AUGUST 6, 1945

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb was known as “Little Boy;”it was a uranium “gun-type” bomb that was chosen for first operational use because all the science to explode it was thoroughly known by the scientists of the Manhattan Project, making it the “safe” option.

At 0245 hours on Monday August 6, 1945, three American B-29 bombers of the 509th Composite Group took off from an airfield on Tinian, 1,500 miles south of Japan. The lead B-29 was named “Enola Gay” for mission commander Paul Tibbets’ mother. Despite the bomb’s nickname, it weighed nearly 10,000 pounds. The overloaded Enola Gay used more than two miles of runway to get airborne.

At 0715 hours, Navy Captain William S. Parsons climbed into the bomb bay and armed the bomb; Enola Gay began climbing to the bombing altitude of 31,000 feet.

At 0815 hours, Hiroshima Time, bombardier Tom Ferebee dropped the bomb using the Aioi Bridge as an aiming point, clearly visible through the plane’s bombsight. When Ferebee released the bomb from its restraints, Enola Gay jumped nearly ten feet at the sudden loss in weight.

Tibbets immediately banked the B-29 sharply on a 155 degree turn and entered a dive. He had practiced this difficult maneuver for months because he had been instructed that he had less than 45 seconds to get his plane clear of the subsequent explosion.

At 0816 hours, “Little Boy”exploded 1,800 feet above the center of Hiroshima with about 13,000 tons of explosive force (13 kilotons). Due to crosswind, the bomb missed the Aioi Bridge aiming point by approximately 800 feet and detonated directly over Shima Surgical Clinic.

The mushroom cloud

Up to that point, Hiroshima had been largely spared the rain of conventional air bombing that had ravaged many other Japanese cities. Rumors abounded as to why this was so, from the fact that many Hiroshima residents had emigrated to the U.S. to the supposed presence of President Truman’s mother in the area. Many citizens, including schoolchildren, were recruited to prepare for future bombings by tearing down houses to create fire lanes, and it was this task that many were laboringat or preparing to do so that morning. Just an hour before, air raid sirens had sounded as a single B-29, the weather plane for the Little Boy mission, approached Hiroshima. A radio broadcast announced the sighting of the Enola Gay soon after 0800.

At the time of the bombing, Hiroshima was home to 280,000-290,000 civilians as well as 43,000 soldiers. Between 90,000 and 166,000 people are believed to have died from the bomb in the four-month period following the explosion. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that after five years there were perhaps 200,000 or more fatalities as a result of the bombing, while the city of Hiroshima has estimated that 237,000 people were killed directly or indirectly by the bomb’s effects, including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer.

15 minutes later

The mission, codenamed Operation Centerboard I, was approved by XXI Air Force commander Major General Curtis LeMay on August 4, 1945.

The mission was led by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who had flown the lead B-17 - “Butcher Shop” - on the first combat mission flown by the Eighth Air Foprce three years earlier on August 17, 1942. The crew included copilot Robert Lewis, bombardier Tom Ferebee, navigator Theodore Van Kirk, and tail gunner Robert Caron.

Pilot Paul Tibbets: “We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud… boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall. No one spoke for a moment; then everyone was talking. I remember (copilot Robert) Lewis pounding my shoulder, saying ‘Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!’ (Bombardier) Tom Ferebee wondered about whether radioactivity would make us all sterile. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission. He said it tasted like lead.”

Navigator Theodore Van Kirk recalled the shockwaves from the explosion: “(It was) very much as if you’ve ever sat on an ash can and had somebody hit it with a baseball bat… The plane bounced, it jumped and there was a noise like a piece of sheet metal snapping. Those of us who had flown quite a bit over Europe thought that it was anti-aircraft fire that had exploded very close to the plane.” On viewing the atomic fireball: “I don’t believe anyone ever expected to look at a sight quite like that. Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains.”

Tail gunner Robert Caron: “The mushroom itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. As we got farther away, we could see the base of the mushroom and below we could see what looked like a few-hundred-foot layer of debris and smoke and what have you… I saw fires springing up in different places, like flames shooting up on a bed of coals.”

The cloud formed by the firestorm

Six miles below, the people of Hiroshima were waking up and preparing for their daily routines. Up to that point, the city had been largely spared by the rain of conventional air bombing that had ravaged other Japanese cities. Rumors abounded why this was so, from the fact that many Hiroshima residents had emigrated to the U.S. to the supposed presence of President Truman’s mother in the area. Many citizens, including schoolchildren, were recruited to prepare for future bombings by tearing down houses to create fire lanes, and it was at this task that many were laboring or preparing to labor on the morning of August 6. A radio broadcast announced the sighting of the Enola Gay soon after 0800.

The city of Hiroshima was annihilated by the explosion. 70,000 of 76,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and 48,000 of those were entirely razed.

Medical doctor Michihiko Hachiya: “Nothing remained except a few buildings of reinforced concrete… For acres and acres the city was like a desert except for scattered piles of brick and roof tile. I had to revise my meaning of the word destruction or choose some other word to describe what I saw. Devastation may be a better word, but really, I know of no word or words to describe the view.”

Writer Yoko Ota: “I reached a bridge and saw that the Hiroshima Castle had been completely leveled to the ground, and my heart shook like a great wave; the grief of stepping over the corpses of history pressed upon my heart.”

Ground Zero

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