American Bomber: B-29 Superfortress Bockscar

Stored in the Arizona desert at the end of World War II and flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1961, the B-29 Bockscar went on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.  Piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, Bockscar was the B-29 that committed the second atomic attack on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.

Restored to original condition the plane appears as it did on the morning it carried out the second atomic attack on Nagasaki, Japan.

The tail towers nearly thirty feet above ground.

The streamlined fuselage set the standard for future bombers, which would not bristle with machine guns like the bombers before the B-29.

The nose-art of World War II planes usually reflected something about the pilot.  This B-29 is named after its pilot Frederick Bock.  However, Bock would not pilot the bombing mission on August 9, instead he piloted Major Sweeney’s bomber the Great Artiste carrying instruments to measure the bombs effects, while Major Sweeney piloted Bockscar.

For more information follow this link: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=527

Fat Man Atomic Bomb

Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki

On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan’s unconditional surrender.

The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called “Bock’s Car,” after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. Nagasaki was a shipbuilding center, the very industry intended for destruction. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 (exact figures are impossible, the blast having obliterated bodies and disintegrated records).

General Leslie R. Groves, the man responsible for organizing the Manhattan Project, which solved the problem of producing and delivering the nuclear explosion, estimated that another atom bomb would be ready to use against Japan by August 17 or 18-but it was not necessary. Even though the War Council still remained divided (“It is far too early to say that the war is lost,” opined the Minister of War), Emperor Hirohito, by request of two War Council members eager to end the war, met with the Council and declared that “continuing the war can only result in the annihilation of the Japanese people….” The Emperor of Japan gave his permission for unconditional surrender.

“Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.” 2008. The History Channel website. 8 Aug 2008, 04:20 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6545.

The thing I have always found morbidly fascinating about this bomb is that it doesn’t explode.  It implodes.  Inside the bomb is a central core of plutonium 239 and formed around that core is a soccer ball-like shaped charge of alternating fast and slow burning detonators.  When it detonates the soccer ball collapses in on the plutonium core compressing it until it implodes.  A split second after imploding a massive release of energy results in devastating destruction, which, when used on August 9, 1945, convinced Emperor Hirohito that Japan faced annihilation if it continued the war.

  

The Fat Man atomic bomb can be found at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

For more information about this weapon and others follow these links:  http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/exhibits/

or: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1016

On This Day, 8-6-08: Atom Bomb

On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a “conventional” bombing of Japan was underway, “Little Boy,” (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets’ plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Tibbets’ B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on August 6. Five and a half hours later, “Little Boy” was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read “Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis” (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas).

There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city’s 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying.

According to John Hersey’s classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load.

There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Another crewman remarked, “It’s pretty terrific. What a relief it worked.”

“Atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima.” 2008. The History Channel website. 5 Aug 2008, 11:23 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6542.

Here is a picture of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on august 6, 1945.  This recreated version of the atomic bomb can be found at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.