Happy Nagasaki Liquidation Day!

[Angry White Trash]

Let us celebrate the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of Nagasaki, Japan August 9th, 1945.

After the 1st nuke bombing of Hiroshima 3 days earlier, the Japanese were showing absolutely no intention to surrender... they were not taking the Americans seriously enough and President Truman made the historical decision to flatten another strategic Japanese city.

The Primary target for the second bombing was Kokura, Japan on August 9th, 1945. In the early morning hours on Tinian Island ground crews were making all the final preparations for the day's mission. The world's first Plutonium bomb 'Fat Man' had been carefully placed in the bombay of the B-29 'Bockscar'. It was more powerful than the uranium 'Little Boy' bomb. Group Commander Paul Tibbets (PIC of Enola Gay) selected Charles Sweeney to fly the second 12+ hour mission.

An hour before takeoff the flight engineer informed the crew that one of Bockscar's fuel transfer pumps wasn't working and requested time to replace it. This particular fuel pump was responsible for pumping 640 gallons of fuel carried in a reserve tank. Replacing the pump would take hours and moving Fat Man to another aircraft would be extremely dangerous because it was already armed and the bomb was live. Tibbets and Sweeney therefore elected to have Bockscar continue the mission without repairing the pump and without draining the reserve fuel tank. Those 640 gallons were going for a ride to Japan & back and represented a 4,032lb weight penalty. This became a critical factor much later in the mission.

Unlike the first Atomic Bomb strike 3 days previous, the second mission was riddled with problems. Bockscar left Tinian Island at 3:49AM and the mission profile called for a rendezvous point over Iwo Jima but foul weather forced them to fly lower than normal and rendezvous over Yakushima Island. There they would link up with two other B-29's 'The Great Artiste' and 'The Big Stink' and fly on to Kokura. The Big stink never showed up and after orbiting 45 minutes longer than planned Bockscar struck out to the primary target of Kokura.

The weather observation planes, 'Enola Gay' and 'Laggin' Dragon' reported good bombing conditions over Kokura and the secondary target of Nagasaki. As Bockscar approached Kokura late from the delayed rendezvous ... smoke from a nearby firebomb raid began to shroud 70% of the city. Three separate bomb runs were made to no avail. The bombadier couldn't get a proper view of the target and anti aircraft fire became intense as well as Japanese radio chatter indicating an effort to send fighters to intercept them. Also, their fuel was starting to become critical as they toiled fruitlessly over Kokura... the decision was made to reduce power and divert to Nagasaki.

Things were no better 20 minutes later when they found Nagasaki covered by dense clouds. The decision was made to bomb using radar but in the last few moments of the bomb run the bombadier saw an opening in the clouds and toggled Fat Man visually at 10:58am... 43 seconds later the good folks of Nagasaki were bathed in American made canned sunshine. It exploded with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of 1,650 feet approximately 1.5 miles northwest of the planned aiming point, resulting in the destruction of 44% of the city.

The failure to drop Fat Man at the precise bomb aim point caused the atomic blast to be confined to the Urakami Valley. As a consequence, a major portion of the city was protected by the intervening hills, but even so, the bomb was dropped over the city's industrial valley midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works in the north. An estimated 35,000 people were killed and 60,000 injured during the bombing at Nagasaki.

Now the difficult part... get Bockscar home without being shot down or running out of fuel. Do to all the delays, diversions and the added weight penalty, Bockscar did not have enough fuel to land at the emergency field at Iwo Jima and had to fly to Okinawa. On short final to Yontan Airfield, Bockscar lost # 2 engine to fuel starvation and a second engine while landing. After narrowly missing a group of parked B-24's, Bockscar's remaining two engines died while taxiing off the runway. Bockscar would need to be towed off the runway.

Unlike Enola Gay's 'milk run' mission 3 days before, the second mission was a cornucopia of near disasters. Despite all the drama, the mission was a huge success and the slant's finally got their minds right and accepted Truman's unconditional surrender... ending WWII once and for all.

I like a happy ending!