Article Type: Military History
Article Date: August 16, 2002
I Am Become Death: The Destroyer of Worlds
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| Mushroom cloud of a nuclear detonation. |
Within a millisecond of detonation the fireball formed at 50 million degrees centigrade. As it expanded it created shockwave that traveled at the speed of sound. The rising fireball sucked superheated air up into the vacuum left by the shock wave as everything below was incinerated. Dust and rubble rose forming a mushroom cloud as the firestorm raged below for six hours. Several tornadoes formed from the hot air rising into the cooler air. The nuclear age had arrived. The time was 8:17 AM August 6, 1945. The city below was Hiroshima.
Bomb or Invade?
It can be debated endlessly whether the invasion of the Japanese homeland would have been preferable at this stage of WWII. After a long, hard road of war the United States was not eager to present the public with a huge casualty list after an invasion. Estimates of 250,000 - 500,000 were discussed and it was unacceptable to the military planners and President Truman.
The Japanese were prepared to fight to the last man, woman and child—literally. The citizens were armed with wooden spears and practiced in their use. The Japanese Air Force and Navy had about 8,000 planes left also. This was a large deterrent after the Kamikazes debuted in 1944 wreaking their havoc.
A continual bombing effort such as used against Germany would have dragged the war an untold amount of time. And these raids were killing civilians at an escalating rate. In fact a typical firebomb raid had killed more than died at Hiroshima. The Allies would have had to burn every population center in Japan to achieve any type of success to bring the fanatical faction on the island to possibly bargain for peace. At the time that didn’t seem like a gamble worth taking for the lives it would have cost on both sides. Whatever the course of action—invasion or continued firebombing—more Japanese lives would have been expended than American lives.
I’ll Take Manhattan
The fabled Manhattan Project was ready to reach fruition after its years of work from dedicated scientists, several of whom were German Jews. A successful test in the New Mexico desert proved all the calculations were correct. At first no one even knew if the theory was possible. The Germans worked on their atomic project with a different intellect. And while it was proven after the war that they probably could not have made a chain reaction explosive device, a dirty bomb was entirely in the realm of possibility. Not knowing the German progress on atomic research hastened the resolve in New Mexico.
The Germans calculated too large an amount of uranium for their device. In fact they surmised that perhaps, a whole nuclear reactor needed to be dropped to achieve mass: that all the atomic material would have to split simultaneously. It would have been a bomb of dimensions that no aircraft could carry.
Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and his group originally had similar doubts about the amount needed but their concept was that once the first atom was split it would continue in a chain as each reaction stimulated the next. The trigger actually imploded to create a harmonized explosion so the splitting would be the required uniform type in nature.
B-29
The plane for the task was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. It was developed from the 1939 specification as a hemisphere defense bomber for a 4,000-mile range craft. The first one flew on September 7, 1942. Production commenced in mid-1944 amidst all the big ship’s teething problems. Raids from China were soon initiated. Later in the summer of 1944 Pacific bases were used after wrestling islands from the Japanese.
In its time it was the largest production aircraft with wings spanning 141.25 feet. The pressurized fuselage was 99.5 feet long and the plane normally weighted was 120,000 lbs. but this could be increased to 135,000 lbs. Four Wright Cyclone 18-cylinder radials each had 2,200 HP at 2,800 RPM for takeoff and war emergency gave 2,300 HP at 25,000 feet. The bomber had a ceiling of 33,600 feet.
Range with 4,000 lbs. of bombs was 3,250 miles and with 10,000 lbs. it shrank to 2,650 miles making for missions of 16.4 and 8.9 hours respectively. A maximum short-range ordnance load weighed 20,000 lbs. Climb was 900 FPM but speed was high - 357 MPH at 30,000 feet. It cruised at 342 MPH. Tankage for the B-29A was 9,288 gallons.
Twelve .50 caliber machine guns mounted four to a turret each with 1,000 rounds. A 20 mm M2 Type B cannon was manually operated from the tail. The turrets themselves were remotely operated from nearby bubbles allowing for greater precision and less gunner fatigue.
