“No problem, Colonel. Just a question. Are we splitting atoms?”
Tibbets stared at the tail gunner, then continued crawling up the tunnel.
Caron had recalled the phrase about splitting atoms from a popular science journal he had once read. He had no idea what it meant.
Back in the cockpit, Tibbets disengaged “George” and began the climb to nine thousand feet for the rendezvous at Iwo Jima.
Jeppson went into the navigator’s dome; to the east he could see a waning moon, flashing in and out of the cloud banks. Ahead, apart from a high, thin cirrus, the sky was cerulean. All his life Jeppson would remember the grandeur of this night as it began to fade into dawn. By the time the Enola Gay arrived over Iwo Jima, the whole sky was a pale, incandescent pink.
Exactly on time, the Enola Gay reached the rendezvous point. Circling above Iwo Jima, Tibbets waited for the other two bombers.
At 4:55 A.M., Japanese time, Sweeney’s Great Artiste and Marquardt’s No. 91 joined the orbit, swimming up to nine thousand feet.
At 5:05:30 (6:05:30 on van Kirk’s chart, as the navigator would keep his entries on Tinian time), with daybreak in full flood, the three bombers formed a loose “V.” Tibbets in the lead, they headed toward Shikoku, the large island off the southeast coast of Japan.
Crossing the pork-chop-shaped Iwo Jima for the last time, Tibbets used his cockpit radio to call Major Bud Uanna in the communications center set up on the island especially for the mission. “Bud, we are proceeding as planned.”
Through the early-morning static came Uanna’s brief response. “Good luck.”
8
On Iwo Jima, McKnight and the crew of Top Secret relaxed. Their standby bomber was unlikely to be needed now.
At a comfortable 205 miles an hour, the Enola Gay, the Great Artiste, and No. 91 headed northward. Aboard all three bombers there was a constant routine of checking wind velocity and calculating drift.
Lewis, with little to do except fill in his log, found his entries becoming cryptic. Finally, when the bomber reached 9,200 feet, he simply wrote: “We’ll stay here until we are about one hour away from the Empire.”
Beser’s sleep was disturbed when an orange rolled down the tunnel from the forward compartment and dropped on his head. He opened his eyes to see Shumard and Stiborik grinning at him. Caron thrust a cup of coffee into his hands. Gulping it down, Beser checked his equipment. He had arranged all the dials he needed to see at eye level when he sat on the floor; instruments he would only listen to were up in the racks that reached to the bomber’s roof. Several shelves of receivers, direction finders, spectrum analyzers, and decoders allowed Beser to monitor enemy fighter-control frequencies and ground defenses, as well as radar signals that could prematurely detonate the bomb. His special headset allowed him to listen to a different frequency in each ear.
Beser fiddled with the sets, tuning dials and throwing switches. Into one of his ears came the sounds of a ground controller on Okinawa talking down a fleet of bombers returning from a mission; in his other ear were brief air-to-air exchanges between Superdumbos circling off the coast of Japan. Beser was relieved to hear the rescue craft were on station for the atomic strike.
Suddenly Beser saw the Japanese early-warning signal sweep by. “It made a second sweep, and then locked onto us. I could hear the constant pulse as they continued to track us,” he said later.
The element of surprise, which had been counted the Enola Gay’s greatest protection, was gone.
The radarman decided to keep the knowledge to himself. “It wasn’t Tibbets’s worry at this stage. And it would be upsetting for the rest of the crew to have somebody say, ‘Hey, they’re watching us.’ So I just used my discretion.”
Sometime after 6:30 A.M., Japanese time, Jeppson climbed into the bomb bay carrying the three red plugs, and edged along the catwalk toward the middle of the bomb. The bay was unheated, and its temperature was about the same as that outside the plane, 18° C. Carefully he unscrewed the green plugs and inserted the red ones in their place, making the bomb a viable weapon. As he gave the last plug a final turn, even the ice-cool Jeppson had to reflect that “this was a moment.”
Jeppson climbed out of the bay and reported to Parsons what he had done. Parsons went forward and informed Tibbets, who switched on the intercom and addressed the crew. “We are carrying the world’s first atomic bomb.”
An audible gasp came from several of his listeners. Lewis gave a long, low whistle; now it all made sense.
