One may not readily remember – Charles W Sweeny and those who know would not like to remember - Major General Charles W. Sweeney, an officer in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and the pilot who flew Bockscar carrying the Fat Man atomic bomb to the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. (this day 73 years ago !) A small fishing village set in a secluded harbour, Nagasaki had little historical significance until contact with Portuguese explorers in 1543. An early visitor was Fernão Mendes Pinto, who came from Sagres on a Portuguese ship which landed nearby in Tanegashima – this day changed the lives of its citizens – sadly .. .. On August 6, 1945, the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the 20-kiloton atomic bomb "Little Boy," which devastated most of Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people. Just a few days later, on August 9, 1945, another US bomber dropped the 21-kiloton atomic bomb "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, killing approximately 70,000 people and leaving thousands of others injured. The design for the first atomic bomb was frighteningly simple: One lump of a special kind of uranium, the projectile, was fired at a very high speed into another lump of that same rare uranium, the target. When the two collided, they began a nuclear chain reaction, and it was only a tiny fraction of a second before the bomb exploded, forever splitting history between the time before the atomic bomb and the time after. The casualties would have been greater if the bomb hadn't missed its original target due to weather conditions. The number of deaths and injuries are mind-boggling!
Pic
credit : https://thebulletin.org/
"At
first, the American people were filled with joy and relief that the war was
over not long after the Nagasaki bomb, but as a book called ‘By The Bomb's
Early Light' by Paul Boyer explained, that joy gave into fear because the
American people realized within weeks, if not days, that if we can do that to
somebody else, somebody else can do that to us. And sure enough, Russia had the
bomb within four years"
During the final stage of
World War II, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The
United States dropped the bombs after obtaining the consent of the United
Kingdom, as required by the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed thousands
people, most of whom were civilians. They remain the only use of nuclear
weapons in the history of warfare. In the final year of the war, the Allies
prepared for what was anticipated to be a very costly invasion of the Japanese
mainland. This undertaking was preceded by a conventional and firebombing
campaign that destroyed 67 Japanese cities. The war in Europe had concluded
when Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8, 1945. As the Allies
turned their full attention to the Pacific War, the Japanese faced the same
fate.
By August 1945, the
Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs, and the 509th
Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was equipped with
the specialized Silverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that could
deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Orders for atomic bombs to be
used on four Japanese cities were issued on July 25. The bombs over Hiroshima
& Nagasaki, immediately devastated their targets. Over the next two to four
months, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000–146,000 people
in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths
in each city occurred on the first day. Large numbers of people continued to
die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries,
compounded by illness and malnutrition, for many months afterward. In both
cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable
military garrison.
Japan announced its
surrender to the Allies on August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki
and the Soviet Union's declaration of war. On September 2, the Japanese
government signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II.
The ethical and legal justification for the bombings is still debated to this
day.
Fat Man" was the
codename for the atomic bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of
Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only
two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its
detonation marked the third-ever man-made nuclear explosion in history. It was
built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from
the Hanford Site and dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar. For
the Fat Man mission, Bockscar was piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney.The name Fat Man refers generically to the
early design of the bomb, because it had a wide, round shape. It was also known
as the Mark III. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid
plutonium core. Two more Fat Man bombs
were detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in
1946. Some 120 Fat Man units were produced between 1947 and 1949, when it was
superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. The Fat Man was retired in 1950.
The original target for
the bomb was the city of Kokura, but it was found to be obscured by clouds and
drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on
nearby Yahata the previous day. This covered 70% of the area over Kokura,
obscuring the aiming point. Three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes,
burning fuel and repeatedly exposing the aircraft to the heavy defenses of
Yawata, but the bombardier was unable to drop visually.
Major General Charles W.
Sweeney was the pilot who flew Bockscar carrying the Fat Man atomic bomb to the
Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Separating from active duty at the
end of World War II, he later became an officer in the Massachusetts Air
National Guard as the Army Air Forces transitioned to an independent U.S. Air
Force, eventually rising to the rank of Major General.That same morning, on the day of the mission,
the ground crew notified Sweeney that a faulty fuel transfer pump made it
impossible to utilize some 625 gallons of fuel in the tail, but Sweeney, as
aircraft commander, elected to proceed with the mission. Paul Warfield Tibbets
Jr. a brigadier general in the United States
Air Force was the pilot who flew the
Enola Gay (named after his mother) when it dropped Little Boy, the first of two
atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Japan was
devastated, thousands killed ~ today Time writes that things are very
different. Eighty-four percent of Japanese people feel “close” to the U.S.,
according to the Japanese government’s annual Cabinet Office poll, and 87% of
Americans say they have a favorable view of Japan, according to a Gallup poll. The
first phase was the United States’ roughly seven-year occupation of Japan,
which began following the surrender. When Japan got a new constitution, which
took effect on May 3, 1947, its terms came largely courtesy of American
influence, specifically that of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur and his staff. The
American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after the U.S. and Japan signed a
security treaty for a “peace of reconciliation” in San Francisco in 1951. Meanwhile,
a historic display of reconciliation came in 2016, when President Barack Obama
became the first U.S. President to visit Hiroshima, and Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe visited Pearl Harbor seven months later. “The two leaders’ visit
will showcase the power of reconciliation that has turned former adversaries
into the closest of allies,” the White House said in a statement.
~and the debate over whether it was the right
decision to use atomic bombs in 1945 — or if it ever would be — continues, too.
Diplomatic relations may have been settled, but “that moral question, perhaps
humanity can never resolve.”
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
9th August
2018.
PS 1 :The Fat Man bomb was fueled by plutonium created at the Hanford nuclear reservation, at the time a secret operation near the Tri-Cities. Pic credit :http://www.yakimaherald.com/
