Enola Gay

by Gordon Thomas

  But not all the newcomers were security men.

  Technical Sergeant George Caron arrived dusty and thirsty from a trans-American journey, with his collar unbuttoned and wearing a flying jacket, a double breach of military regulations.

  The MPs at the gate pounced on the diminutive air gunner. They marched him to the orderly room in the headquarters building. There, a policeman began to berate Caron.

  Suddenly, from an adjoining office, Caron heard a familiar voice. “Is that you, Bob?”

  “Sure is, Colonel.”

  Tibbets was one of the few officers who called Caron by his nickname, “Bob.”

  “Come on in.”

  Smiling impishly at the stunned policemen, Caron strolled from the orderly room in to see Tibbets. They greeted each other like the old buddies they were.

  Caron had been gunnery instructor on Tibbets’s B-29 training program. Feet up on his desk, Tibbets now explained to the gunner why he had sent for him. “Bob, I need a man who knows what he’s doing—and can teach others to do a similar job. And keep their mouths shut.”

  “Colonel, I won’t even mention I’m here,” said Caron.

  Tibbets smiled, reestablishing the easy contact which had marked their previous working relationship. He did not find it unusual to be imparting information to a noncom while senior officers in the 393rd still had no idea of what was happening. It was the way Tibbets preferred to do things, dealing first with the men who had already proved themselves to him. Tibbets believed that the privileges of rank were limited; men had to earn the right to his confidence.

  On the B-29 program, onlookers had spoken scathingly of “Tibbets’s private air force.” He had shrugged such criticism aside. He meant to adopt the same policy at Wendover, sometimes confiding to enlisted men information he would not entrust to an officer.

  The first time he saw his new outfit assembled, he was not overly impressed. They were trying too hard to look nonchalant, “the way they had seen Alan Ladd do it in the movies.” Tibbets thought they looked decidedly inexperienced. He guessed most of the officers were in their early twenties. The enlisted men seemed even younger. Ferebee and Caron know what it’s all about, thought Tibbets, the others are trying to pretend they do.

  The smartly dressed officer standing ramrod stiff, cap squared off—that must be the executive officer, King. Tibbets had heard about him from Classen. King was a peacetime professional, Regular Army. Tough but fair, Classen had said. The unit needed such a man, judging by what Tibbets had read in Uanna’s dossiers.

  The 393rd later agreed that, standing there, Tibbets looked tough, mean, and moody. One officer put it, “He looked as if one mistake from us, and he would happily fry us for breakfast and use our remains to stoke his lunchtime stove.”

  Beser thought: This is the man I want to go to war with. Feeling Tibbets’s stare fall upon him, the radar officer visibly straightened; he wished now that he hadn’t worn his cap at such a rakish angle.

  Command had taught Tibbets a trick: surprise people, shake them by the unexpected. “I’ve looked at you. You have looked at me. I’m not going to be stuck with all of you. But those of you who remain are going to be stuck with me.”

  This was a new Tibbets to Caron. He shared in the ripple of expectancy around him.

  Tibbets continued. “You have been brought here to work on a very special mission. Those of you who stay will be going overseas.”

  A muted cheer came from the rear ranks. Tibbets froze it with one look. “This is not a football game. You are here to take part in an effort that could end the war.”

  This time he allowed the murmur to rise and fall of its own accord. He had them now. “Don’t ask what the job is. That is a surefire way to be transferred out. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t answer any questions from anybody not directly involved in what we will be doing. Do exactly what you are told, when you are told, and you will get along fine.

  “I know some of you are curious about all the security. Stop being curious. This is part of the preparation for what is to come. Nobody will be allowed into a fenced-off area without a pass. Lose that pass, and you face court-martial.

  “Never mention this base to anybody. That means your wives, girls, sisters, family.”

  There was dead silence when he paused. Years ago, when he first became an officer, his mother had given him a piece of advice: sometimes he would have to be tough, but he should always try to temper it by showing the other side of his character, gentleness.

  “It’s not going to be easy for any of us. But we will succeed by working together. However, all work and no play is no fun. So, as of now, you can all go on two weeks’ furlough. Enjoy yourselves.”

