Enola Gay: Mission to Hiroshima

1

Less than half a mile from the Aioi Bridge, a solitary blindfolded American stood motionless inside the keep of Hiroshima Castle. His guard, Private Matsuoka, grasped the airman’s arms, lifted them up and down. Once the prisoner began doing the movement himself, Matsuoka took hold of his knees, forcing them to bend.

Each morning, in turn, the twenty-three American POWs in Hiroshima received such exercise.

Although it was now barely eight o’clock, the August sun beat down on the prisoner, and soon his soiled coveralls were soaked with perspiration. Afterward, still blindfolded, he was marched for fifteen minutes around Hiroshima Castle’s courtyard.

Some fifty yards away, in his Town Hall office, Mayor Awaya listened to Maruyama counting off the latest statistics. As of this morning, August 3, about 30,000 adults and 11,000 students, between the ages of eleven and seventeen, had been drafted into labor battalions to work on the firebreaks. Over 70,000 dwellings had been demolished; some 60,000 of the city’s peak wartime civilian population of 340,000 had already been evacuated; a sixth exodus was due within a few days as more people lost their homes to the firebreaks. This morning, Maruyama estimated, there were 280,000 civilians left in the city.

Both men knew that Hiroshima’s dwindling number of stores could not supply the needs of so many people. Before the war, there had been nearly 2,000 food shops in the city; today, there were fewer than 150. Many of the larger ones were allowed to supply only the military. And Awaya also knew it was the demands of the military that made it necessary for so many of the citizens to remain in the city. The Toyo factory, for instance, needed 10,000 employees to turn out its 6,000 rifles a week. The Mitsubishi company also required a huge labor force and, like Japan Steel’s complex on the edge of Hiroshima, it was working seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

Awaya told his assistant he would seek an immediate interview with Field Marshal Hata and ask for the commander’s help in “changing the situation and ending this madness.”

Maruyama cautioned him that in formal situations Hata was reputed to be stiffly uncompromising. Far better to catch the field marshal in more relaxed surroundings, he suggested. And in two days’ time there would be just such an opportunity: the mayor had been invited to a cocktail party in the officers’ club on August 5.

Awaya said he would think over the idea.

In the Shima Surgical Hospital, Dr. Kaoru Shima smiled at his earnest visitor. The man, a farmer, had walked several miles to ask Dr. Shima to call on his wife. From his description, Dr. Shima guessed that the woman was pregnant. He promised to call at the farm the next time he was in the area.

2

On August 2, Tibbets had told van Kirk that he was going on the mission.

Briefing the 509th’s group navigator on the strike, Tibbets had stressed the importance of accuracy. That did not worry the experienced van Kirk. But he was concerned by the fact that Tibbets, Ferebee, and he had never flown together from Tinian, and now there would be no chance for them to do so. Further, some of the men he would be flying with were virtual strangers to him.

Van Kirk did not share his worries with Tibbets. Yet, shortly after he had left Tibbets’s office, a painful rash erupted on various parts of his body. He reported to flight surgeon Young, who hospitalized him and reported the incident to Tibbets.

Tibbets was even more alarmed than van Kirk about the strange outbreak. In Tibbets’s view, there “just wasn’t anybody in the same class as Dutch when it came to accurate navigation.” He sent Ferebee to the hospital to find out how ill van Kirk was.

It was an inspired choice. Ferebee made light of van Kirk’s complaint, “accusing me of lying in bed just to get attention from some of the prettiest nurses you ever did see.”

After Ferebee left, Dr. Young visited the navigator. Seeking “a possible emotional basis” for the illness, Dr. Young asked van Kirk, “Are you worried about the mission?”

“No.”

“Do you really want to go? You’ve got a wife and son now.”

“I want to go.”

“Then go.”

Within a few hours, van Kirk’s rash completely cleared, and on August 3 he left the hospital.

The same day, LeMay flew into Tinian with the order for Special Bombing Mission No. 13. It was essentially the same document Tibbets had drafted the morning of August 1, with a number of details added. The strike was set for August 6. The targets were:

Primary—Hiroshima urban industrial area.

Secondary—Kokura arsenal and city.

Tertiary—Nagasaki urban area.

The order confirmed that no friendly aircraft, “other than those listed herein, will be within a fifty-mile area of any of the targets for this strike during a period of four hours prior to and six subsequent to strike time.”

Thirty-two copies of the order were distributed to commands on Guam, Iwo Jima, and Tinian. Tibbets locked his copy in the office safe and then departed with LeMay to inspect Little Boy, nestling on its cradle in the heavily guarded Tech Area.

Shortly after 2:00 P.M. on August 4, the 509th’s briefing hut was sealed off by carbine-carrying MPs who barred its entrance and entirely ringed the long, narrow building. Inside, intelligence officers Hazen Payette and Joseph Buscher attached enlarged reconnaissance photographs of Hiroshima and the alternative targets to two blackboards, then draped both boards with large cloths. The walls were covered with maps of Japan and reminders that “careless talk costs lives.”

At 2:30 P.M., Parsons arrived with a group of scientists. Among them was Second Lieutenant Morris Jeppson, who a few days before had won a coin toss with another electronics officer to decide which would assist Parsons on the mission. Parsons produced a can of film from his briefcase, and a technician laced it on a projector.

At 2:45, the British contingent arrived. Both Cheshire and Penney were grim-faced, having just been told by LeMay that they were to be excluded from flying on the first atomic mission. Hoping for a last-minute reversal of the order, they seated themselves behind the scientists.

Caron, Duzenbury, Shumard, Stiborik, and Nelson arrived wearing flight coveralls. They had just returned from a local test run in which van Kirk, fully recovered, had navigated to Rota. Tibbets had made a four-minute bomb run, then banked sharply after Ferebee released the practice pumpkin. All the bomber’s equipment had functioned perfectly.

During the practice flight, Lewis, in the copilot’s seat, had said little. Prior to flying, he had performed the painful task of telling his regular bombardier and navigator that “they were being superseded by rank” and would not be flying the atomic strike. Tibbets had at last made it clear to Lewis that his role would be that of copilot, with Tibbets in command, but Lewis still felt it was “basically my crew” that would make the run.

Caron arrived at the briefing wearing his Brooklyn Dodgers cap and determined that nothing but a direct order would make him remove it. The night before, in a drunken moment, Caron had succumbed to Shumard’s prompting for a haircut. A tipsy GI barber and Duzenbury had trimmed Caron’s head until he “resembled a cross between a Blackfoot Indian and a patch of sprouting prairie.”