Tibbets continued. “When the bomb is dropped, Lieutenant Beser will record our reactions to what we see. This recording is being made for history. Watch your language and don’t clutter up the intercom.”
He had a final word for Caron. “Bob, you were right. We are splitting atoms. Now get back in your turret. We’re going to start climbing.”
9
In Hiroshima, Lieutenant Colonel Kakuzo Oya arrived at 7:00 A.M. at Second General Army Headquarters to read over the intelligence report he intended to submit to Hata’s communications meeting in two hours’ time. While he checked the report, Colonel Kumao Imoto and other senior officers arrived. After Lieutenant Colonel RiGu and Colonel Katayama joined them, they would all go to the officers’ club, where the meeting was to be held. Field Marshal Hata was still at home, praying at the family shrine.
Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, hero of Pearl Harbor and now the Imperial Japanese Navy’s air operations officer, had been in Hiroshima for the past ten days, discussing defense plans for the expected American invasion. Fuchida would miss the gathering of dignitaries scheduled for that morning. The previous afternoon he had been summoned from the conference to deal with some technical snags at the navy’s new headquarters in Nara, near Kyoto. At about the time that Oya was checking over his report, Fuchida was still grappling with the bugs in the Nara communications system.
In the countryside west of Hiroshima, Dr. Kaoru Shima’s house calls demanded more time than he had anticipated. Revising his schedule once again, he hoped to be back in his Hiroshima clinic around noon.
At the Japanese fighter base at Shimonoseki, some one hundred miles southwest of Hiroshima, Second Lieutenant Matsuo Yasuzawa started the engine of his two-seater training plane.
Yasuzawa, the flying instructor Yokoyama had seen at Hiroshima Airport with the kamikaze student pilots, had repeatedly requested combat flying, and was turned down each time on the grounds he was too valuable an instructor to risk in battle.
Recently, sensing Yasuzawa’s rebellious mood, his commander had promised that soon they would each climb into a training aircraft and attempt to ram an attacking B-29. For Yasuzawa this would be the rippa na saigo, the “splendid death” the kamikazes so often spoke to him about.
Today, however, he was flying a major to Field Marshal Hata’s communications meeting in Hiroshima. He expected to arrive in the city just before 8:00.
Yasuzawa turned to check that his passenger was strapped in behind him, taxied to the runway, received clearance to take off, and commenced the forty-minute flight from Shimonoseki to Hiroshima. Yasuzawa’s course was roughly at right angles to that of the Enola Gay, now approaching Japanese airspace.
At 7:09 A.M., Radio Hiroshima interrupted its program with another air-raid alert. Simultaneously, the siren wailed its warning across the city. Everybody tensed for the series of intermittent blasts that would indicate an imminent attack.
10
Although the Japanese could not know it, Claude Eatherly’s Straight Flush did not itself warrant an alert.
As the Hiroshima siren sounded, the Straight Flush reached the designated initial point, just sixteen miles from the Aioi Bridge. At 235 miles an hour, at a height of 30,200 feet, the Straight Flush made a straight run toward the aiming point, following exactly the course Tibbets and Ferebee had selected for the Enola Gay.
Eatherly looked for a break in the clouds. At first, he could find none. Then, immediately ahead, he saw a large opening. Six miles directly be
low, the city was so clear that the crew of the Straight Flush could see patches of greenery.
Whooping with delight, Eatherly flew across Hiroshima. Above the city’s outskirts, he turned and made another pass. The break in the cloud was still there, a huge hole ten miles across. Shafts of light shone through the gap, as if to spotlight the target for the fliers.
At about the same time, the planes checking the weather over Nagasaki and Kokura found conditions there nearly as good. All three cities were available for the Enola Gay, now at 26,000 feet and still climbing at a steady 194 miles an hour.
At 7:24 A.M., Nelson switched off the IFF. A minute later, on 7310 kilocycles, he received a coded message from the Straight Flush.
Cloud cover less than 3/10ths at all altitudes.
Advice: bomb primary.
After Tibbets read the message, he switched on the intercom and announced, “It’s Hiroshima.”
