71 years ago today - the atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki

crimsonaudio

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Nagasaki
9 Aug 1945

The second bombing was originally planned to be against the city of Kokura, which housed a major army arsenal, on 11 Aug. The schedule was moved up by two days to 9 Aug, however, due to predicted bad weather moving in on 10 Aug. The atomic bomb "Fat Man" was loaded onto B-29 Superfortress bomber Bockscar, commanded by Major Charles Sweeney of USAAF 393rd Squadron, who had piloted the bomber Great Artiste during the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Similar to the Hiroshima attack, two other B-29 bombers accompanied Bockscar; the Great Artiste, piloted by Captain Frederick Bock (who usually flew Bockscar, named after himself), with scientific instrumentation and Big Stink, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel James Hopkins, Jr., with photography equipment. Unlike the Hiroshima attack, "Fat Man" was already armed when the bomber took off due to the complexity of the Plutonium bomb. This concerned Sweeney, as this meant that a big jolt, not overly rare during takeoffs, might detonate the bomb if the electrical safety plugs failed; as history would show, an accidental detonation did not happen. As Bockscar began its approach toward Japan, fuel would be his only concern; the bomber had a problem with the transfer pump with his reserve fuel tank, and the mission was deemed too important to be delayed simply for a malfunctioning pump.

When Bockscar and Great Artiste reached the rendezvous point, however, Big Stink was nowhere to be found. Unable to locate him after 40 minutes, Sweeney decided to proceed with the mission without Big Stink.

Sweeney had hoped that, despite better defended by the Japanese, the skies over Kokura would be clear enough for them to conduct the bomb run. He knew the Kokura was a much greater military target when compared to the secondary target, Nagasaki. To his disappointment, Kokura was 70% cloud covered. He was ordered that the bombardier must be able to visually identify the target point before releasing the bomb, thus he made three runs over Kokura, expending the precious fuel that he had little of. All three runs failed to give them the chance to properly identify their target, and Sweeney made the decision to go for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Had he had enough fuel, he would have flown in a northwestern direction, then circle back for an eastward approach for Nagasaki; given his fuel situation, Sweeney had his navigator plot a straight line for his target. A quick calculation revealed that, even if they only make one run at Nagasaki and head straight to Okinawa, rather than Iwo Jima as originally planned, they already had too little fuel to make the trip.

The city of Nagasaki was one of the most important sea ports in southern Japan. Although it was not among the list of potential targets selected by Oppenheimer's committee, it was added later due to its significance as a major war production center for warships, munitions, and other equipment. This was the very reason why Sweeney hoped that Kokura would have clear weather for the attack, thus avoiding an attack on Nagasaki which housed a greater civilian population.

At 0750 hours in the morning of 9 Aug, the presence of American bombers in the general area in southern Japan caused the city of Nagasaki to sound the air raid alarms, but the "all clear" signal was given at 0830. The two attacking bombers were visually detected at Nagasaki at 1053, but like at Hiroshima many radar station commanding officers thought this small flight must be on a reconnaissance mission; a few radar station operators who had learned about Hiroshima, however, knew what was coming, and braced for impact. As Bockscar approached, US Navy Commander Frederick Ashworth, the weaponeer, approved Sweeney's request to drop the bomb by radar, rather than by establishing visual contact with the aiming point, should weather once again interfere.

At about 1100 hours, bombardier Captain Kermit Beahan aboard Bockscar, previously unable to find his original aiming point near the center of Nagasaki, found a break in the clouds directly over another aiming point. This aiming point was over the Urakami Valley that housed the namesake district in the Nagasaki suburbs, which hosted industrial complexes devoted to war production. Beahan signaled that he was ready to proceed with the attack.

At 1100 hours, the Great Artiste, the scientific aircraft, dropped instruments attached to three parachutes. Also inside this package was an unsigned letter to Professor Ryokichi Sagane, a leading nuclear physicist of Japan who had befriended American nuclear physicists prior to the war, urging him to advise Japanese leadership to surrender to avoid further atomic attacks.

At 1101 hours, Beahan released the bomb over Urakami. 43 seconds later, the "Fat Man" bomb containing about 6.4 kilograms of Plutonium 239 detonated at the altitude of 469 meters over the halfway point between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (a factory producing torpedoes) in the north. Ground Zero was about 3 kilometers northwest of the original aiming point near the center of Nagasaki. The resulting blast was much greater than the "Little Boy" blast that devastated Hiroshima three days earlier. Somewhere between 40,000 to 75,000 people were immediately killed by the explosion equivalent to the detonation of 21 kilotons of TNT, and everything within 1 kilometer from Ground Zero were reduced to total ruin. Fires were started as far as 3.2 kilometers from Ground Zero. The heat generated by the bomb was estimated at 3,900 degrees Celcius, and the blast created winds up to 1,005 kilometers per hour in speed. Because the detonation had taken place in a valley, the center of Nagasaki was shielded by the mountains and hills that surrounded Urakami, thus large parts of Nagasaki proper were relatively unharmed by the initial blast. By the end of 1945, death tolls directly related to "Fat Man" reached 80,000.