  Classen was about to dismiss the squadron when Tibbets spoke again. “If any of you wish to transfer out, that’s fine. Just say the word.”

  He waited.

  Nobody moved.

  “I’m glad,” Tibbets said, “really glad.”

  By midafternoon, the men were already leaving the base. Many had begun to wonder why, if their assignment was so important in ending the war, they had been given two weeks’ leave. Some believed Tibbets had tried too hard to impress them.

  Second Lieutenant Eugene Grennan, the engineer on Eatherly’s crew, decided after strolling down the flight line that the talk about security was “hogwash.” A hangar door had been open. He peered inside, “and there was this German V-1 rocket.”

  A triumphant Grennan decided that the squadron was going to Europe “to knock down Nazi rockets.”

  The rocket was a plywood mockup, and the hangar door had been deliberately left ajar—a trap devised by Uanna. Within minutes, an agent reported that Grennan had swallowed the bait. But Uanna was in no hurry to catch the engineer. He had other snares to set.

  Navigator Russell Gackenbach reached Salt Lake City and was stopped by an NCO asking if Wendover was the “headquarters of the Silverplate outfit.” Gackenbach had never heard of Silverplate, but he suspected a trap and sternly warned his questioner that “darn-fool questions could get us both in the pen.”

  Gackenbach had survived Uanna’s obstacle course. Others found themselves enmeshed.

  Two NCOs were accosted by an officer in a Salt Lake City hotel. He said he was joining the 393rd. What sort of outfit was it? The men obligingly told him. The officer thanked them. Two hours later, as the talkative NCOs boarded a train for home, MPs stopped them and drove them back to base. In Tibbets’s office they were confronted by the officer. He was a Manhattan Project agent. Within an hour both noncoms were on the way to Alaska.

  Grennan reached Union Square, Chicago, before his trap sprung. There he ran into a friend from college days. Grennan told him about “the crazy setup at Wendover.” His friend listened attentively. They parted company. Grennan arrived home to find a telegram ordering his immediate return to Wendover. There, Uanna keelhauled the young flier for talking. His friend was a project agent. All that saved the crestfallen Grennan from transfer was his fine flying record. From then on, he became one of the most security-conscious men in the squadron.

  Five more members of the 393rd were netted by Uanna’s agents. They were also swiftly shipped to Alaska. Their records were not good enough to save them.

  In the late afternoon, Groves telephoned Tibbets, wanting to know why the squadron had gone on furlough. He was told about the security operation now in progress.

  The two men had met briefly in Washington. Then, Tibbets had been uncomfortably aware of the immense pressures the project chief was under. Now, Groves appeared to have ample time to talk. He promised new B-29s would be available soon, and reminded Tibbets that “the world is yours.”

  This was Groves at his most cajoling. Now he switched moods. He talked about the scientists who would soon be descending on Wendover. They were “brilliant men,” but they had little understanding of “the military side of things.” Therefore, it would be best if Tibbets did not “inform them unduly” about the training program.
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br />   Groves wanted to restrict news of the Army Air Force’s involvement to a few scientists—and then only to those he knew supported his view that the bomb must be produced as soon as possible. He saw those who questioned the validity of what they were doing as befuddled meddlers who were straying out of the scientific and into the political arena. He sensed that if these “longhairs” were aware that a strike force now existed to drop the bomb, their protests would become shriller.

  He put it differently to Tibbets.

  “Colonel, what people don’t know about they can’t talk about. And that is good for security.”

  Beser was ordered to remain on base. Tibbets had told him to expect important visitors soon.

  When the radar officer attempted to question Tibbets, he “received the coldest stare any man could give. I just shut up, went to my quarters, and waited.”

  Tibbets was being hard-nosed “because I wanted to impress on Beser, and everybody else in the outfit, that I didn’t fool around.”

  Now, late in the evening of September 12, Tibbets and Ferebee finally settled down for their eagerly awaited reunion.

  Ferebee was taller than Tibbets, and rakishly elegant. He could have played the hero in a war movie. He sported a neat RAF-style moustache which made him look older than his twenty-four years.