Lewis came in with Eatherly’s crew, who were in boisterous spirits after a night’s carousing. They seated themselves next to Sweeney’s crew, who, taking a cue from their commander, were in a more thoughtful mood. Before coming to the briefing, Sweeney had gone down the flight line with three scientists who were installing a range of radio receivers and automatic film-recording devices aboard the Great Artiste. The scientists had explained to Sweeney that three parachutes, carrying cylinders similar in shape and weight to fire extinguishers, would be dropped from the plane near the target. Radio transmitters in the cylinders would send data back to the plane. Sweeney realized he would have to fly in perfect sync with Tibbets to make sure the instruments fell into the designated area.

Beser arrived with Tom Classen; they sat down at the rear of the room, near the projector. For Beser, the briefing was a welcome respite “from the murderous pace up at the Tech Area.” Having worked on the uranium bomb, he was now assisting with the final assembly of the plutonium bomb; shortly before coming to the briefing, scientist Ed Doll told him to “stand by to go on a second mission as well.” Beser had asked how many missions were planned, and Doll had replied, “Just as many as it takes to make them quit.”

Ferebee and van Kirk entered soon afterward and took seats up front, near General Farrell.

At 3:00 precisely, Tibbets arrived in freshly pressed khakis. Flanked by Payette and Buscher, he walked to the platform. The two intelligence officers positioned themselves by the blackboards. Parsons joined Tibbets on the dais.

Sergeant Spitzer was concentrating hard to remember his impressions for his diary. He saw that Parsons was “perspiring and kept clearing his throat and shuffling his papers.”

Two months earlier, at a Los Alamos conference, one of Parsons’s staff had proposed “arming” the bomb in flight. Groves and Oppenheimer had opposed the idea, believing it would be too easy for something to go wrong. Nevertheless, Parsons, increasingly troubled by the spate of crashes on Tinian, had decided to insert the conventional explosive and its detonator into the rear of the bomb after the plane was airborne. While this plan would somewhat reduce the risk, in the event the plane crashed the uranium “bullet” might still slip down the barrel, hit its “target,” and cause a nuclear explosion.

Parsons had told nobody yet of his plan. He feared that if Groves heard about it, he would reach out nearly seven thousand miles and stop him.

The hushed murmuring in the room ceased as Tibbets spoke. “The moment has arrived. Very recently, the weapon we are about to deliver was successfully tested in the States. We have received orders to drop it on the enemy.”

He nodded to Payette and Buscher, who removed the cloths from the blackboards.

Tibbets announced the targets in order of priority: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki. He next assigned three B-29s to serve as weather scouts. Eatherly’s Straight Flush would go to Hiroshima; Jabbit III, commanded by Major John Wilson, would fly to Kokura; the Full House, piloted by Major Ralph Taylor, was given Nagasaki.

Sweeney’s Great Artiste, and No. 91, commanded by Major George Marquardt and carrying photographic equipment, would accompany Tibbets to the actual target—whose final selection would still depend on the weather reports radioed back by the scouting B-29s. If all three cities were ruled out by weather conditions, the plane would return to Iwo Jima, after Parsons had “disarmed” the bomb in the air.

The seventh B-29, Top Secret, commanded by Captain Charles McKnight, was assigned to fly to Iwo Jima and park on the guarded apron by the specially constructed pit.

Tibbets then introduced Parsons, who came directly to the point. “The bomb you are going to drop is something new in the history of warfare. It is the most destructive weapon ever produced. We think it will knock out almost everything within a three-mile area.”

A stunned gasp swept the room.

Parsons sketched in the background of the Manhattan Project. Spitzer later recorded his reaction to what he had heard. “It is like some weird dream conceived by one with too vivid an imagination.”

Parsons signaled the technician to switch on the projector. Nothing happened. The operator fiddled with the mechanism. Suddenly, the celluloid became entangled in the sprockets, and the machine started to rip up the film.

Parsons told the operator to stop the projector, walked back to the platform, and addressed the room. “The film you are not about to see”—he paused, and laughter lifted the tension—“was made of the only test we have performed. This is what happened. The flash of the explosion was seen for more than ten miles. A soldier ten thousand feet away was knocked off his feet. Another soldier more than five miles away was temporarily blinded. A girl in a town many miles away who had been blind all her life saw a flash of light. The explosion was heard fifty miles away.”

Every man in the room was transfixed. Even Tibbets, who knew what was coming, was “overwhelmed by the presentation.”

Parsons continued. “No one knows exactly what will happen when the bomb is dropped from the air. That has never been done before. But we do expect a cloud this shape”—he drew a mushroom on the blackboard—“will rise to at least thirty thousand feet and maybe sixty thousand feet, preceded by a flash of light much brighter than the sun’s.”

Buscher brought forward a cardboard box and pulled out a pair of tinted goggles similar to those worn by welders. Parsons explained that these would be worn by every crew member of the planes that would be near the target at the time of the explosion. He slipped them over his eyes, indicated a knob on the nose bridge, and told his audience that turning it would change the amount of light admitted by the glass. Over the AP, he said, the knob must be turned to its lowest setting.

Payette and Buscher distributed the goggles while Tibbets issued a warning. “You’re now the hottest crews in the air force. No talking—even among yourselves. No writing home. No mention of the slightest possibility of a mission.”

He then gave details of the route to be taken to Japan, the altitude along various stages of the flight, the bombing height, and the likely takeoff time: the early hours of Monday, August 6.

The air-sea rescue officer took over, saying no mission at any time was ever so thoroughly supported. Flying off the Japanese coast would be Superdumbos—B-29s specially equipped to coordinate rescue operations and fight off any enemy opposition. Dumbos—navy flying boats—would be patrolling the flight path to and from Japan, ready to swoop down and rescue any crew that ditched. Supporting the aircraft would be cruisers, destroyers, and “lifeguards”—submarines prepared to “come almost onto the enemy beaches to pick you up.”

Before the briefing, Ed Doll had told Jeppson that if he fell into enemy hands, Jeppson “should tell the Japs everything you know. Then we’ll know what you’ve told them. They’d find out anyway in the end.”

Doll was a civilian. Buscher was a military man and delivered the formal air force attitude: captured crews were to give only their name, rank, and serial number. He reminded them to search through their flying kit to make sure they had removed all personal belongings—items which could be useful to the enemy.

Tibbets concluded the formal briefing with a short homily. Later, he would not be able to recall his exact words; it would be left to Spitzer to produce the only record.