Minutes later, the Full House and Jabbit III reported in. Nelson took the transcribed messages to Tibbets, who shoved them into his coverall pocket. He told Nelson to send a one-word message to Uanna on Iwo Jima.
“Primary.”
On board the Straight Flush, just about to leave Japanese airspace, a debate broke out.
Eatherly, like the other two weather-scout planes, was under strict instructions to return directly to Tinian.
Instead, according to his flight engineer, Eugene Grennan, Eatherly switched on the intercom and suggested they orbit until Tibbets passed them, “and then follow him back to see what happens when the bomb goes off.”
Grennan suggested this “wouldn’t be smart.” According to him, somebody else argued that “if Tibbets and the others get knocked out of the sky by the shock wave, we should be there to report what happens.” So it started: everybody arguing, should we, shouldn’t we go? Then, Eatherly said, “Listen, fellas, if we don’t get back to Tinian by two o’clock, we won’t be able to get into the afternoon poker game.”
In the end, the consensus was that staying to watch one bomb drop wouldn’t be much of a thrill. “What would we see?” asked Eatherly.
The crew of the Straight Flush decided to give the atomic bomb a miss.
11
At 7:31 A.M., the all clear sounded in Hiroshima. People relaxed, lit kitchen stoves, prepared breakfast, read the Chugoku Shimbun.
Warrant officer Hiroshi Yanagita, the Kempei Tai leader who had rounded up some of the American POWs now in their cells at Hiroshima Castle, did not hear any of the night’s air-raid alerts. He was in bed, sleeping off a heavy hangover. The sake he had drunk at Field Marshal Hata’s party the previous night was taking its toll.
On Mount Futaba, Second Lieutenant Tatsuo Yokoyama kept his men at their antiaircraft gun post. He thought it strange that the lone plane had circled and made a second run high over the city.
He ordered breakfast of rice, soup, pickles, and stewed vegetables to be served to the gunners at their posts, and a similar meal brought to his quarters. As a sign of respect, his aide carried the breakfast tray high above his head—to ensure that his breath did not fall on the food.
Inside Hiroshima Castle, bowls of mush were left on the cell floors of the American prisoners.
At the Shima clinic, the staff changed shifts while the patients had breakfast. As was the custom in Japanese hospitals, the food was prepared and served by relatives. By 7:35 A.M., most of them were hurrying from the clinic to put in another long day for the war effort.
At 7:40, Second Lieutenant Matsuo Yasuzawa’s twin-seater aircraft landed at the airport. It had been a short, undemanding flight. Yasuzawa now had to find out for his passenger where Hata’s communications meeting was being held. Yasuzawa felt like an errand boy.
The Korean prince, Lieutenant Colonel RiGu, had waited until Yasuzawa’s trainer passed overhead before mounting his handsome white stallion. The sound of engines made the horse nervous. Prince RiGu was in no hurry; there was still over an hour before Hata was scheduled to open the communications conference. At a gentle trot, RiGu’s stallion took him toward the Aioi Bridge, and Second General Army Headquarters.
In the center of Hiroshima, at 8:00, hundreds of youths began work on the fire lane leading to the Aioi Bridge.
Close by, on the grounds of Hiroshima Castle, many of the city’s forty thousand soldiers were doing their morning calisthenics. Not far from them, a solitary blindfolded American was also being exercised.
12
Fifty miles from the Aioi Bridge, the Enola Gay flew at 30,800 feet, followed by the two observer planes at a few miles’ distance. Van Kirk called out tiny course corrections to Tibbets.
At 8:05 A.M., van Kirk announced, “Ten minutes to AP.”
In his cramped tail turret, Bob Caron tried to put on his armored vest. Hemmed in by his guns, and holding the unwieldy camera he had been given just before takeoff, he gave up and put his only protection from flak on the floor.
Beser was monitoring the Japanese fighter control frequency. There was no indication of activity. Stiborik was glued to his radar screen. Shumard was peering out of a waist blister turret, also on the lookout for fighter planes.
Ferebee settled himself comfortably on his seat and leaned forward against the special bombardier’s headrest he and Tibbets had designed months ago at Wendover.
Parsons and Jeppson knelt at the bomb console. All the lights remained green. Parsons rose to his feet and walked stiffly toward the cockpit.