  He had survived sixty-three combat missions, twenty more than Tibbets. They shared the same philosophy about war: it was a rotten business, but it was either kill or be killed.

  They had flown together in Europe, been shot up, known the meaning of fear, and become firm friends. It was almost a year since they had last met, but Tibbets was pleased to see the old bonds were still there.

  They rambled through the past, remembering English airfields they had flown from, German-occupied French towns they had attacked. They talked excitedly about that summer’s day in 1942 when they had tangled with Göring’s personal squadron of yellow-nosed Messerschmitts. On that occasion one of the gunners on their bomber had had his foot shot off, the copilot had lost a hand, and Tibbets himself had been wounded in the arm. But Ferebee had successfully bombed the Germans’ Abbeville air base, and in daylight. That evening the BBC had mentioned the raid on its nine-o’clock news. They remembered other fliers, men who had died, men who had vanished into German prison camps, men whose fate was uncertain.

  Finally Tibbets turned to the present. “Tom, we are going to need good men for this job. If it works, we’ll flatten everything within eight miles of the aiming point.”

  Ferebee considered what he should say. “That’s quite a bang, Paul.”

  The bombardier made no other comment. Restraint was one of Ferebee’s qualities. He was always prepared to wait and to listen. His friends said the only time he really asserted himself was in combat, at the poker table, or when a pretty girl passed.

  Tibbets asked him if he could recommend anybody they should bring in for “the job.”

  “What about ‘Dutch’?”

  Theodore “Dutch” van Kirk had been their navigator in Europe. Quietly professional in the air, he and Ferebee had caroused and gambled off-duty. Occasionally Tibbets had joined them in their whoopee making, smiling indulgently as his younger companions staged their own blitzkrieg on London’s nightlife. Ferebee explained that van Kirk was back in America, had married, and was now based in Louisiana. Tibbets said he would have the navigator transferred to Wendover. Van Kirk could raise the standards of the 393rd’s navigators to that required for an atomic strike mission.

  “Tom, I want every one of these crews to be lead crews, capable of finding their way to a target without having pathfinders up front leading the way and dropping marker bombs.”

  Ferebee had two further suggestions for men who could meet Tibbets’s requirements. One was a bombardier, Kermit Beahan; the other was a navigator, James van Pelt. Both had previously impressed Ferebee.

  Tibbets said they would be recruited. He announced his own choices. They were all men who had served with him on the B-29 testing program. Three of them were pilots: Robert Lewis, Charles Sweeney, and Don Albury.

  Lewis, Tibbets explained, was a little wild, but a natural pilot; Sweeney was Boston Irish “and would fly a B-29 through the Grand Canyon if you asked him”; Albury “was about the most competent twenty-five-year-old I have ever known.”

  He had one other selection, Staff Sergeant Wyatt Duzenbury, his former flight engineer. “Tom, Dooz can coax magic out of airplane engines, and he’s a helluva guy when you’re in a corner. Give him an engine fire and he becomes steady as a rock. Give him two and he becomes even steadier.”

  By the end of the evening, Tibbets and Ferebee had virtually decided on the men who would fly the first atomic strike.

  6

  Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy had ordered a trim dive for 1700 hours on September 17. Submarine I.58 was to dive three hundred feet below the waves of Hiroshima Bay to test the watertightness of all hull valves and openings.

  I.58 had been commissioned at Kure four days earlier; this was the first time she would be submerged. From the day he had first seen her, back in May, Hashimoto had been impressed by the boat; she was one of the I-class submarines, larger and faster and better equipped than almost any boat of a comparable class anywhere in the world. Two diesel engines gave I.58 a cruising speed of 14 knots; submerged, her motors drove the submarine at 7 knots. With a range of 15,000 miles, she could remain at sea for three months. For her six torpedo tubes, all forward, she carried nineteen torpedoes, the most advanced in the world. Oxygen-fueled, leaving no wake, they had a speed of 58 knots and a range of 5,500 meters. Each 2-foot-diameter torpedo carried a 1,210-pound explosive charge.