On August 5, a duplicating machine turned out the single-page operations order, No. 35, which described the final preparations for the strike.

The order was primarily a timetable of the day’s activities, from mealtimes for the various crews to the last moment they could rest in their Quonsets before takeoff. Down on the flight line, the order gave the mechanics all the details they needed about which planes were going, and when, and how much fuel and ammunition each would carry. The one bomb to be taken was described only as “special.”

Crucial data on the weather expected over western Japan in the next twenty-four hours were radioed from northern China on the orders of Mao Tse-tung.

After attending morning Mass, Sweeney was to make the last preatomic flight of the 509th. He was ordered by Tibbets to take the Great Artiste to thirty thousand feet and release an inert, concrete-filled bomb over the ocean while the scientists on Tinian tracked its fall. The fuzing test was similar to the one Sweeney’s crew had performed at Wendover, when the firing system had triggered prematurely.

At altitude, Sweeney radioed that he was ready.

Among the knot of scientists waiting to track the falling bomb was Luis Alvarez, the son of a well-known surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. While at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alvarez had invented the ground-control approach system that would one day be used on almost every airfield in the world. He had later headed the Los Alamos team that built the complex release mechanism for the bomb. On Tinian he had developed a device that would be carried by Sweeney’s plane and dropped over the target city to help measure the atomic bomb’s shock wave.

Now, wearing earphones, Alvarez was waiting for the steady tone he was hearing to be broken, signifying that Sweeney’s test bomb had left the plane. He knew exactly the sequence of events which, if everything worked properly, would follow. It was precisely the same as for the real atomic bomb to be dropped the following day.

When the bomb fell from the plane, wires attached to it would be pulled out, not only cutting a tone signal but also closing a switch within the bomb—the first of a number of switches that had to be closed in sequence before the electricity traveling from batteries within the bomb reached the end of the circuit, the electrical detonator. Once the electricity reached the detonator, it would ignite the explosive powder. If there were no hitches the next day, this would send the uranium “bullet” down the gun barrel, causing the atomic explosion.

Alvarez heard the signal stop. He knew the test bomb was on its way. The first switch should have closed. Sweeney started his 155-degree turn. A timing device in the bomb now waited a preset number of seconds before closing the second switch in the electrical circuit. Once that switch was closed, the electricity continued a little farther along the line, stopped by another, still-open switch which was controlled by a height-detecting device that measured barometric pressure. That device was set to close its switch when the bomb was five thousand feet above the ground. Then the final and most sensitive instrument in the chain took over. This was a miniature radar set, also enclosed within the bomb. Its transmitter sent out radio waves which hit the ground, bounced back, and were received by the bomb’s radar antennae, sticking out like strange feelers near the front of the weapon. If all went well, the radar was set to close the final switch in the chain when the bomb was still 1,850 feet up in the air.

For this test run, to signify that the fuzing system had worked properly, the bomb was to emit a slight puff of smoke at 1,850 feet. Through binoculars, Alvarez and the other scientists watched carefully for the smoke.

In vain.

The test bomb plunged, smokeless, past the planned height of detonation and into the ocean.

Alvarez turned to his colleagues. “Great, just great,” he said. “Tomorrow we’re going to drop one of these on Japan, and we still haven’t got the thing right.”

Sweeney wasn’t surprised. He knew that, whereas Japanese bombs had a tendency to explode prematurely, among the conventional bombs produced by the United States there were a fair number of duds. With such a new, complex bomb, the chances of success must be less.

He predicted the bomb Tibbets would drop tomorrow would be a dud.

In the hot, glaring sun down on the flight line, a group of men led by scientist Bernard Waldman, a physics professor on loan from Notre Dame University, completed fitting out No. 91 for its photographic role; a fast-acting camera was to replace the plane’s Norden bombsight. Waldman himself would be acting as cameraman.

At 2:15 P.M., the telecon machine in the 509th’s operations room clattered out confirmation from LeMay on Guam that the takeoff time for the atomic bomb–carrying plane was to be in just over twelve hours, making the time over target between 8:00 and 9:00 the following morning.

At 2:30 P.M., Ed Doll sent an encoded telegram to Los Alamos. It was based on an interview he had conducted with Beser, who reported that a rigorous search “had so far detected no Japanese using the frequency on which the bomb’s radar set will be operating.”

By 3:00 P.M., Morris Jeppson and three officers from the First Ordnance Squadron had completed installing a control panel just forward of the bomb bay and just aft of the engineer and pilot compartments of the bomber Tibbets would be flying. The console was thirty inches high and about twenty inches wide. It contained switches, meters, and small, colored indicator lights. Attached to its back were four thick cables, each containing twenty-four individual wires. These cables stretched like umbilical cords back to the bomb bay, where, once the bomb was in place, they would be plugged into the weapon. They would automatically disconnect from the bomb when it was dropped.

The console was designed to monitor the bomb’s batteries; to check for any electrical shorts along its firing circuit; to look out for a premature closing of any switch; to spot a malfunction in the barometric-pressure device, the timing mechanism, or the radar set.

While Jeppson and his team toiled inside the bomber, a sign painter placed a ladder against its nose and grumpily climbed to the top, carrying a can of paint and a brush.

He had been dragged away from a softball game by Tibbets, who had handed him a piece of paper and told him to “paint that on the strike ship, nice and big.”

The paper contained two words: Enola Gay.

At 3:30 P.M., a group of scientists, MPs, and security agents assembled around the atomic bomb, now resting on a trolley.

On a signal from Major Uanna, after he had carefully draped the bomb with a tarpaulin, the trolley was hooked to a tractor, pulled slowly out of the hut, and escorted out of the Tech Area.

Looking to some observers like a military funeral cortege, the trolley and its guards traveled a half mile down the asphalt to the Enola Gay. The weapon was winched up into the plane’s front bomb bay and clamped to its special hook. The fifteen-foot doors banged shut.

There were just over ten hours to takeoff.

At 4:15, Tibbets, Ferebee, and van Kirk posed with Lewis and the regular crew of the Enola Gay for an official air force group photograph outside the 509th’s headquarters. The mood was relaxed; there was some joshing of Caron over his refusal to remove his baseball cap. Afterward, Lewis and the rest of the crew decided to drive down to inspect the bomber.

At the Enola Gay, their progress was barred by MPs. Disappointed but still mellow, Lewis walked around the B-29.

Suddenly, as Caron would recall, Lewis bellowed, “What the hell is that doing on my plane?”

