The Little Boy
On August 4, seventy men of the 509th filed into a briefing hut on Tinian and sat down to watch a movie. Seven crews saw a colossal fireball rise up from the floor of the New Mexican desert and turn darkness into day. Awed by the pyrotechnics and power, they realized instantly the reasons for their peculiar training routine. One bomb, steep turns; their questions were answered by the film shot only nineteen days earlier.
Captain Parsons gave a speech in which he outlined the significance of the new weapon. He avoided using the word “atomic” as he told the men the bomb would be detonated in the air, that its full destructive effect was not known, that airplanes near the explosion would have to be extremely careful not to fly near the cloud rising from the burst. When Parsons mentioned the term “radioactivity,” some of the listeners blanched as they connected it with another term, “sterility.”
Tibbets then discussed the procedures for the first flight. He went over the air-sea rescue plans, the schedule for takeoff, routes and other aspects of the mission. Then the seven crews filed out of the hut into the bright sunlight of Tinian knowing that the next few days would see remarkable moments in the history of the world. Though the words atomic bomb had not been mentioned, the privileged group that had witnessed the movie knew that something horrendous was about to happen to the Japanese.
On Sunday, the fifth of August, scientists began the job of packing the Little Boy for shipment to Hiroshima. Two pieces of the deadly metal U-235 were delicately positioned at opposite ends of the cylindrical casing. A charge of cordite was placed behind one of them. On command it would blast this piece of uranium toward the other section with the velocity of a .45-caliber bullet. When the two collided, the temperature over Hiroshima would become that of a sun. All these calculations had been worked out at Los Alamos by minds normally devoted to peaceful pursuits.
On the sixth of August, Colonel Tibbets led the way to Japan with the Little Boy tucked inside the bomb bay of the Enola Gay. Chuck Sweeney and Crew 15 flew The Great Artiste nearby as an instrument ship. In its rear section, three scientists occupied a section set up as a darkroom. George Marquardt commanded the third plane, Number 91, equipped with cameras.
At 7:30 A.M., in brilliant sunlight, they sighted the Japanese coast. Claude Eatherley, flying as weather scout over the primary target, radioed back that conditions were perfect.
Tibbets called Sweeney: “Chuck, it’s Hiroshima.”
The planes turned toward the Initial Point for the run to the city. Underneath, the mass of Shikoku Island was a dark green. There were only a few clouds in the sun-drenched sky.
The placid Inland Sea appeared below and then the coastline of Honshu. Tibbets turned west at a point sixty miles from the target and shortly thereafter Hiroshima lay exposed and beautiful under the B-29’s. Sweeney and Albury could even see in the center of the city the old castle that served as Japanese Army Headquarters in the area. The men in The Great Artiste kept reminding Beahan to yell when the Little Boy fell from the other B-29 because Sweeney needed every second of time to bank away safely.
At precisely 8:15 and 17 seconds Beahan shouted “Bombs away!” Sweeney pulled the plane over in a 60-degree bank and Beahan dropped a cluster of instruments on parachutes to gauge the intensity of the explosion.
The Little Boy, a black and orange shape weighing nearly five tons, fell down on the 255,000 people of Hiroshima. At an altitude of 1,870 feet, the nine and one half pounds of cordite drove the uranium chunks into each other and the equivalent of 13,500 tons of TNT exploded in the sky.
A brilliant purplish-white flash lit the interiors of the three B-29’s. Tibbets was momentarily blinded. Captain Parsons, who had daringly armed the Little Boy in flight to avoid any danger of explosion on takeoff, was staggered by the flash and the unfolding destruction.
In The Great Artiste, the film in the scientists’ darkroom showed jagged lines as the instruments, still suspended on parachutes, attested to the death of a city.
At the Japanese Naval Academy on the island of Eta Jima, nearly sixty miles southeast of Hiroshima, students in classrooms heard a dull thunder and felt an unusually warm breeze touch them through open windows.
The three B-29’s flew away from the devastation. Kermit Beahan had been so awed by the Little Boy that he forgot to turn on a tape recorder to preserve Crew 15’s comments for posterity. George Marquardt’s camera plane had photographed the boiling cloud, but only dust and smoke were visible beneath it. On the ground, more than sixty-four thousand people were dead or about to die.
Major Tom Ferebee had dropped his special bomb within feet of the prescribed aiming point. The Little Boy was released only seventeen seconds later than planned. The first atomic bomb mission was almost perfectly executed. Nothing had gone wrong.
Half a world away, Harry Truman heard the news while he ate lunch with men of the cruiser Augusta carrying the President home from Potsdam. An aide handed Truman a dispatch:
“Big bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 5 at 7:15 P.M. Washington time. First reports indicate complete success which was even more conspicuous than earlier test.”
