{"id":103283,"date":"2020-08-05T12:16:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T16:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=103283"},"modified":"2020-08-05T12:16:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T16:16:14","slug":"75-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=103283","title":{"rendered":"75 Years ago today…"},"content":{"rendered":"
Col Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay before leaving for the bombing of Hiroshima<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Colonel Paul Tibbets flew his B-29 heavy bomber “Enola Gay” over Hiroshima, Japan 75 years ago today. At 0815 local time on 8\/6\/45 (1915 hours EDT 8\/5\/45) his bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee released their top-secret payload. Their payload was so secret only he, Tibbets, and the weaponeer Navy Captain William “Deak” Parsons knew what was on board. The remaining crew had been given dark glasses and were told only to expect a bright flash.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Strike Order 5 August, 1945, 509th Composite Group, US Army Air Force<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the flight to Hiroshima, Parson crawled into the cramped bomb bay of the Superfortress to arm their payload, receiving the Silver Star medal for it.\u00a0After Ferebee, who also received a Silver Star for the mission, released their single bomb, it fell for 44.4 seconds before that bright flash happened.<\/p>\n

What followed was only the second detonation of an atomic bomb and the first to be used in warfare. The bomb blew up with the force of about 16,000 tons of TNT. The bomb was timed to burst in the air, maximizing destructive potential and minimizing radioactive fallout.<\/p>\n

Hiroshima bomb blast, 2-5 minutes after detonation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The blast instantly vaporized everything within a mile and caused near total destruction and massive fires in an area about 4.4 square miles. Sixty-nine percent of the buildings in the city were destroyed and another 6-7% were damaged. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people in the heavily populated city were killed by the blast and resultant firestorm (of a population somewhere around 350,000). Tens of thousands more suffered injuries including burns and radiation sickness.<\/p>\n

Tibbets would be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General Carl Spaatz (commander of US Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific) after landing. He was hailed as a hero and even invited to the White House.<\/p>\n

The horrible effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and days later Nagasaki, convinced the Japanese to end the war. The Japanese were preparing to fight to the last man, woman, and child as the Allies moved toward invading the mainland. The Japanese, their organized military, local militias, and even the citizenry themselves, were told being organized to fight and resist the invasion. Throughout the many battles in the Pacific Theater the Japanese troops had They finally surrendered unconditionally on August 15, 1945.<\/p>\n

The nuclear bombings cost the Japanese hundreds of thousands of casualties, but averted the Allies from having to invade. Plans had been drawn up to invade the Japanese mainland with about 6,000,000 (six million!) men, an order of magnitude bigger than the Normandy Landings in the year prior.<\/p>\n

Estimates of the human cost to the Allies for the invasion ran upwards of 1,000,000 casualties. The atomic bombing thus saved millions of Allied men’s lives, and though it did cost the Japanese dearly, it likely averted hundreds of thousands of casualties on their side as well were the Allied invasion of the mainland to have happened. Most histories remark only on how terrible the bombings themselves were without pointing out the alternative was much worse.<\/p>\n

Casualty estimates led the US Army in WWII to order more than 1.5 million Purple Heart medals. During that war 1 million or so had been used, leaving 500,000 in stock. Since the horrific invasion of Japan never happened, the excess inventory of Purple Hearts are still being issued to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colonel Paul Tibbets flew his B-29 heavy bomber “Enola Gay” over Hiroshima, Japan 75 years ago … 75 Years ago today…<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,10,461,462,121,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-historical","category-purple-heart","category-silver-star","category-war-stories","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103284,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103283\/revisions\/103284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}