Hiroshima and Nagasaki after 60 years!

Hiroshima:
On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay left the island of Tinian for Hiroshima, Japan. This section recounts the first atomic bombing.

Hiroshima was chosen as the primary target since it had remained largely untouched by bombing raids, and the bomb's effects could be clearly measured. While President Truman had hoped for a purely military target, some advisers believed that bombing an urban area might break the fighting will of the Japanese people. Hiroshima was a major port and a military headquarters, and therefore a strategic target. Also, visual bombing, rather than radar, would be used so that photographs of the damage could be taken. Since Hiroshima had not been seriously harmed by bombing raids, these photographs could present a fairly clear picture of the bomb's damage.

The mushroom cloud rising over Hiroshima, Japan. The city of Hiroshima was the target of the world’s first atomic bomb attack at 8:16 a.m. on August 6, 1945. The cloud rose to over 60,000 feet in about ten minutes.

Nagasaki:

On August 9, 1945, another American B-29 bomber, Bock's Car, left Tinian carrying Fat Man, a plutonium implosion-type bomb. The primary target was the Kokura Arsenal, but upon reaching the target, they found that it was covered by a heavy ground haze and smoke. This section recounts the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.

Nagasaki was a city on the west coast of Kyushu on picturesque Nagasaki Bay. It was famous as the setting for Puccini's beautiful opera Madame Butterfly. It was also home to two huge Mitsubishi war plants on the Urakami River. This complex was the primary target, but because the city was built in hilly, almost mountainous terrain, it was a much more difficult target than Hiroshima.

Clouds covered Nagasaki when Bock's Car arrived. Contrary to orders, weaponeer Ashworth determined to make the drop by radar if they had to due to their short fuel supply. At the last minute a small window in the clouds opened and bombardier Captain Kermit K. Beehan made the drop at 10:58 A.M. Nagasaki time.

Fat Man exploded at 1,840 feet above Nagasaki and approximately 500 feet south of the Mitsubishi Steel and Armament Works with an estimated force of 22,000 tons of TNT.

Unlike Hiroshima, there was no firestorm at Nagasaki. Despite this, the blast was more destructive to the immediate area, due to the topography and the greater power of Fat Man. However, the hilly topography limited the total area of destruction to less than that of Hiroshima, and the resulting loss of life, though horrifically high, was also less. The exact number of casualties was impossible to determine. The Japanese listed only those they could verify and set the official estimate at 23, 753 killed, 1,927 missing, and 23, 345 wounded. U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey figures were much higher, but still less than those for Hiroshima.

Within a minute of Fat Man's explosion, a brilliant fireball boiled skyward. Sweeney banked sharply to avoid it. The two B-29s were battered by five successive shockwaves and the radioactive cloud surged toward them. Both planes turned away and headed home.