The final explosive act of the Second World War took place at 11.02 hours on 9 August 1945, when the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. On board the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that was to photograph the astonishing scene when the bomb Fat Man was delivered on Nagasaki was a British observer – Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC.
WHEN NIGHT BECAME DAY
I
t was at around 14.00 hours on 8 August 1945, when Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC received confirmation that
he would be permitted to fly on the second atomic bombing mission with the USAAF’s 509 Composite Group. Cheshire was supposed to have been the British representative on the Enola Gay for the first nuclear attack upon Hiroshima two days earlier, only to be denied by the US authorities who wanted an “all- American show”.
Standing USAAF instructions required that the crews slept during the afternoon before a night flight. The weather, though, was very hot and the tents they were in did not cut out either the heat or the light. So the crews were issued sleeping pills. On the Hiroshima mission the pills had not helped the crews sleep yet when they were ready to fly the drugs made them so drowsy that they had to take stimulants to keep them awake! Cheshire refused to take his pills as he preferred to be tired rather than drugged.
There had been much debate about how to defeat Japan following the end of the war in Europe. The US Admirals Leahy and King thought that victory could be achieved by air and sea power alone. General MacArthur thought otherwise. As had been demonstrated in Europe, bombing alone could not achieve complete success. In MacArthur’s words, bombing was “an unproved war-winning instrument”. The Japanese would never surrender. The only way that the war could be won was by capturing Japanese territory inch by tortuous inch.
There were many problems associated with this approach. The first was the enormous loss of life to Allied soldiers that this policy would inevitably cause. The proof of this had already been demonstrated at Okinawa, the first Japanese island proper to be invaded. The battle for Okinawa lasted from 6 April to 21 June 1945, and resulted in 12,000 Americans being killed. The Japanese determination to fight to the last man was demonstrated by the fact that they suffered the loss of 120,000 men, forced hundreds of civilians to commit hara-kiri rather than surrender, and made school children walk across a minefield in front of their army to clear a passage for their troops.
With this knowledge in mind, MacArthur estimated that the invasion of Japan (which he was prepared to undertake) would result
MAIN PICTURE: The mushroom cloud which resulted from the atomic explosion over Nagasaki pictured rising 60,000 feet into the air on the morning of 9 August 1945. (US National Archives)
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