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80 years ago this week the United States ended the war with Japan with two atomic fission bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The majority of victims were civilians, as was the norm in bombing cities at the time, as destroying morale and the civilian will to fight was considered a key battle in war then. The popular phrase was that by killing those Japanese, we saved the lives of potentially millions who would have been killed had we been forced to invade Japan. The 509th Composite Group, flying B-29s, carried the load.<\/p>\n
First flight – on August 6th the Enola Gay, named after pilot Paul Tibbett’s mother, dropped the ~15 kiloton Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima, killing\u00a0 somewhere between 90-166,000 casualties.<\/p>\n
Little Boy used a charge of cordite to fire a hollow cylinder (the “bullet”) of highly enriched uranium through an artillery gun barrel into a solid cylinder (the “target”) of the same material. The design was highly inefficient: the weapon used on Hiroshima contained 64 kilograms (141\u00a0lb) of uranium, but less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Less than a kilo… and we have all seen the footage of what it looked like, and the damage that it did.<\/p>\n
Second bomb – August 9th, Major Charles Sweeney flew Bock’s Car to drop a plutonium implosion bomb on Nagasaki. This bomb only had 11 kg of plutonium which was compressed by precise shaped charges until it imploded. It’s estimated 60-80,000 were killed by this one.<\/p>\n
Three days later, a Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. Over the next two to four months, the effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half the deaths occurred on the first day. For months afterward, many people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition.\u00a0\u00a0Wiki “Little Boy”<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Couple of quick items\u00a0 I did not know – the Enola Gay flew as the weather plane on the Nagasaki flight. The Great Artiste, the only other plane to participate in both raids, was flown by Captain Richard Bock, for whom Bock’s Car was named. And due to bad fuel pump, Bock’s Car had two of its four engine starve out due to lack of fuel during the landing.\u00a0 Amazing…<\/p>\n
Additional material from\u00a0 Wiki Atomic Bombings<\/a><\/p>\n
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