In reality, at 30,000 feet it was all but immune except to a few Japanese interceptors. When the decision was made to ultimately fly as low as 7,000 feet in night firebomb raids loss rates escalated though results were excellent. After 300 B-29s finished with Tokyo on March 19, 1945 16.7 miles of the city lay burned out. They had been stripped of guns to reduce weight so 18,000 lbs. of incendiaries could be carried. 267,000 buildings were destroyed and there were 185,000 casualties to the loss of fourteen Superforts.
The 509th
Colonel Paul Tibbets headed up the newly formed group in December 1944 and practice began in Wendover, Utah. It was so remote the crew called it “Leftover.” The exercises were endless and the group was chided by others remarking that all they did was practice and had a soft time of things. Simulated atomic missions were flown at 29,000 feet using light-cased 10,000 lb. bombs of T.N.T. By July 1945 when the first atomic weapon was exploded in New Mexico the group was ready. The remote locations were obviously chosen to keep any news about the project from leaking to the media.
General Uzal Ent empowered Tibbets with a password “Silverplate” that either opened or closed doors of bureaucracy for the Colonel, as he desired. “Ent told me to prepare for simultaneous drops on Germany and Japan as soon as the atomic ordnance was ready,” recalled Tibbets. Yes, had Germany not capitulated when it did it too would have been bombed. Only Tibbets knew the true nature of the weapon being developed. Crews were simply told if they volunteered for the group their efforts would end the war sooner. They went on a lot of blind faith through the endless training.
The device was said to have a one in 10,000 chance of failure by the cautious scientists. Tibbets took the odds and on his authority alone moved the group to Tinian Island in the Marianas. Summer 1945 dragged on. With Germany out of the picture all focus was on Japan now at the end of July. “We knew we could use the bomb between August 5th and 9th. All we were waiting for was presidential approval. On the 5th we got word,” remembered Tibbets.
U234?
Refined uranium 235 was the power for the weapon. Uranium, being fairly rare was refined from uranium oxide into the weapons grade stuff at Oakridge Tennessee. You might say the next chapter in the story should be titled “A funny thing happened on the way to Japan.” Submarine U-234 sailed from Germany with 560 kilos of uranium oxide along with a dismantled Me 262 and two Japanese officers. Previous attempts to send the uranium to Japan via shallow diving Japanese I-boats were unsuccessful. Three boats were never heard from after leaving Germany.
U-234 began its Atlantic crossing but was eventually intercepted. Intelligence was in Allied hands about the boat and her cargo so a concentrated effort to find her was made. The U-234 skipper took her to 650 feet on a couple of occasions to elude pursuers but once the word from Admiral Dönitz was heard that the war was over for Germany the U-234 made contact with American forces. The captain deliberately gave false contact coordinates to Canadian ships in the area so he could surrender to the Americans. The Japanese were still at war with America and they committed suicide with the aid of sleeping pills.
Being as scarce as it was (500 kilos of uranium oxide yielded about a half a kilo of weapons grade material) the uranium was shipped to Oakridge for refinement. So ironically German U235 was used over Japan in the device dubbed “Little Boy.” The weapon weighed 9,000 lbs. and was rather cylindrical in shape but still looking like a big bomb and unlike the spherical Nagasaki weapon “Fat Man.” “Little Boy” carried 137.3 lbs. of U235.
Zero Hour
Seven B-29s were involved in the historic mission. There was “Enola Gay,” named for Colonel Tibbets’ mother, carrying the bomb. Another was set as a back up ship. Three flew weather recon to survey primary, secondary and tertiary targets. Two others behind flew observation and data recording.
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Enola Gay  |
The 509th group’s insignia was removed and the reconnaissance markings with the large letter “R” within a circle on the tail fin was to obscure the true mission. Recon and weather ships were regularly seen over Japan and little notice was given to single planes that dropped no bombs. Interception was not an easy task at any rate. With short warning periods Japanese interceptors would have an impossible task of climbing to 30,000 feet in a reasonable time. Most normal fighters could never make it. The few special high-altitude interceptors were not loitering all the time if there were any in range of Hiroshima anyway. Hiroshima had been chosen since it was determined that no Allied POWs were held there and the fact that it was little bombed and assessment of damage would be truer.