The crew joined the pilot, who was staring up at the words Enola Gay.

Lewis, on his own later admission, was “very angry, so I called the officer in charge of maintenance and said, ‘Who put this name on here?’ He refused to tell me. So then I said to him, ‘All right, I want it taken off. Get your men and remove the name from the plane.’ He said, ‘I can’t do that!’ I said, ‘What the hell you talking about? Who authorized you to put it on?’ He says, ‘Colonel Tibbets.’ ”

Lewis drove back to group headquarters and stormed into Tibbets’s office.

What followed is a matter of dispute. In Lewis’s version, “Tibbets knew what I was coming in there for. I said, ‘Colonel, you authorized men to put a name on my airplane?’ He said, ‘I didn’t think you’d mind, Bob.’ I guess he was embarrassed.”

Tibbets would maintain he was anything but embarrassed. He had, in fact, consulted Ferebee, van Kirk, and Duzenbury before naming the bomber after his mother; none of the three had raised any objection. Tibbets had not consulted Lewis, “because I wasn’t concerned whether Bob cared or didn’t care.”

During the morning in the Tech Area, and later, into the early evening, Parsons practiced inserting the explosive charge and detonator into the weapon, a delicate maneuver made more difficult by the cramped conditions, poor light, and stifling heat of the Enola Gay’s bomb bay.

When he finally emerged from the bomber, General Farrell was waiting for him. Pointing at Parsons’s lacerated hands, Groves’s deputy offered to lend him a pair of thin pigskin gloves.

Parsons shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare. I’ve got to feel the touch.”

At 7:17 P.M., Farrell sent a message to Groves letting him know that Parsons intended to arm the bomb after takeoff. By the time Groves received the message, it was too late for him to do anything about it.

At 7:30 P.M., Classen, the 509th’s deputy commander, following instructions from Tibbets, briefed a dozen ground officers on their various duties between then and takeoff.

They were to escort scientists and key military personnel to “safe” areas well away from North Field; there was to be no chance of losing irreplaceable atomic experts in an unscheduled nuclear explosion. When the time came, many of the scientists refused to budge, pointing out that almost nowhere on Tinian would be safe if an accident occurred.

Fire trucks were to be stationed every fifty feet down the sides of runway A, the North Field airstrip selected for takeoff.

Flight surgeon Young was told that in the event of a crash, his rescue teams must not touch anything until a specially detailed squad from the First Ordnance Squadron had monitored the crash area for radioactive contamination. It was the first and only inkling Young would receive that the weapon was an atomic bomb.

By 8:00, mess officer Charles Perry’s cooks had begun to prepare the meals he would be offering the combat crews just after midnight: they could select a full-scale breakfast, dinner, or supper from a choice of thirty dishes. Afterward, the crews could collect packed sandwiches for eating over Japan in the morning. Satisfied that the fliers were cared for, Perry began personally to prepare the pineapple fritters that Tibbets had requested.

All Perry had been told about the mission was that it “was the most important in the war.” That was enough for him. He started to lay plans for “a full-scale culinary celebration,” to take place after the airmen returned.

3

On the same day, at 6:00 P.M., guests began arriving at the officers’ club in Hiroshima for the reception in honor of Field Marshal Hata’s new chief of staff. Among the civilians were the local governor, senior civil servants, and Mayor Awaya.

Hata and his chief moved from group to group, sipping sake and making polite conversation. Periodically, Awaya drifted to the door of the salon, where Maruyama waited with a sake container filled with cold tea. Awaya was a teetotaler, and it was Maruyama’s duty to replenish the mayor’s cup so that Awaya would be spared the embarrassment of having to refuse sake.

As soon as Lieutenant Colonel Oya arrived at the reception, Hata sought him out, eager for a firsthand report on the situation in Tokyo. Oya, who had just returned from the capital, reported that morale in the city was still high. The two men discussed briefly the update of the military situation which Oya had spent the day preparing; it was to be discussed at a full-scale communications conference called by Hata for the following morning at 9:00 A.M.

In less than twelve hours, gathered together in Hiroshima would be many of the senior commanders crucial to the defense of western Japan.

When Mayor Awaya cornered Hata, the field marshal gave a vague promise to discuss civilian matters in a few days. The disappointed mayor decided to go home. His wife had just returned to Hiroshima with their three-year-old grandchild.

Maruyama accompanied the mayor home and said he would see him in the morning, as usual, soon after 8:00.

Shortly after they parted, at 9:22 P.M. Radio Hiroshima broadcast an air-raid standby alert. Eight minutes later came the all clear.

For Dr. Shima, traveling toward the outskirts of Hiroshima, the warning presaged another nervous night. He always worried about his patients when he was away. But it would have been unthinkable for him to refuse to make house calls around the countryside. He had a busy night’s work ahead of him, moving from one farm to another. He did not expect to be back in Hiroshima much before 8:00 the following morning.

As the communications bureau of Second General Army Headquarters continued its surveillance of exchanges between American aircraft and control towers, it was clear that Japan was in for another brutal series of raids. In fact, 30 bombers were en route to Japan to drop mines in the Inland Sea; 65 bombers were coming to bomb Saga; 102 planes were about to launch an incendiary attack on Maebashi; 261 bombers were heading for the Nishinomiya-Mikage area; 111 bombers were bound for Ube; and 66 for Imabari.

At 12:25 A.M., Hiroshima’s radio station advised the civilian population to evacuate to their designated “safe areas.” They would wait in their shelters for two hours before the all clear sounded. The alert would do nothing to improve the temper of a weary populace so often called from their homes by false alarms.

4

During the night of August 5 to 6, some of the crewmen on Tinian went to the mess hall to sample the dishes Perry’s cooks had prepared. Tibbets, Ferebee, and van Kirk ate several plates of pineapple fritters. But for many the idea of food was not tempting. They lay on their bunks and thought of their loved ones, became a little maudlin, and drowned their homesickness with surreptitious shots of whiskey. A few slept.

At 11:30 P.M., the crews of the three weather planes went to their final briefing. By then, Ferebee was heavily involved in a poker game, one of many being held that night. Between bids, he told a favorite Tinian story about the day one of the 509th’s officers and a nurse had gone swimming in the nude. The clothes they left on the beach were stolen, and the two were forced to walk, naked, almost two miles back to their Quonset huts.

