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Since June, the B-29 crews have flown over Hiroshima on test runs, dropping what are nicknamed ‘pumpkins’ - harmless orange bombs the exact shape of an atom bomb. weather reconnaissance bomber, Straight Flush, is spotted over Hiroshima and an air-raid alarm sounds across the city. Paul W Tibbets, (center), in honour of his 57-year-old mother
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It’s Monday and it looks like it will be a typical August day: hot and humid. Ten minutes later, Enola Gay starts her final climb to 31,000 ft. Lewis writes in his log: ‘It’s a funny feeling knowing this thing is right in the back of you. At the height they need to drop the bomb from, they will need clear skies if the mission is to be successful. Or better still, all the way home.’Īfter passing through half an hour of cloud, the Enola Gay emerges into the dawn light. ‘I think everyone will be relieved when we have left our bomb with the Japs and get half way home. With all he had to do to help get this mission off, he deserves a few winks.
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He writes: ‘The old bull shows signs of a tough day. Tibbets has a nap while Lewis monitors ‘George’, the autopilot. It weighs 5 tons and has the explosive force of 20,000 tons of TNT. Lewis stops writing and begins the 11-part process of priming the bomb they call Little Boy. Everything went well on take-off, nothing unusual was encountered.’ Lewis is writing the log as if it is a letter to his parents: ‘Dear Mom and Dad. He’s been asked to write an account of the raid by New York Times journalist William Laurence, who has not been allowed on the flight. Lewis is scribbling a makeshift log on the back of some War Department forms. In the gloom of the cockpit, 27-year-old co-pilot Captain Robert A. ‘Colonel, we wouldn’t be playing with atoms today, would we?’ asks tail gunner Bob Caron. ‘We’re going on a bombing mission, but it’s a bit special.’ ‘You know what we’re doing today?’ he asks. Tibbets crawls through the plane to speak to his ten-man crew at the rear. Tonight, he is working as an air-raid warden. At Hiroshima Communications Hospital, Dr Michihiko Hachiya is scanning the sky. Sickening: Almost all of the 8,000 children who were clearing fire breaks in the centre of Hiroshima were vaporised in the blastĮnola Gay takes off into the night. Tibbets leans out of the cockpit and gives a wave to the cameras. The Enola Gay is illuminated by floodlights so the take-off can be filmed for posterity. His father had only said: ‘If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead. Tibbets named it after his mother as tribute to her support for his decision to join the Army Air Corps back in 1937. His crew were dismayed when they saw ‘Enola Gay’ on the fuselage, as they’d hoped for something racier, like other B-29s, which had names like Slick Dick or Leading Lady. 82’, but last night Tibbets wrote his mother’s name on a piece of paper and gave it to the Tinian airbase signwriter. At the controls is her son, 29-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets.įor the past few months, the plane has been known simply as ‘No. On the Pacific island of Tinian, 8,000 miles away, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bearing her name is preparing for take-off. Here, in a specially commissioned piece from Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie, the writers of the acclaimed D-Day: Minute By Minute, is a dramatic reconstruction of the countdown to the Armageddon, as seen through the eyes of those who lived through it.Īt her home in Miami, 57-year-old Enola Gay Tibbets is enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon. The atomic bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in an instant was dropped 70 years ago this week.