  Then, just when it appeared as though the thing has settled down into a state of permanence, there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom that increased the height of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upwards and then descending earthward, a thousand old faithful geysers rolled into one.

  It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in the act of breaking the bonds that held it down. In a few seconds it had freed itself from its gigantic stem and floated upward with tremendous speed, its momentum carrying into the stratosphere to a height of about 60,000 feet.

  But no sooner did this happen when another mushroom, smaller in size than the first one, began emerging out of the pillar. It was as though the decapitated monster was growing a new head.

  As the first mushroom floated off into the blue it changed its shape into a flower-like form, its giant petal curving downward, creamy white outside, rose-colored inside. It still retained that shape when we last gazed at it from a distance of about 200 miles.

  U.S. National Archives

  The explosion of the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb created this mushroom cloud which rose to 60,000 feet over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

  “It was over!”

  Much to the disbelief of members of the 509th Composite Group, Japan did not surrender immediately after the first two atomic bombs destroyed much of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lieutenant Colonel Fred J. Olivi, who flew over Nagasaki in the Bockscar, recalls his reluctance to fly another mission and his relief at the next day’s news of Japan’s unconditional surrender.

  From Decision at Nagasaki: The Mission that Almost Failed

  BY LIEUTENANT FRED J. OLIVI

  The main topic of every conversation at the Officer’s Club, beach, Mess Hall, or Quonset hut was the end of the War. None of us could understand why the Japanese had not surrendered after Nagasaki. We couldn’t understand what they were waiting for—another A-bomb? Also, we wondered what effect Russia’s entry into the war would have on the Japanese. The USSR declared war on Japan on August 9, 1945—the same day we dropped our atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

  I think most of us wondered why Russia had waited so long to join America, Britain and China in the war against the Japanese Empire. Maybe they wanted to make sure we had Japan beaten before they got involved. We had a great time discussing all the ramifications of peace, which seemed to be just around the corner, but still elusive.

  It was not until several days after our mission, when good aerial reconnaissance photos became available, that we were informed of the damage “Fat Man” had done to Nagasaki. Although we had missed the original target identified at our briefing, our second atomic bomb had done substantial damage. It detonated 1,890 feet above the Urakami Valley.

  The aerial photos revealed we were off by approximately one and a half miles. Instead of exploding over the heart of the city, the bomb detonated just north of the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, located in the Urakami valley. These works were totally destroyed. It appeared that about three miles of factory buildings and other industrial plants located on the Urakami River, to the Mitsubishi Urakami Ordnance Plant, had been destroyed.

  I remember that later General Jimmy Doolittle was reported to have said he was happy that we had not hit Nagasaki’s downtown area in which many civilians were located. All in all, everyone considered our mission a success, and General LeMay would be happy, too.

  Following our mission to Nagasaki, rumors about peace filled Tinian Island. And there was some preliminary celebrating. I remember hearing the loud “bang-bang-bang” as guns were fired into the air by parties unknown, primarily late at night. I don’t recall that anyone in the 509th was involved in these celebrations.

  On August 14th, we were informed there was to be yet another mission to the Japanese Empire. Peace had not yet come to the Pacific, and apparently it was decided to let the Japanese know we still had a lot of bombs left.

  All available B-29s in the 509th were scheduled to take part in this bombing strike. We were told it would be a “maximum effort,” with B-29s flying from Guam and Saipan as well as from Tinian. The bombs used by the 509th would be the familiar “Pumpkins,” filled with 10,000 pounds of Torpex [an explosive more powerful than TNT].

  At our briefing we were informed that the Japanese city of Koromo would be the target for “The Great Artiste.”

  The general reaction of virtually every man in the 509th was, “What? Another mission? The War should be over—and now we’ve got to go out again!”

  But we went—as ordered. Everyone hoped this would be our last mission.