Van Kirk occupied his time checking his flight bag, making sure all his navigational instruments were there and his pencils sharpened; Caron sat quietly and thought of his wife; Nelson read the latest copy of the Reader’s Digest; Shumard tried to sleep; Stiborik went to the Catholic church to make a sacramental confession; Parsons and Jeppson ran over a checklist of what they would do once they were airborne; Lewis prowled outside the combat crew lounge, where the final briefing would be held at midnight.

Beser was busy with a task ideally suited to his temperament. Tibbets had assigned him to brief Bill Laurence, The New York Times reporter attached to the Manhattan Project. Beser’s vivid descriptions helped Laurence later to collect a Pulitzer Prize for his work.

Beser was still talking when, shortly before midnight, he was called to the briefing.

Outside the crew lounge, scientist Ed Doll handed Beser a piece of rice paper with numbers on it specifying the radio frequency the bomb’s radar would use to measure the distance from the ground as it fell. The numbers were written on rice paper, explained Doll, so that Beser could swallow the paper if he were in danger of being captured.

At midnight, Paul Tibbets walked to one end of the lounge and addressed the twenty-six airmen who would be flying with him to Japan.

Not once in the year he had commanded them had Tibbets mentioned to anyone in the 509th the words atomic or nuclear. Now, in this final briefing, he continued to preserve security by merely referring to the weapon as being “very powerful” and “having the potential to end the war.”

He reminded the crews to wear their welders’ goggles at the time of the explosion. Then, in a crisp few sentences, he spelled out the rules for a successful mission. “Do your jobs. Obey your orders. Don’t cut corners or take chances.”

The weather officer stepped forward and gave the forecast: the route to Japan would be almost cloud-free, with only moderate winds; clouds over the target cities were likely to clear at dawn. The communications officer read out the frequencies to be used on various stages of the mission and gave the positions of rescue ships and planes.

Tibbets had a few final words for each of the specialists on the mission. Navigators were reminded of the rendezvous point above Iwo Jima where the three planes were to meet; tail gunners should check that each aircraft had its thousand rounds of ammunition; engineers, that they were carrying seventy-four hundred gallons of fuel (except for the strike aircraft, Enola Gay, which would have four hundred gallons less to make its takeoff easier); radiomen, that the new call sign was “Dimples.”

At 12:15 A.M., Tibbets beckoned to Chaplain Downey, who invited the gathering to bow their heads. Then, in a richly resonant voice, consulting the back of an envelope, Downey read the prayer he had composed for this moment.

At 1:12 A.M., trucks picked up the crews of the two B-29s assigned to fly alongside the Enola Gay: the Great Artiste, piloted by Sweeney; and No. 91, commanded by Marquardt.

At 1:15 A.M., a truck picked up the crew of the Enola Gay. Tibbets and Parsons sat up front with the driver. Squeezed in the back were van Kirk, Ferebee, Lewis, Beser, Jeppson, Caron, Shumard, Stiborik, and Nelson. They all wore pale-green combat overalls; the only identification they carried were dog tags around their necks. Beser’s was stamped with an “H” for “Hebrew.”

At 1:37 A.M., the three weather-scout planes took off simultaneously from separate runways on North Field. At 1:51 A.M., Top Secret took off for its standby role at Iwo Jima.

Duzenbury had spent every available minute since the final briefing with the Enola Gay. He always took at least two hours for his “preflight,” for whatever Tibbets and Lewis might have thought, the flight engineer “knew she was my ship.”

First, Duzenbury walked slowly around the bomber, checking it visually, “watching out for the slightest thing that didn’t look normal,” making sure even that every rivet was in place on all the control surfaces. Then, around 1:00, Duzenbury went aboard Enola Gay alone, checklist in hand.

Duzenbury went first to his own station, behind Lewis’s seat. It took him little time to inspect his instrument panel; he prided himself that it was always in perfect working order. Then he stepped into the cockpit and examined the controls, switches, and dials. After he had verified that all was in order there, Duzenbury made his way back into the spacious area he shared with navigator van Kirk and radioman Nelson. Now it also contained Jeppson’s console for monitoring the bomb.

Duzenbury opened a small, circular, airtight door situated just below the entrance to the long tunnel that led to the after end of the plane, swung himself feet first through the hatch, and found himself in back of the bomb.

Using a flashlight, he crawled to the right side of the weapon and onto the catwalk that ran along the length of the bay; from there, he had his first overall view of the world’s most expensive bomb. To Duzenbury, who had worked as a tree surgeon before enlisting, it resembled a long, heavy tree trunk. The cables leading into it from Jeppson’s monitoring panel, and its antennae, made it look like no bomb he’d ever seen before.

He continued along the catwalk, checking everything as he went, past the nose of the bomb and back along the other side. When he once again reached the fins, he noticed two unusual containers that, he thought, shouldn’t be there. Almost unconsciously, he kicked them.

The flight engineer had not been told they contained the explosive powder and tools Parsons would use later to arm the bomb.

He was about to remove the containers when a bright shaft of light shone through the hatch into the bomb bay. Puzzled, Duzenbury climbed back through the hatch into van Kirk’s compartment. The light filled the area. Duzenbury walked forward into the cockpit and stopped, openmouthed.

The Enola Gay was ringed by floodlights.

Interspersed between the klieg stands and mobile generators were close to a hundred people—photographers, film crews, officers, scientists, project security agents, and MPs. Dumbfounded and a little annoyed, Duzenbury turned back to his checklist.

The lights and camera crews had been ordered by General Groves, who wanted a pictorial record of the Enola Gay’s departure. Only space had prevented a movie crew from flying on the mission.

Now Tibbets stepped from the truck and found himself surrounded by a film crew. He had been warned in a message from Groves that there would be “a little publicity,” but in his view, “this was full-scale Hollywood premiere treatment. I expected to see MGM’s lion walk onto the field or Warner’s logo to light up the sky. It was crazy.”

With a touch worthy of an epic production, the “extras” on the asphalt formed an avenue for the “stars” in the crew.

The 509th’s commander complied with shouted requests to turn first this way, then that way, to smile, look serious, “look busy.”

Parsons, mystified by the carnival atmosphere, turned to anybody who would listen and said, “What’s going on?” Not recognizing the naval captain, a brash photographer shoved Parsons against one of the Enola Gay’s wheels and said, “You’re gonna be famous—so smile!”

Parsons glared at the cameraman, who shrugged and joined the group swarming around Beser, still briefing Bill Laurence of The New York Times.

Beser himself was carrying a portable recording machine on which he planned to capture the crew’s reactions to the atomic explosion.