The “Enola Gay” was stripped of armor and guns, save for the 20 mm in the tail, to get as much range out of the plane as possible. At 2:45 AM Dimples 82, the plane’s call sign, was cleared. Tibbets was “not concerned as I knew I’d have the altitude. The only concern was a tail chase.” The Cyclones spun and the craft raised itself off of the crushed coral runway. Tibbets had five and a half hours to contemplate the possible use of cyanide capsules he carried for the twelve men aboard to use if captured. On board besides Tibbets were Robert Lewis, co-pilot; Thomas Ferebee, bombardier; Theodore Van Kirk, navigator; Wyatt Duzenbury, flight engineer; Jacob Beser, radar specialist; Richard Nelson, radio operator; George Caron, tail gunner; Robert Shumard, asst. flight engineer; Wm. Parsons, special weapons expert; Morris Jeppson, weaponeer; and Joe Stiborik, radar man. The crew was only told of the atomic payload and what its force was only after takeoff.
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| The crew |
The B-29 thundered through the clear air above the Japanese city at 31,600 feet going 328 MPH as bombardier Tom Ferebee announced, “Three minutes,” as the city center fast approached.
“We are on target,” Ferebee called. “Thirty seconds…fifteen seconds,” he added as the electronic tone filled everyone’s headset. It would only cease when “Little Boy” was released. At 8:16 the bomb bay opened, the device was released and the tone ended.
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| Little Boy |
The ship now unburdened lurched heavenward and Tibbets banked away 150 degrees sharply as he’d done so many times in practice. Only tail gunner Bob Caron would see the show. Designed to detonate at 1,850 feet for maximum force the bomb received a radar echo and set off a normal explosive that drove the wedge of U235 into a larger piece achieving critical mass. “The estimate of equaling 20,000 tons of T.N.T. was way off,” said Tibbets after turning around to view the devastation. “If Dante had been with us on the plane he would have been terrified,” he surmised. “The city we’d seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this awful blanket of smoke and fire,” he recalled.
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| Tailgunner Bob Caron's photo |
The planes returned to Tinian without incident. The whole mission lasted twelve hours and thirteen minutes.
Reap The Whirlwind
A 3.5-mile epicenter marked the most intense devastation. People there were vaporized. Walls, asphalt and steel glowed red hot. Clothes were etched on to skin of corpses farther from the epicenter. Human shadows were printed onto standing walls as the owners disintegrated. All this happened within one second after the blast. 80,000 died in the immediate inferno with a further 47,000 succumbing to radiation effects afterward. Some 62,000 buildings were destroyed.
President Truman now warned the Japanese leaders to surrender or ”expect a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen.” Only two other A-bombs had been assembled at the time but the Japanese didn’t know it. One was used over Nagasaki three days later. Still the inner cabinet could not admit defeat. Emperor Hirohito finally addressed the country telling of the acceptance of the Allied terms. But he never used the word surrender so many did not understand the message.
Truman announced the success of the mission to aboard the USS Augusta returning from the Potsdam Conference. “It had more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam’ (12,000 lbs.), which is the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”
Rumors circulated into the 1960s that many of the crew had severe remorse and had mental problems. Only one individual, Claude Eatherly in one of the weather ships ahead of “Enola Gay,” spent time in a mental institution. When motion pictures were made dialogue of what was said aboard the atomic bomber was taken out of context and lines were added for effects of horror on crewmen’s parts. Such was not the case in reality.
Tibbets retired as a general. Decades later when asked if he would do it again, say, against Hanoi during Vietnam he replied, “I would’ve without any question.”
On August 15, 1945 that lone B-29 was responsible for the end of World War II and beginning of the atomic age.
The only B-29 still flying is operated by the Confederate Air Force.
Sources
- Green, William
The World Guide to Combat Planes Vol. 2
Doubleday & Co. NY 1967
- Hart, B.H. Liddell
History of the Second World War
G.P. Putman’s Sons, NY 1970
- Sundermann, James F.
World War II In The Air
Franklin Watts, Inc. NY 1962
- Thomas, Gordon & Witts, Morgen
Enola Gay
Random House, NY 1979
- Various authors
Hiroshima
Orange County Register, August 4, 1985