  Today, for the hull tests, the torpedo room was empty, except for the rats that infested the submarine. Every effort to exterminate the rodents had been unsuccessful. But they were the only problem that Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto had failed to overcome. His endless battles with the Kure Naval Dockyard, the Naval Technical Department, and the Naval Research Bureau had paid off. I.58 was equipped exactly the way he wished.

  Standing on the boat’s bridge, as it moved through the water a little over a mile south of Hiroshima, Hashimoto looked through his binoculars at the naval academy on the island of Etajima. Nothing seemed to have changed since he had been a cadet there from 1927 to 1931. Three years later, in 1934, he had been assigned to submarines; he had loved the life. But a spell of duty in destroyers and subchasers, operating in the waters off China, had intervened. It was not until 1938 that he was selected to be a full-time member of the submarine service. By then he was married, and in 1940 his wife gave birth to their first child, a son.

  Professionally, Hashimoto had found himself caught up in events which stirred him deeply. He was assigned to the naval task force supporting the air attack on Pearl Harbor, a torpedo officer on one of the five submarines which had each launched a two-man midget submarine against the American fleet. The midget subs had failed in their mission; all were sunk. But Hashimoto’s own craft had made good its escape. Since then, he had enjoyed an unspectacular war.

  He liked it that way. The first time he had assembled the crew of I.58, he told them he was expecting competence, not “senseless heroics.”

  Hashimoto had personally selected many of his 105 officers and men. Some of them had been with him on his previous submarine. They thought their thirty-five-year-old captain firm but fair. He was widely experienced and had a reputation for surviving.

  A few of the newcomers were young; Hashimoto looked upon this as another sign that the war was demanding a supreme effort. But, like the others, his youngsters were eager and shaping up well.

  I.58 reached its diving station.

  Hashimoto climbed down from the bridge to the control room. He watched and listened to the final preparations for diving; the air was filled with quiet orders, reports, the sounds of bell signals.

  The main engines were clutched out; the electric motors
began to run at full whine. The outboard exhaust and air-induction valves were closed off.

  The engine room informed the control room that it was ready to dive. The lookouts came below. The officer of the watch spun the handwheel which clamped the flanged lid leading to the conning tower against its seating. The seamen at the ballast tank vent levers reported that all the main vents were clear. The chief turned to Hashimoto and reported that the boat was ready to dive.

  Hashimoto gave the order. “Dive! Dive! Dive! Thirty feet.”

  He watched as the sailors opened the main vent levers. A roar of air escaped from the main ballast tanks. I.58 was no longer buoyant. The depth gauge began to move, slowly at first, then with gathering speed. Outside, the sea could be heard slapping against the conning tower. Then the sound died. The bridge was beneath the waves. The electric motors took over.

  The chief reported that the boat was properly trimmed.

  Hashimoto ordered the main vents shut. I.58 continued to drop through the water. Suddenly, a vibration ran through the boat. The chief ordered the submarine to be retrimmed. At one hundred feet, I.58 was suspended on an even keel, held in place by the careful balance of water in the compensating and trimming tanks.

  Leakage points and discharge-pump capacities were once more tested. There were no defects.

  Hashimoto ordered I.58 to be taken deeper. The trouble came suddenly, and with a gush of water at two hundred feet.

  A leak had developed in the torpedo room. The area was at once sealed off.

  Hashimoto gave his orders quickly, with no sign of concern, aware now of the anxious faces around him.

  I.58 steadied and then began to climb rapidly toward the surface. There, the diesel motors took over.

  Hashimoto quietly cursed the dockyard fitters whose carelessness had nearly caused a disaster. Hiroshima Bay was deep; there was little chance grappling crews could have recovered the submarine. The fear that was always at the back of his mind—the dread of being entombed forever on the seabed—made Hashimoto almost physically sick. If he had to die, he wanted the end to come in battle. All but five of his classmates from the naval academy were dead, victims of American destroyers. Nowadays the life expectancy of a submarine crew was measured in weeks, not months, without the slipshod Kure dockyard workers shortening the odds still further.