In an expansive mood, Beser told the photographers to take some shots of the rest of the crew. “These guys are every bit as important as the rest of us,” he said.

Shumard and Stiborik bowed in mock obsequiousness. Radioman Dick Nelson, raised on Hollywood’s doorstep, thought “some of the people were behaving as if they were in some low-budget production.”

Reporter Laurence asked Lewis to keep a log of the Enola Gay’s flight, which The New York Times would later publish. No money was mentioned, but Lewis thought it might earn him “a few dollars.”

Lewis addressed the crew. Nelson later recalled, “He gave us a good long stare and said, ‘You guys, this bomb cost more than an aircraft carrier. We’ve got it made, we’re gonna win the war, just don’t screw it up. Let’s do this really great!’ He made it clear that as far as he was concerned, we were still his crew, and we were doing it for him.”

Caron peered around owlishly in the bright lights, smiling enigmatically when somebody said he had never before known a tail gunner who wore glasses. He doggedly refused to take off his baseball cap. In common with many on the apron, Caron found the scene “a trifle bizarre. I had to put my guns in their mount, and all the time I was getting stopped to have my picture taken.”

Caron had planned to take his camera on the mission, but in all the excitement he had left it on his bunk. Yet in the end he would take the most historic pictures of all. An army captain thrust a plate camera at Caron and told him, “Shoot whatever you can over the target.”

At 2:20 A.M., the final group photo was taken. Tibbets turned to the crew and said, “Okay, let’s go to work.”

A photographer grabbed Beser and asked for “one last good-bye look.”

Beser bridled. “Good-bye, hell! We’re coming back!” He climbed up the ladder and through the hatch behind the Enola Gay’s nose wheel, suddenly tired of the publicity.

Beser was followed by Ferebee and van Kirk, who, like Caron, were wearing baseball caps; Shumard and Nelson wore GI work caps; Stiborik a ski cap.

Finally, only Parsons and Tibbets remained below, talking to Farrell. Suddenly the general pointed to Parsons’s coveralls. “Where’s your gun?”

Parsons had forgotten to draw a weapon from supply. He motioned to a nearby MP, who unstrapped his gun belt and handed it over. Parsons buckled it around his waist and, after a quick thank-you, climbed clumsily up the nose ladder. Like all the others, Parsons wore beneath his coveralls a survival vest with fishhooks, a drinking-water kit, first-aid package, and emergency food rations. Over this came a parachute harness with clips for a chest chute and a one-man life raft. On top was an armorlike flak suit for protection against shell fragments.

Unknown to the others, Paul Tibbets also carried a small metal box in a pocket of his coveralls. Inside the box were twelve capsules, each containing a lethal dose of cyanide. At the first sign of trouble over Japan, Tibbets was to distribute the capsules to the men on the plane. He would then explain to them the alternatives they faced before capture: they could either blow out their brains or commit suicide by poisoning. Tibbets knew this procedure had been devised especially for the atomic mission because “if you were shot down, can you imagine the measures the Japanese would take to find out what you were doing? So if you don’t want to go through the torture that they might submit you to, the best way out is either with the gun or with the capsules.”

As he said farewell to Farrell, Tibbets had a more immediate concern—the possibility of crashing on takeoff, as he had seen so many planes do during the past weeks on Tinian. The Enola Gay was probably the most thoroughly checked aircraft in the world. But no check devised could ensure there would be no last-minute failure of some crucial component.

Smiling and looking relaxed for the clamoring photographers, Tibbets boarded the Enola Gay. When he reached his seat, he automatically felt his breast pocket to make sure his battered aluminum cigarette case was still there. He regarded the case as a lucky charm, and he never made a flight without it.

A cameraman climbed a stepladder and photographed Ferebee’s bomb-aiming position in the nose. The bombardier was glad he had earlier ordered the ground crew to make a thorough search of the plane and to remove “any unauthorized items.” Among those found were six packs of condoms and three pairs of silk panties. Ferebee thought “such things had no place on a bomber.”

Caron strapped himself in by his twin rear guns; in the event of a crash on takeoff, he believed “there was a marginally better chance of survival in the tail.” For luck, Caron carried a photograph of his wife and baby daughter stuck in his oxygen flow chart. Shumard, squatting in one of the waist blister turrets, had with him a tiny doll; across from him, at the other turret, were Beser and Stiborik. They did not believe in talismans, though Stiborik thought his ski cap was as good as any.

At his station by the entrance hatch to the bomb bay, Nelson fished out a half-finished paperback and placed it on the table beside him. A few feet away, van Kirk laid out his pencils and chart.

Forward of the navigator, Parsons and Jeppson sat on cushions on the floor, listening patiently to the final preparations for takeoff going on around them. Finally, Tibbets called up Duzenbury. “All set, Dooz?”

“All set, Colonel.”

Tibbets slid open a side window in the cockpit and leaned out.

A battery of cameramen converged to photograph his head over the gleaming new sign, Enola Gay.

“Okay, fellows, cut those lights. We’ve gotta be going.”

5

Tibbets ordered Duzenbury to start No. 3 engine; when it was running smoothly, he ordered No. 4, then No. 1, and finally No. 2 engine to be fired.

Lewis added a note on the scratch pad he was keeping for The New York Times. “Started engines at 2:27 A.M.”

The copilot looked across at Tibbets, who nodded. Lewis depressed the switch on his intercom. “This is Dimples Eight-two to North Tinian Tower. Ready for taxi out and takeoff instructions.”

“Tower to Dimples Eight-two. Clear to taxi. Take off on runway A for Able.”

At 2:35 A.M., the Enola Gay reached her takeoff position.

The jeep that had led the bomber there now drove down the runway, its headlights briefly illuminating the fire trucks and ambulances parked every fifty feet down each side of the airstrip.

At 2:42 A.M., the jeep flashed its lights from the far end of the runway, then drove to the side.

Tibbets told Lewis to call the tower.

Its response was immediate. “Tower to Dimples Eight-two. Clear for takeoff.”

Tibbets made a final careful check of the instrument panel. The takeoff weight was 150,000 pounds; the 65-ton Enola Gay, with 7,000 gallons of fuel, a 5-ton bomb, and 12 men on board, would have to build up enough engine thrust to lift an overload of 15,000 pounds into the air. Tibbets made a decision: he would hold the bomber on the ground until the last moment to build up every possible knot of speed before lifting it into the air.

He did not tell Lewis of his intention.

