Enola gay crew regret
While those pilots who were trained enough to do more than take off and fly straight and level were a precious commodity not worth risking against anything but the most dire need. Only mid and late war aircraft stood a chance of reaching them at altitude before the bombers escaped.
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Michael Gordin's Five Days in August has a lot about the 509th in it John Coster-Mullen's self-published Atom Bombs has a whole lot (but is harder to track down).īeing with what? The IJA and IJN had precious few aircraft and pilots that could challenge a B-29. They needed to know that their work was important despite its appearance of being unimportant, and that they needed to keep it quiet.
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#Enola gay crew regret how to
So that gives a fair account of what they needed to know: they needed to know how to deliver large bombs accurately to targets from high altitudes, unaccompanied by other bombers or fighters, in defenseless bombers. The captain of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, of course knew the whole story as he had been involved in the Manhattan Project on several ballistics and delivery questions. Some of them later reported that they had figured some of it out. So they were not random at all, and they knew they were up to something. They also told their work was totally secret compared to other bombing groups, and they accompanied other bombing raids with their "Pumpkins" in the run-up to the late summer of 1945, and trained in flying essentially solo raids (one or two B-29s at most, as opposed to hundreds) of this sort as well. They were members of the 509th Composite Group, which had trained for a year or so in the art of dropping very large, awkwardly shaped bombs ("Pumpkins," which were atomic bomb casings filled with only high explosives, essentially) from specially modified B-29s ("Silverplate") that had their armaments and armor stripped from them. The crews that flew the planes that dropped the atomic bombs were not regular bombing crews. Previous AMAs | Previous Roundtables Featuresįeature posts are posted weekly. May 25th | Panel AMA with /r/AskBibleScholars Please Subscribe to our Google Calendar for Upcoming AMAs and Events To nominate someone else as a Quality Contributor, message the mods. Our flaired users have detailed knowledge of their historical specialty and a proven record of excellent contributions to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read and Understand the Rules Before Contributing.
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Then flew towards Hiroshima but no nearby landing field was available so we went to Nakasaki and landed about 20 miles from the city. First we went to Tokyo to get several Japanese scientists who worked in the atomic bomb project. Which is another reason why wars should never be fought - they are senseless.You visited Japan shortly after the surrender, what were your feelings? Yes. But how do you win a war without killing. I am not proud of the many people that were killed and nobody is. It was a necessary job and I'm glad I was qualified to do it. Van Kirk writes both the questions and the answer in his own hand, in part: ".About dropping the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Regarding the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and how he felt about the the civilian casualties and Japan. Outstanding content Handwritten Autograph Letter Signed, 2 pages, 8" x 11", lined white sheet, no date. Navigator on the "Enola Gay", the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.