Truman was greatly moved. The Augusta sped onward across the Atlantic while the President shared the tremendous story with James Byrnes and ordinary seamen on the cruiser.
6 August 1945 |
1700 hours |
From: Togo
To: Sato
No. 991 (urgent, ambassador’s code.)
It is reported that Stalin and Molotov returned to Moscow today. As we have various arrangements to make, please see Molotov immediately, and demand his earliest possible reply.
The first word was in from Hiroshima, where a strange weapon had caused tremendous damage.
Before he heard from Sato, Togo was propelled into sending another frantic cable. An eyewitness to the atom bomb had come back to the capital with a chilling description: “The whole city of Hiroshima was destroyed instantly by a single bomb.”
7 August 1945 |
1540 hours |
From: Togo
To: Sato No. 993
Regarding your No. 1519. The situation is becoming so acute that we must have a clarification of the Soviet attitude as soon as possible. Please make further efforts to obtain a reply immediately.
Sato answered within hours:
7 August 1945 |
1950 hours Moscow |
8 August 1945 |
1200 hours, Ministry of Foreign Office, Tokyo |
From: Sato
To: Togo
No. 1530 (urgent, ambassador’s code.)
Regarding my No. 1519. As soon as Molotov returned to Moscow, I requested a meeting. I also asked Lozovsky to help arrange it. On the seventh, Molotov notified me that he would see me at 1700 hours tomorrow, the eighth.
Molotov kept his promise. At 5:00 P.M. on the eighth of August he met with Ambassador Sato and promptly declared war on the Japanese Empire.
Late that same night, in a room at Secret Police Headquarters in Osaka, Japan, two men stood over the figure of an American flyer, Lieutenant Marcus McDilda. Shot down that day on a strafing mission, McDilda had been picked up from the water and brought to shore. As soldiers marched him blindfolded through the streets, civilians closed about him and smashed him repeatedly with their fists. Bruised and bleeding, he was taken to a building where Japanese officers began to interrogate him. The pilot was asked questions about his home base at Iwo Jima. He lied consistently about the number of aircraft on the island, about other details of the P-51 fighter plane he flew.
For several hours he endured constant harassment. At intervals, officers stepped up and beat him. Then the same questions were asked again. When he said that 300 planes were based on Iwo, his captors displayed photographs showing that approximately 150 fighters actually operated from there. Trapped in this lie, he was rewarded with another beating.
The questioning became more intense. One officer demanded that he tell what he knew of the atomic bomb, dropped two days before on Hiroshima. McDilda assured him that he knew absolutely nothing about the weapon. The Japanese kept returning to the theme of the atomic bomb. McDilda repeatedly denied any knowledge of it.
Before midnight, a door opened and a general stepped in. He, too, insisted that McDilda tell about the bomb. When the lieutenant did not, the general drew out his sword and held it up before the captive’s face. Then he jabbed forward, cutting through an open sore on McDilda’s lip. Blood streamed down onto the American’s chin and flying suit. The general screamed, “If you don’t tell me about the bomb, I’ll personally cut off your head.” Then he stalked from the room.
McDilda was badly shaken. He hurt terribly from the many beatings. His face was cut, his torn lip throbbed from the sword slash. As the interrogators picked up the familiar questioning about the bomb, the pilot wondered just what he could tell them about it in order to stay alive. He could recall having heard someone on Iwo talking about the splitting of atoms, of negative and positive charges. Marcus McDilda began to tell the Japanese secret police about the atomic bomb.
Hoping his heavy southern drawl would confuse the interpreter, the pilot from Florida began: “As you know, when atoms are split, there are a lot of plusses and minuses released. Well, we’ve taken these and put them in a huge container and separated them from each other with a lead shield. When the box is dropped out of a plane, we melt the lead shield and the plusses and minuses come together. When that happens, it causes a tremendous bolt of lightning and all the atmosphere over a city is pushed back! Then when the atmosphere rolls back, it brings about a tremendous thunderclap, which knocks down everything beneath it!”
The interrogators prodded him to go on. McDilda continued: “The bomb is about 36 feet long and 24 feet wide.”
The Japanese asked, “Do you know the next target for this weapon?” McDilda thought a minute, then chose the two cities whose destruction might be most demoralizing. He said, “I believe Kyoto and Tokyo. Tokyo is supposed to be bombed in the next few days.”
The excited secret policemen pressed him for further details but McDilda was running out of ideas. He kept going back to his original lies. One of the interrogators left the room and went to a phone. He put through a call to Tokyo to the main headquarters of the secret police in Japan.
Back in the small room, Marcus McDilda continued to tell his preposterous story to fascinated officers, who were appalled at the news that Tokyo might become a victim of the terrible new bomb.