The copilot was feeling apprehensive; he, too, knew that the Enola Gay was well overweight, and he sensed that the next few seconds “could be traumatic.”

Ferebee, on the other hand, felt completely relaxed and confident that Tibbets “had worked everything out.”

Van Kirk watched the second hand of his watch reach 2:44 A.M. Until the bomber was actually airborne, there was nothing for him to do.

At 2:45 A.M., Tibbets said to Lewis, “Let’s go,” and thrust all throttles forward. The Enola Gay began to roll down the runway.

Tibbets kept his eye on the RPM counter and the manifold-pressure gauge. With two-thirds of the runway behind them, the counter was still below the 2,550 RPM Tibbets calculated he needed for takeoff; the manifold-pressure gauge registered only 40 inches—not enough.

In the waist blister turrets, Shumard and Stiborik exchanged nervous glances. Beser smiled back at them, oblivious of any danger. Far forward, at his panel, Duzenbury stirred uneasily. He knew what Tibbets was trying to do, but found himself wondering whether Tibbets “was ever going to take her up!”

Lewis stared anxiously at the instruments before him, a duplicate set of those in front of Tibbets. Outside, the ambulances and fire trucks flashed by.

“She’s too heavy!” Lewis shouted. “Pull her off—now!”

Tibbets ignored Lewis, holding the bomber on the runway. Instinctively, Lewis’s hands reached for his control column.

“No! Leave it!” Tibbets commanded.

Lewis’s hand froze on the wheel.

Beser suddenly sensed the fear Stiborik and Shumard felt. He shouted, “Hey, aren’t we going to run out of runway soon?”

Lewis glanced at Tibbets, who was staring ahead at the break in the darkness where the runway ended at the cliff’s edge.

Lewis could wait no longer. But even as his hands tightened around the control column, Tibbets eased his wheel back. The Enola Gay’s nose lifted, and the bomber was airborne at what seemed to Lewis the very moment that the ground disappeared beneath them and was replaced by the blackness of the sea.

Watching the takeoff from his hiding place near the peak of Mount Lasso was Warrant Officer Kizo Imai. For the past ninety minutes he had observed the lights, the flashbulbs, the cameras, and the people. He could not imagine what it all meant.

When the bomber that was the center of all the attention had taken off, it left from the very runway that Imai had originally helped to build.

Two minutes after the Enola Gay, the Great Artiste took off, followed at 2:49 A.M. by No. 91. Now the three weather-scout planes and three combat planes of Special Bombing Mission No. 13 were airborne and heading, on course and on time, for Japan.

At 2:55:30 A.M., ten minutes after takeoff, van Kirk made his first entry in the navigator’s log.

To make such calculations throughout the flight, van Kirk worked closely with radarman Stiborik. Between them, the two men would continually check bearings.

The Enola Gay was on the north-by-northwest course it would maintain for the three-hour leg to Iwo Jima. As the plane burrowed through the Pacific night, ten of the twelve men on board busied themselves.

Ferebee had nothing to do, and sat relaxed in his seat. There would be another six hours before his specialist skills as bombardier would be called into use. To tire himself now in pointless activity could have a detrimental effect on the role he would play later.

Beser, exhausted from over forty hours without sleep, was slumped on the floor at the back end of the tunnel, quietly snoring. He would be needed to man his electronic surveillance equipment only after the Enola Gay passed over Iwo Jima.

Apart from routine orders, Tibbets had not yet exchanged a word with Lewis. Both men were aware that Lewis had tried to take over at the crucial moment of takeoff. Lewis had acted instinctively; he had in no way intended to criticize Tibbets’s flying ability. But he could not bring himself to say so. In turn, Tibbets recognized that his copilot’s reaction had been perfectly understandable. “It was the response of a man used to sitting in the driver’s seat.” But Tibbets, too, could find no way of expressing himself. And so they sat in uncomfortable silence, Tibbets flying the plane, Lewis watching the instruments and adding a few lines to the log he was keeping. “Everything went well on take-off, nothing unusual was encountered.”

Caron called Tibbets on the intercom and received permission to test his guns. He had a thousand rounds to defend the Enola Gay against attack, and now expended fifty of them. The sound rattled through the fuselage. In Caron’s tail turret there was a smell of cordite and burned oil. Behind him, in the darkness, he watched tracers falling toward the sea.

Satisfied, and for the moment free of responsibility, Caron crawled into the rear compartment of the bomber. There, Stiborik was studying photographs of Hiroshima as the city would later appear on his radar screen. The unreal-looking pictures meant almost nothing to the tail gunner.

Close to 3:00 A.M., Parsons tapped Tibbets on the shoulder. “We’re starting.”

Tibbets nodded, switched on the low-frequency radio in the cockpit, and called Tinian Tower. “Judge going to work.”

As arranged, there was no acknowledgment. But in the control tower on North Field, a small group of scientists studied a copy of a checklist that, on board the Enola Gay, Parsons had taken from a coverall pocket. It read:

This bald recital gave no clue as to the delicate nature of the task Parsons was to perform.

The naval officer lowered himself down through the hatch into the bomb bay. Jeppson followed him, carrying a flashlight.

The two men squatted, just inside the bay, their backs almost touching the open hatch, and faced the tail end of the bomb. Parsons took his tools out of the box that Duzenbury had kicked during his preflight check.

Ferebee left his bombardier’s seat and came back to watch this critical stage of the mission.

To Ferebee, the two men crouching in the bomb bay resembled car mechanics, with Jeppson handing tools to Parsons whenever he was asked.

As each stage on the checklist was reached, Parsons used the intercom to inform Tibbets, who radioed the news to Tinian.

But by stage 6—the actual insertion of the gunpowder and electrical detonator—Tinian was out of radio range of Tibbets’s set. For security reasons, he had decided against using Nelson’s more powerful transmitter: Tibbets feared that his messages would be picked up by Japanese monitors.

At 3:10 A.M., Parsons began inserting the gunpowder and detonator. He worked slowly and in total silence, his eyes and hands concentrating on the task. Gently, he placed the powder, in four sections, into position. Then he connected the detonator. Afterward, with sixteen measured turns, he tightened the breech plate, then the armor and rear plates.

The weapon was now “final” except for the last, crucial operation, which Jeppson would perform when he returned to the bomb bay and exchanged three green “safety” plugs for red ones. Until then, the weapon could not be detonated electrically—“unless, of course, the plane ran into an electrical storm.”

At 3:20 A.M., the two men climbed out of the bomb bay.

