Museum curator Ryo Koyama said, "The records contain vivid testimonies by each and every crew member (of the Enola Gay) and has historic value. The museum is considering releasing the audio tapes and having experts analyze the recordings after getting approval from the people concerned. The pilot also said he saw the mushroom cloud from the bomb through the aircraft's window. "If you can imagine yourself inside a tin building and somebody comes along on the outside and hits it with a hammer, you get the sound effect," he recalled. So I got this lead taste in my mouth and that was a big relief - I knew she had blown."Īfter dropping the bomb, the Enola Gay made a rapid evasive right turn but the shockwaves hit the fuselage, according to Tibbets. And this was because of the fillings in my teeth. Tibbets is quoted as saying in the records that at the moment of the explosion, "I got the brilliance, I tasted it. The "Little Boy" uranium bomb detonated at 8:15 a.m. 6, 1945 and made its way to the target - the T-shaped Aioi Bridge in the Hiroshima city center. base on Tinian Island in the Pacific in the early hours of Aug. This indicates that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was indeed a highly confidential mission.
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When asked why the crew members carried handguns, Tibbets explained that they were for protection, and revealed that they had cyanide tablets, too, to kill themselves to avoid capture by the Imperial Japanese Army in case the aircraft crashed. 9, 1945, was also included.Īccording to the donated records, the interviewer asked in detail how the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A memoir written by Jacob Beser, who was aboard both the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. The tapes contain voices of five people, including Tibbets and Thomas Ferebee, the bombardier who pushed the button to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A memo left with the items suggests that they are copies of records made for the 1977 book "Enola Gay: Mission to Hiroshima" written by British authors Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. They were donated to the museum in June last year by the bereaved family of a Japanese person who had owned them. (Pictures available on request.) The guide said that the Silverplate B-29 modifications included this radome. The records include 27 tapes spanning about 30 hours, and 570 pages of transcripts. There is a radome in the belly of the plane, between the two bomb bays.
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Museum officials say the existence of those tapes and transcripts had never before been confirmed, adding that they are important as they depict in detail the situation inside the bomber and the psychological state of the crew. Official photograph of the Office of Chief of Engineers, now in the collections of the National Archives.Tape recordings of testimonies by Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets and others are shown at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima's Naka Ward, on July 20, 2018. Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay, returns after the strike Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Image: 77-BT-91: Tinian Island, August 1945. Four days later, Japanese submarine, I-58, sank Indianapolis, northeast of Leyte.Ī replica of Little Boy can be found at " In Harm's Way: Pacific" exhibit area in the National Museum of the Navy, Bldg.
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Previously, on July 26, the bomb, along with " Fat Man" was transported to Tinian Island by USS Indianapolis (CA-35) for final assembly. A U-235 projectile fired down a gun barrel collided with a stationary element, causing a mass increase leading to nuclear fission. Nuclear fission was achieved by the collision of two parts of active material (Uranium-235). The gun-type weapon possessed the power of 26,000,000 pounds of high explosives. The bomb weighed 9,000 pounds and had a diameter of only 28 inches. The bomb was dropped by a USAAF B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, piloted by U.S. The Smithsonian Institution has given the American public ready access to a meticulously restored Enola Gay as the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, but. The atomic bomb used at Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, was "Little Boy".