It would be the start of a frightful era of weapons that could defy control and menace civilization.īut as “Dimples Eight Two” picked up speed that morning, its mission was born of its time: deliver a blow that the United States hoped might finally end the global butchery of World War II. Tens of thousands more would die the same way at Nagasaki a few days later, and the world would subsequently be hearing about megatons, mutual assured destruction, proliferation, nuclear winter, meltdowns and dirty bombs. It was an important enemy military site with a wartime population about 280,000, according to the historians Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.Īlmost half of them were about to be incinerated, crushed, and irradiated by the crude atomic weapon named “Little Boy” that the Enola Gay carried. (AP)įifteen hundred miles to the north-northwest, under a waning crescent moon, lay a 400-year-old Japanese city most Americans probably had never heard of but whose name was about to be etched into the pages of history. Shumard, assistant engineer and Staff Sgt. Jacob Besser, radar countermeasures officer.
Tibbets, 509th Composite Group commanding officer and pilot Capt. John Porter, ground maintenance officer Capt. This undated photo includes most members of 12-man crew of the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima posing in the Mariana Islands in 1945 during World War II.