Parsons went forward and informed Tibbets they had finished. Then he sat on the floor beside Jeppson, who was checking the bomb’s circuits on his monitoring console.

6

Five minutes after Parsons and Jeppson completed arming the bomb, in Hiroshima, where the time was 2:25 A.M., the all clear sounded. People emerged from the air-raid shelters.

On Mount Futaba, Second Lieutenant Tatsuo Yokoyama staggered sleepily back to his quarters. This was turning out to be a bad night: three alerts and not a sign of a bomber. He dismissed the gun crews and asked his orderly to bring him a pot of tea.

7

Tibbets stared into the night. The stars were out, pricking the inky blackness of the sky; below them, looking very white, were the clouds. Inside the Enola Gay, it was comfortably warm.

Tibbets finally broke the silence in the cockpit by asking his copilot what he was writing. Lewis replied he was “keeping a record.” Tibbets did not pursue the matter, and the two men continued to sit, not speaking, peering into the darkness.

Nelson completed his check of the loran equipment. Loran was a long-range navigational device designed to determine a plane’s position by the time it took to receive radio signals from two or more transmitters whose positions were known. Nelson had tuned to transmitters on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Duzenbury and Shumard were paralleling generators to ensure that the four motors remained smoothly synchronized.

At 4:01, Tibbets spoke first to Sweeney and then to Marquardt, both of whom were following some three miles behind. The Great Artiste and No. 91 reported “conditions normal.”

At 4:20, van Kirk called Lewis on the intercom to give the estimated time of arrival over Iwo Jima as 5:52 A.M.

Lewis noted this in his log, and then added, “we’ll just check” to see whether the navigator’s estimate turned out to be correct.

By now, Lewis was expanding his log from its original stark timetable to contain such observations as: “The Colonel, better known as the ‘old bull,’ shows signs of a tough day; with all he had to do to help get this mission off, he is deserving a few winks.”

Tibbets, in fact, had never felt more relaxed or less tired. The trip, so far, was “a joyride.”

At 4:25 A.M., he handed over the controls to Lewis, unstrapped himself, and climbed out of his seat to spend a little time with each man on the plane.

Parsons and Jeppson confirmed that the final adjustments to the bomb would be made in the last hour before the target was reached.

As he reached Duzenbury’s position, Tibbets felt Lewis trim the controls so that the Enola Gay was flying on “George,” the automatic pilot; the elevators gave a distinct kick as “George” engaged.

Tibbets chatted with Duzenbury for a few minutes and then moved on to Nelson. The young radioman hurriedly put down the paperback he was reading and reported, “Everything okay, Colonel.” Tibbets smiled and said, “I know you’ll do a good job, Dick.” Nelson had never felt so proud.

Tibbets next watched van Kirk make a navigational check. Ferebee joined them, and the three men speculated as to whether conditions would allow them to bomb the “primary.” Tibbets said that whatever Eatherly reported the weather over Hiroshima was, he would still go there first “to judge for myself.”

Tibbets then crawled down the thirty-foot padded tunnel that ran over the two bomb bays to connect the forward and aft compartments of the Enola Gay.

In the rear compartment were Caron, Stiborik, Shumard, and a still-sleeping Beser.

Tibbets turned to the tail gunner. “Bob, have you figured out what we are doing this morning?”

“Colonel, I don’t want to get put up against a wall and shot.”

Tibbets smiled, recalling that day last September in Wendover when Caron had fervently promised to keep his mouth shut. Since then, the tail gunner had been an example to everybody when it came to security.

“Bob, we’re on our way now. You can talk.”

Caron had already guessed the Enola Gay was carrying a new superexplosive. “Are we carrying a chemist’s nightmare?” he asked.

“No, not exactly.”

“How about a physicist’s nightmare?”

“Yes.”

Tibbets turned to crawl back up the tunnel. Caron reached in and tugged at his leg.

Tibbets looked back. “What’s the problem?”

“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 below, 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.

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-pitched 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.

Kempei Tai officer Hiroshi Yanagita snored insensibly in his bed.

Tatsuo Yokoyama, stripped to the waist in the midsummer heat, was raising a bowl of rice to his mouth, chopsticks poised.

Tibbets continued to hold the Enola Gay in a steep power dive and right turn of 155 degrees. Sweeney’s Great Artiste was performing an identical maneuver to the left.

Inside the bomb, a timer tripped the first switch in the firing circuit, letting the electricity travel a measured distance toward the detonator.

Tibbets asked Caron if he could see anything. Spread-eagled in his turret, the gravitational force draining the blood from his head, the gunner could merely gasp, “Nothing.”

Beser, also trapped by the violence of the maneuver, stared at his instruments. He could not lift his hand to activate the wire recorder.

There were now twenty seconds left.

On the ground, Prince RiGu was cantering his horse onto the Aioi Bridge.

The announcer at Radio Hiroshima reached the studio to broadcast the air-raid warning.

In the half-underground communications center at Hiroshima Airport, Yasuzawa asked where Hata’s meeting was to be held.

On the fire lanes, supervisors blew their whistles, signaling thousands of workers, many of them schoolboys and -girls, to run to their designated “safe” areas.

Aboard the Enola Gay, Tibbets pulled down his glasses. He could see nothing. He yanked them off. In the nose, Ferebee had not bothered to put his on.

The Enola Gay was coming to the end of its breathtaking turn and was now some five miles from Ferebee’s AP, heading away from the city. Tibbets called Caron. Again, the tail gunner reported there was nothing to see.

Beser at last managed to switch on the wire recorder. Stiborik turned up the brightness on his radar screen so he could see it through his glasses. Duzenbury, his hand on the throttles, worried about what the blast would do to the Enola Gay’s engines.

Jeppson counted. Five seconds to go.

In the bomb, the barometric switch tripped at five thousand feet above the ground. The shriek of the casing through the air had now increased to a shattering sonic roar, not yet detectable below.

On the ground, Kazumasa Maruyama was on his way to pick up Mayor Awaya, as he did every morning before work.

At Radio Hiroshima, the announcer pushed the button that sounded the air-raid siren and, out of breath, spoke into a microphone. “Eight-thirteen, Chugoku Regional Army reports three large enemy planes spotted, heading—”

The bomb’s detonator activated 1,890 feet above the ground.

At exactly 8:16 A.M., forty-three seconds after falling from the Enola Gay, having traveled nearly six miles, the atomic bomb missed the Aioi Bridge by eight hundred feet and exploded directly over Dr. Shima’s clinic.