Left alone, Jeppson also stood up, and buckled on his parachute. He saw Nelson and van Kirk look at him curiously. Their parachutes remained stacked in a corner.
Van Kirk called out another course change, bringing the Enola Gay on a heading of 264 degrees, slightly south of due west. At 31,060 feet and an indicated airspeed of 200 miles an hour, the bomber roared on.
Van Kirk called Tibbets on the intercom. “IP.”
Exactly on time, at the right height and predetermined speed, van Kirk had navigated the Enola Gay to the initial point.
It was 8:12 A.M.
At that moment at Saijo, nineteen miles east of Hiroshima, an observer spotted the Enola Gay, the Great Artiste, and No. 91. He immediately cranked the field telephone that linked him with the communications center in Hiroshima Castle, and reported what he had seen. The center was manned by schoolgirls drafted to work as telephone operators. Having written down the details, one of the girls telephoned the Hiroshima radio station. At dictation speed, the announcer wrote down the message. “Eight-thirteen, Chugoku Regional Army reports three large enemy planes spotted, heading west from Saijo. Top alert.”
The announcer rushed to a nearby studio.
It was now 8:14 A.M.
Tibbets spoke into the intercom. “On glasses.”
Nine of the twelve men slipped the Polaroid goggles over their eyes and found themselves in total darkness. Only Tibbets, Ferebee, and Beser kept their glasses up on their foreheads; otherwise, it would have been impossible for them to do their work.
Before covering his eyes, Lewis made a notation in his log. “There will be a short intermission while we bomb our target.”
With thirty seconds to go, Ferebee shouted that Hiroshima was coming into his viewfinder. Beser informed Parsons that no Japanese radar was threatening the bomb’s proximity fuze.
Tibbets spoke quickly into the intercom. “Stand by for the tone break—and the turn.”
Ferebee watched the blacks and whites of the reconnaissance photographs transform themselves into greens, soft pastels, and the duller shades of buildings cramming the fingers of land that reached into the dark blue of Hiroshima Bay. The six tributaries of the Ota River were brown; the city’s principal roads a flat, metallic gray. A gossamer haze shimmered over the city, but it did not obscure Ferebee’s view of the aiming point, the T-shaped Aioi Bridge, about to coincide with the cross hairs of his bombsight.
“I’ve got it.”
Ferebee made his final adjustments and turned on the tone signal, a continuous, low-p
itched hum, which indicated he had started the automatic synchronization for the final fifteen seconds of the bomb run.
A mile behind, in the Great Artiste, bombardier Kermit Beahan prepared to switch open the bomb doors and drop the parachute-slung blast gauges earthward.
Two miles behind, Marquardt’s No. 91 made a 90-degree turn to be in position to take photographs.
The tone signal was picked up by the crews of the three weather planes, including Eatherly’s, now about 225 miles from Hiroshima and heading back to base.
It was heard on Iwo Jima by McKnight, still sitting in the pilot’s seat of Top Secret. McKnight told Uanna, “It’s about to drop.”
Precisely at 8:15:17, Enola Gay’s bomb-bay doors snapped open, and the world’s first atomic bomb dropped clear of its restraining hook.
The monitoring cables were pulled from the bomb, and the tone signal stopped.
The Enola Gay, suddenly over nine thousand pounds lighter, lurched upward ten feet.
Caron, in the tail, gripped the plate camera and, blinded by the welder’s goggles, wondered which way to point it.
Tibbets swung the Enola Gay into a diving right-hand turn.
Ferebee shouted, “Bomb away,” and turned from his sight to look down through the Plexiglas of the Enola Gay’s nose.
He saw the bomb drop cleanly out of the bay and the doors slam shut. For a fleeting eyeblink of time, the weapon appeared to be suspended by some invisible force beneath the bomber. Then Ferebee saw it fall away. “It wobbled a little until it picked up speed, and then it went right on down just like it was supposed to.”
On the ground, Lieutenant Colonel Oya stood at a window of Second General Army Headquarters and peered up at the Enola Gay and the Great Artiste. The two bombers seemed to be diving toward the city.
Field Marshal Hata, having tended his garden and prayed at his shrine, was dressing for the communications meeting.
Enola Gay Page 29
