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The B-29s broke off and headed for Nagasaki. They made three unsuccessful passes, wasting more fuel, while anti-aircraft fire zeroed in on them and Japanese fighter planes began to climb toward them. When they got to Kokura they found the haze and smoke obscuring the city as well as the large ammunition arsenal that was the reason for targeting the city. Sweeney and his crew were under orders to only bomb visually. Bock, aboard The Great Artiste, caught a glimpse of it, but Sweeney never saw the plane and circled the area for forty minutes, wasting yet more precious fuel, before finally taking off for Kokura. Barnes had isolated the failed switch that had caused the malfunction and corrected the problem.īock's Car and The Great Artiste rendezvoused at Yakushima and waited for Hopkins's plane. Ashworth and his assistant 2nd Lieutenant Phillip M. A half hour later weaponeer Captain Frederick L. While the two weather planes, Up an' Atom and Laggin' Dragon, were reporting favorable conditions over both Kokura and Nagasaki, Bock's Car was the scene of a heart-stopping discovery: the red arming light on the black box connected to Fat Man was lit, indicating that the firing circuit had closed.
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Radio silence had to be broken to instruct Hopkins on how to operate the camera. Hopkins's support plane The Big Stink, but was scratched from the mission because he had forgotten his parachute. Robert Oppenheimer's right hand man (Serber briefed physicists of the Manhattan Project on how to build an atomic bomb), was assigned as the mission's high-speed camera specialist. Robert Serber, Los Alamos physicist and J.
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on August 9, 1945, with scant yards of runway left, Bock's Car lifted off.ĭr. The crew must have had this on their minds. Everyone on Tinian had seen B-29s overloaded with mines and explosives crash and explode at the end of the runway when just one engine failed. Bock's Car was overloaded by the heavy bomb. But, to convince the Japanese that Hiroshima was not a one-time occurrence, it was decided to proceed.įat Man was aptly named. This could jeopardize a safe return and under other circumstances would have meant canceling the mission. Kuharek discovered that one of the fuel pumps was not operating, effectively cutting Bock's Car's fuel supply by 640 gallons. Just before takeoff from Tinian, flight engineer Master Sergeant John D. Yakushima, off the Kyushu coast, became the new rendezvous point and four B-29's were deployed as rescue planes in case crews needed to ditch over water. Bock, Jr.'s plane Bock's Car, while Bock's crew switched to The Great Artiste.Ī typhoon was threatening Iwo Jima, the mission rendezvous point. So Sweeney and his crew took over Captain Frederick C. But The Great Artiste was still outfitted with scientific gear left over from being the support plane for the Hiroshima mission and there wasn't time to outfit it to carry Fat Man. Sweeny was to command the mission in his plane The Great Artiste. There was some confusion at the outset of the Nagasaki mission. That day, when one would have expected all attention to be focused on the Nagasaki strike, yet another ceremony took place to honor Tibbets and the crew of the Enola Gay. Originally scheduled for August 11, 1945, the mission was advanced to August 9 due to weather concerns. The Nagasaki mission couldn't have been more different. Following the ceremony the fliers were feted at a star-studded debriefing where General LeMay told the men, "Kids, go eat, take a good shower, and sleep as much as you want!" was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General Spaatz. The crew was greeted by an excited crowd. The Enola Gay landed uneventfully at Tinian. The flight was uneventful, the weather cooperated, and, at 8:15 A.M. On August 6, 1945, The Enola Gay lifted off from Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas at two A.M. When a second mission was approved, Kokura was the primary target Nagasaki was the secondary target. Stimson against the advice of General Groves, the Manhattan Project's military leader). The Target Committee at Los Alamos selected Hiroshima as one of five possible targets for the first mission, along with Yokohama, Kokura, Niigata, and the city of temples, Kyoto (which was subsequently eliminated at the insistence of Secretary of War Henry L. From the beginning the mission that resulted in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima overshadowed Nagasaki.