On August 6, 1945, the United States of America deployed its most powerful weapon of mass destruction to date. It was an atomic bomb equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. The city of Hiroshima was completely destroyed, tens of thousands of civilians were killed. While Japan was moving away from this devastation, three days later the United States again launched a second nuclear strike on Nagasaki, hiding behind a desire to achieve the surrender of Japan.
Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.
The bombing of Hiroshima
On Monday at 2:45 am Boeing B-29 Enola Gay took off from Tinian, an island in the North Pacific Ocean, 1,500 kilometers from Japan. A team of 12 specialists was on board to make sure how smooth the mission would go. The crew was commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who named the aircraft "Enola Gay". That was the name of his own mother. Just before takeoff, the name of the plane was written on board.
The Enola Gay was a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber (aircraft 44-86292) as part of a special air group. In order to carry out the delivery of such a heavy cargo as a nuclear bomb, "Enola Gay" was modernized: the latest screws, engines, and quickly opening bomb compartment doors were installed. This upgrade was carried out only on a few B-29s. Despite the Boeing's modernization, he had to drive the entire runway to pick up the speed he needed for takeoff.
Bomber Team Enola Gay.
A couple more bombers flew alongside the Enola Gay. Three more planes took off earlier to find out the weather conditions over possible targets. Suspended from the ceiling of the aircraft was a ten feet (over 3 meters) long "Baby" nuclear bomb. In the "Manhattan Project" (for the development of US nuclear weapons), Navy Captain William Parsons took an important part in the appearance of the atomic bomb. On the Enola Gay plane, he joined the crew as the bomb specialist. To avoid a possible bomb explosion during takeoff, it was decided to put a warhead on it right in flight. Already in the air, Parsons changed the bomb plugs for warheads in 15 minutes. As he later recalled: "At the moment when I put the charge, I knew that" Kid "would bring the Japanese, but I did not feel much emotion about it."
Promotional video:
Bomb "Kid" was created on the basis of uranium-235. It was the result of research worth $ 2 billion, but never tested. Not a single nuclear bomb has yet been dropped from an airplane. For the bombing of the United States, 4 Japanese cities were selected:
Hiroshima;
Kokura;
Nagasaki;
Niigata.
First there was Kyoto, but later it was struck off the list. These cities were the centers of the military industry, arsenals, military ports. The first bomb was to be dropped to advertise the full power and more impressive importance of the weapon, to attract international attention and hasten Japan's surrender.
Atomic bomb Kid.
First bombing target
On August 6, 1945, the clouds cleared over Hiroshima. At 8:15 am (local time) the hatch of the Enola Gay flew open and the Kid flew into the city. The fuse was set 600 meters above the ground, and the device detonated at 1,900 feet. Shooter George Caron described the spectacle he saw through the rear window: “The cloud was in the shape of a mushroom of a seething mass of purple-ash smoke, with a fiery core inside. It looked like lava flows sweeping the entire city."
The cloud was estimated to have risen to 40,000 feet. Robert Lewis recalled: "Where we clearly observed the city a couple of minutes ago, we could already see only smoke and fire, creeping up the sides of the mountain." Almost all of Hiroshima was razed to the ground. Even within three miles of the explosion, 60,000 of 90,000 buildings were destroyed. The metal and stone just melted, the clay tiles melted. Unlike many previous bombings, the target of this raid was not a single military target, but an entire city. The atomic bomb, apart from the military, mostly killed civilians. The population of Hiroshima was 350,000, of which 70,000 died instantly directly from the explosion and another 70,000 died from radioactive contamination over the next five years.
A witness who survived the atomic explosion described: “The skin of the people turned black from burns, they were completely bald, since their hair was burnt, it was not clear whether this was a face or the back of the head. The skin on the hands, faces and bodies hung down. If there were one or two such people, there would be less shock. But wherever I went, I saw just such people around, many died right on the road - I still remember them as walking ghosts."
The explosion of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Atomic bombing of Nagasaki
When the people of Japan tried to comprehend the destruction of Hiroshima, the United States was planning a second nuclear strike. He was not detained so that Japan could surrender, but was inflicted immediately three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. On August 9, 1945, another B-29 "Bockcar" ("Bock car") took off from Tinian at 3:49 am. The initial target for the second bombing was supposed to be the city of Kokura, but it was covered with dense clouds. The backup target was Nagasaki. At 11:02 am, a second atomic bomb was detonated 1,650 feet above the city.
Fuji Urata Matsumoto, who miraculously survived, recounted the eerie scene: “The field with pumpkins was completely destroyed by the explosion. Nothing was left of the entire crop mass. Instead of a pumpkin, a woman's head lay in the garden. I tried to examine her, maybe I knew her. The head was of a woman of about forty, I have never seen it here, maybe it was brought from another part of the city. A golden tooth gleamed in my mouth, singed hair hung down, eyeballs burned out and black holes remained."
Roughly 40 percent of Nagasaki was destroyed. Fortunately for the residents, although the second bomb was more powerful than the explosion over Hiroshima, the mountainous terrain of Nagasaki prevented the explosion from causing much damage. However, out of a population of 270,000, approximately 70,000 had died by the end of the year.
Nagasaki after the bombing.
Kayano Nagai, a survivor recalled: “I saw an atomic bomb. I was four years old. Summer, the cicadas were singing. The atomic bomb was the last horror of the war, since then no more terrible has happened, but I am not the same and my mom is gone. Even if I don't feel bad anymore, I'm not happy."
Disputes about the expediency of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have not subsided for more than half a century. The total number of victims was almost 90,000 people at once, and after five years more than 200,000 people died from radiation. Perhaps Japan's surrender would have followed immediately after the entry of the Soviet Union into the war. In August 1945, the Japanese leadership did not really intend to surrender, but it was a real barbarism on the part of the United States to achieve an end to the war at such a price, with such a number of casualties, which resulted from nuclear explosions and their long-term consequences.
