On August 6, the world will mark 80 years since the first nuclear weapon was deployed, an atom bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The 509th Composite Group landed at Tinian Island air base three days before and went over the mission plans in various detail, according to the recipient's need to know. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was the commander of Special Bombing Mission No. 13. He supervised the re-assignment of call signs and plane markings, inspected the bomb called Little Boy, reviewed the mission with his crew, and played poker late into the night of August 5th. After all, none of his crew could sleep anyway.
Early on the 6th, everyone on Tinian knew that something historic was happening, because lights, cameras, and military journalists were there to document the moment. Tibbets secretly tucked a packet of cyanide pills into his pocket. The Enola Gay and three other planes took off at 2:45 AM, following three weather planes that left an hour earlier. They were six hours and 15 minutes from Japan. Meanwhile, people in Hiroshima were going about their morning as they had for the past few years during wartime. Read about the hours leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima in a book excerpt at LitHub. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: US Air Force)