About 2,000 of the deaths at Nagasaki were Korean workers.

As Bockscar flew toward Okinawa after the bombing, Sweeney did everything he could to conserve fuel. He lowered the speed of his propellers, while he lowered his altitude periodically to gravity to increase his speed rather than using his fuel. When he had Okinawa in sight, one of his engines gave out. After he was not able to get any control tower's attention, he fired off every single emergency flare he had in Bockscar, and his apparently strange act finally got someone attention, and made a safe landing quite literally on the last drops of fuel. As the B-29 aircraft was surrounded by fire trucks and ambulances (his display of flares signaled all kinds of emergencies), a high-level order came from Tinian Island, requiring the crews at Okinawa to give whatever Bockscar required for a return trip to Tinian.

George Weller, one of the first reporters to reach Nagasaki after the attack, and certainty the first western journalist to do so, compiled a report that was censored and would not become published until Jun 2005. In it, he noted:

Look at the pushed-in façade of the American consulate, three miles from the blast's center, or the face of the Catholic cathedral, one mile in the other direction, torn down like gingerbread, and you can tell that the liberated atom spares nothing in its way.

Epilogue

On the very same day of the Nagasaki bombing, the Soviet Union tore up her non-aggression pact with Japan and invaded the Japanese-held northeastern China. The triple shock of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the new front against Russia finally pushed Japan definitively toward settling for peace. Should Japan choose to continue the war, however, the United States expected to complete a third atomic bomb by late Aug or early Sep, with three more in Sep, and plans to use them were certainly being considered.

Recall that during the Nagasaki bombing, American scientists inserted an unsigned letter to Professor Ryokichi Sagane in the instruments that were dropped just prior to the bomb to record scientific data. The letter urged Sagane to advise Japanese leadership to surrender to avoid further atomic attacks. This letter actually did not get delivered to him until a month later. In 1949, American nuclear physicist Luis Alvarez who had been a friend of Sagane's from before the war revealed himself to be one of the authors of this letter; he met with Sagane and signed the letter.

http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=49

 

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day-day

Hall of Fame
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Bartlett, TN (Memphis area)
As Bockscar began its approach toward Japan, fuel would be his only concern; the bomber had a problem with the transfer pump with his reserve fuel tank, and the mission was deemed too important to be delayed simply for a malfunctioning pump.
I wouldn't consider this a simple problem if I was on the flight...
 

Bamaro

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The Atlantic Conference began 75 years ago today
On 9 August 1941, the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales sailed into Placentia Bay, with Churchill on board, and met the American heavy cruiser USS Augusta where Roosevelt and his staff were waiting.
 

Crimson1967

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I think the biggest benefit of dropping the bombs is that we know for a fact what they can do. Imagine more powerful bombs dropped in Korea or Vietnam.


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Tidewater

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I detest people like this writer.
As I was reading, I was thinking to myself, "Yeah? You go ahead and hit that beach numb-[gonads]."

In a candid moment, the author would say, "Um, no thanks. I would want to put myself at risk. I just want to stand in the rear and pontificate at those who do."
 

AUDub

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Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
An interesting tidbit. Before Japan attacked us, Pearl Harbor had been regarded as immune to air-dropped torpedoes because the water was so shallow the torpedoes would hit the ocean floor and embed themselves in the mud. This was one of the few harbors in the world that had such a natural defense against air-dropped torpedoes. In order to attack us, Japan had to develop entirely new torpedo technology designed specifically for Pearl Harbor. Who can guess where those particular torpedoes were designed and constructed?
 

TIDE-HSV

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An interesting tidbit. Before Japan attacked us, Pearl Harbor had been regarded as immune to air-dropped torpedoes because the water was so shallow the torpedoes would hit the ocean floor and embed themselves in the mud. This was one of the few harbors in the world that had such a natural defense against air-dropped torpedoes. In order to attack us, Japan had to develop entirely new torpedo technology designed specifically for Pearl Harbor. Who can guess where those particular torpedoes were designed and constructed?
Wow! Thanks...
 

crimsonaudio

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An interesting tidbit. Before Japan attacked us, Pearl Harbor had been regarded as immune to air-dropped torpedoes because the water was so shallow the torpedoes would hit the ocean floor and embed themselves in the mud. This was one of the few harbors in the world that had such a natural defense against air-dropped torpedoes. In order to attack us, Japan had to develop entirely new torpedo technology designed specifically for Pearl Harbor. Who can guess where those particular torpedoes were designed and constructed?
I don't know, because...

 

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AUDub

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Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
I don't know, because...

:wink:

At 1101 hours, Beahan released the bomb over Urakami. 43 seconds later, the "Fat Man" bomb containing about 6.4 kilograms of Plutonium 239 detonated at the altitude of 469 meters over the halfway point between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (a factory producing torpedoes) in the north.
Whip that little factoid out next time some imbecile claims Nagasaki wasn't a legitimate target.
 

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