Hiroshima Fifty Years Later - The Enola Gay flies again

Abstract

On Monday the 6th of August 1945 a B-29 Superfortress longrange heavy bomber, the Enola Gay, took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific. It was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets. He and his crew had been seconded to the 509th Composite Group that had been formed for the express purpose of delivering the first nuclear weapons. It carried just one bomb, nicknamed Little Boy. The 1700-mile trip to Hiroshima was uneventful, the weather was near-ideal, and the Japanese air force had long since been driven from the skies. The plane made a perfect run over the city, released its cargo and turned for home. Just over 45 seconds later Hiroshima ceased to exist as a functioning society and 80,000 of her citizens perished. A second bomb, Fat Man, was dropped three days later by another B-29, called Bockscar (sic), on the city of Nagasaki which also was obliterated, again with great loss of life. Two days after Nagasaki Japan surrendered unconditionally. Thus nuclear weapons were used for the first, and we must hope for the last, time in anger. Together with the Trinity Test at Alamogordo on the 16th of July, 1945, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are arguably the most sigmificant events in modem history and mark the beginning of the nuclear age.