The Japanese city of Nagasaki is hosting an emotional memorial service again today. On August 9, 1945, the atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat man” dropped by the US Air Force on the city caused at least 70,000 deaths and the surrender of Japan.
Why was Nagasaki on target? The picture that changed the fate of both the city and the world 76 years ago was actually the result of a series of disruptions.
At 03:47 am on August 9, 1945, the US Air Force’s B-29 bomber Bockscar took off from Tinian Island, and the mission to drop a second atomic bomb, called “Centerboard II”, on a Japanese city began.
However, things were not going well before the mission started. Takeoff was constantly delayed due to the plane experiencing fuel pump problems. Just the day before, four B-29 bombers had crashed due to technical problems on take-off, and massive fires broke out as fuel tanks were full.
“We all aged 10 years until we saw the plane take off,” said an American engineer working at Tinian Air Base, recalling those days.
However, Bockscar eventually took off without any problems.
All the armor and ammunition of the Bockscar bomber had been removed so that it could carry the 5-ton atomic bomb.
Exactly 13 minutes after takeoff, the crew of the plane replaced the green wires on the bomb, nicknamed “Fat man”, with red wires. “Fat man” was now ready to use.
The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima “Little boy” was shaped like a flat cylinder, while “Fat man” looked like a giant egg.
The tail of the bomb, which is about one and a half meters high and 3 meters long, was designed to prevent the bomb from being blown towards its target.
There were also messages from the Bockscar crew on the bomb: “Another gift for you” and “[İmparator] Second kiss to Hirohito” was written on it when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki.
After a 6-hour flight, Bockscar had reached the small island of Yakushima. Two more B-29s were to meet with Bockscar there.
The first was the plane named “Perfect Artist”. Its task was to measure the energy that would be released by the explosion of the atomic bomb. The second plane, “The Great Stink”, was equipped with camera systems. He was there to assist the Bockscar crew in hitting the target.
However, the “Great Stink” could not be made ready. After waiting 50 minutes, the command decided to continue with Bockscar and the “Perfect Artist”. The target was the city of Kokura.
The city of 178,000 inhabitants was described by the commanders of the US army as “one of the largest weapons depots in Japan”.
The orders given to the Bockscar crew were strictly to drop the bomb after seeing the target, without using the radar system.
The rationale for this order was that the radar systems at that time caused great deviations.
When Bockscar reached Kokura at 10:45 am, he saw a large cloud of fog over the military installations in the city.
This cloud of fog, the cause of which is still unclear, made hitting targets in Kokura nearly impossible.
So far, three theories about the fog cloud have been focused on:
Whatever the reason, “Fat man” couldn’t be thrown into Kokura because of this fog cloud.
With about 45 minutes remaining over the city, the crew decided to head for the secondary target: Nagasaki.
Although Nagasaki was listed as one of 17 possible atomic bomb targets under plans drawn up in April 1945, the city was delisted in May.
Although Nagasaki had a large port and facilities that manufactured torpedoes for the Japanese navy, the city also housed a camp for US prisoners of war.
Located in a mountainous geography, Nagasaki was also a formidable target militarily. While Kokura and Hiroshima were cities located on relatively flat plateaus, Nagasaki was at the bottom of a deep valley.
Other possible targets for the US military included Kyoto and Yokohama. However, as a result of heavy bombardment of Yokohama, the city was removed from the list of ‘Possible atomic bomb targets’.
US commanders preferred cities that had not been bombed before to see the full effects of the atomic bomb.
However, Nagasaki was not on the list. In fact, the city had been bombed by the US air force at least 4 times before.
Possible targets were listed as follows in the task order prepared on July 24, 1945:
Judging by the documents in the US national archives, someone wrote “and Nagasaki” with a handwritten addition to this text. However, it is unknown who made this addition and why.
The Bockstar had reached the skies of Nagasaki at 11:50 a.m. after an 8-hour flight.
Crew logs indicated that the plane had enough fuel left for less than two hours. One of the pilots even asked, “Is the Pacific cold?”, unsure if they could return the plane to a US base. had written.
There were also clouds over Nagasaki. The aircrew that was going to drop the bomb was looking for the Mitsubishi arms factory from the gaps allowed by the clouds.
The “Fat man” was kicked out of the Bockscar 45 seconds after the pilot said he saw the target.
As soon as the bomb left the plane, the pilot gained altitude and started to move away from the great disaster that would happen seconds later.
“Fat Man” landed in Nagasaki 2 minutes past 12.
The atomic bomb that fell on Nagasaki caused great destruction in the city, killing at least 70,000 people.
Footage taken by “The Magnificent Artist” shows that the clouds were dispersed by the shock wave created by the explosion. The fireball, which was red at first, turns white and rises.
While there is great destruction and disaster on land, only a terrible mushroom-shaped smoke can be seen in the images recorded from the sky.
But did the aircrew really drop the bomb when they saw a target?
There are widespread doubts about this.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez interprets the story of seeing the target at the last second as a “slightly shaken version”. The place where the bomb fell was about 1 kilometer from the Mitsubishi torpedo factory.
However, this point was quite far from the main target arms factory.
The point where the bomb hit was also the place where Nagasaki was home to the most civilians. The map prepared by the US army in 1946 shows that there were many hospitals and schools in the area directly destroyed by the bomb, as well as a prison.
After the bomb, hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper were dropped on Nagasaki, this time from US planes.
The papers described the effects of the Japanese atomic bomb and what the public could do to reduce these effects.
Bockscar had arrived at Okinawa Air Base at 13.20 after dropping the bomb. The pilots who urgently asked for permission to land could not get a response.
Left with no other choice, the pilots opened the window of the plane, fired the flare and began to hope that those who saw it would withdraw from the runway area.
Although it was a hard landing, the plane managed to land. By the time the wheels touched the ground, the engines had stopped because they had run out of gas.
When the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, it was President Harry Truman.
Truman was not at all happy with the result at the time. The US military had “amateurishly” set targets for a devastating weapon like the atomic bomb.
Towards the end of August, Truman wrote in his diary, “The atomic bomb should be used against soldiers, military installations, or navies. Not against civilians, women, and children!” was writing.
US Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace also wrote in his diary that President Truman had “a great pang of conscience”:
“He couldn’t stand the idea of killing 100,000 people at once. He kept calling himself ‘all the kids’.”
The day after Nagasaki, Truman announced his first decision to use the atomic bomb:
“No atomic bomb will be used without the direct permission of the President.”
Atomic bombs have not been used in wars since 9 August 1945.
This news was first broadcast on BBC Turkish on 9 August 2017.