  North Field was alive with B-29s all afternoon and early evening as every available B-29 flew off to the Japanese Empire. Hundreds and hundreds of planes were involved, and the noise never seemed to end as they roared down the four runways.

  The last B-29s to take off were from the 509th. Our operational orders had not changed. We still flew alone, not in formation with other aircraft.

  On this mission to the Japanese Empire, [Capt. Charles] Albury was back in the left hand seat as pilot, with me in the right seat as co-pilot. It felt good to be back in “The Great Artiste.” Fred Bock’s “Bockscar” was a great plane, and it got us home safe and sound even with the problems we had encountered on our mission.

  Our flight to the Japanese Empire was smooth, and we were directed over Iwo Jima—our usual route—before heading for the main islands of Japan.

  Jim Van Pelt again proved he was the best damn navigator in the 509th by putting us right on Koromo, where Kermit Beahan took over, dropping our “Pumpkin” dead on target.

  We didn’t see another B-29 going to, or returning from, the Japanese Empire until we were in the landing pattern at Tinian. I don’t remember if we were the last of the B-29’s that flew from Tinian to return to North Field, but we were close. All B-29’s from the 509th returned safely from this mission no one wanted to fly. We all wondered, “Will this be the final mission? It’s got to be the last one!”

  It is entirely possible that the very last bomb to explode on the Japanese Empire in World War II was delivered by a B-29 from the 509th Composite Group. I like to think that it was.

  August 15, 1945—Peace!

  U.S. NARA

  President Truman announced the surrender of Japan in a crowded Oval Office on August 14, 1945.

  On August 15th, we received news that the Japanese had surrendered—unconditionally!

  I remember my immediate reaction to this announcement as being one of unbelievable relief. It was over! We had brought the Japanese Empire to its knees. It had taken four years, but we had won. As President Roosevelt promised after Pearl Harbor, we had won the inevitable victory.

  The euphoria of knowing I would not have to put my life at risk flying another combat mission hit me pretty hard. I think it affected just about every other man in the 509th the same way.

  Now, all those Marines and soldiers preparing for an invasion of Japan would not have to die in combat. All those fighters and bombers scattered on airfields across the Pacific could at last go home.

  I was proud, truly proud to be an American.

  “The atomic bomb’s peculiar ‘disease’”

  American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. Weller’s articles were censored, possibly because of controversies
over the health effects of radioactive fallout. Weller’s report candidly relates how Japanese doctors were puzzled by an undiagnosed “atomic illness” that was killing patients who outwardly appeared to have escaped the bomb’s impact. Written in September 1945, these stories were not published until 2006.

  From First Into Nagasaki

  BY GEORGE WELLER

  Nagasaki, Japan—September 8, 1945

  The atomic bomb may be classified as a weapon capable of being used indiscriminately, but its use in Nagasaki was selective and proper and as merciful as such a gigantic force could be expected to be.

  It is about two miles from the scene of the bomb’s 1,500 feet high explosion where the harbor has narrowed to 250 foot wide Urakame River that the atomic bomb’s force begins to be discernible. This area is north of downtown Nagasaki, whose buildings suffered some freakish destruction, but are generally still sound.

  The railroad station—destroyed except for the platforms, yet already operating normally—is a sort of gate to the destroyed part of the Urakame valley.[…] The known dead number 20,000, and Japanese police tell me they estimate about 4,000 remain to be found.

  The reason the deaths were so high—the wounded being about twice as many according to Japanese official figures—was twofold: Mitsubishi air raid shelters were totally inadequate and the civilian shelters remote and limited, and that the Japanese air warning system was a total failure.

  Today I inspected half a dozen crude short tunnels in the rock wall valley, which the Mitsubishi Company considered shelters. I also picked my way through the tangled iron girders and curling roofs of the main factories to see concrete shelters four inches thick but totally inadequate in number. Only a grey concrete building topped by a siren, where the clerical staff had worked, had passable cellar shelters, but nothing resembling the provision had been made.