The End
Little Boy was all assembled at Tinian, however the Fat Man bomb was not actually complete and on site until shortly before the bombing mission began, at which point weather patterns forced its target to become the secondary target of Nagasaki1.
The preparation for the bombing run was extensive, for several months before the attack was carried out, planes had been flying in three-plane teams over Japanese cities dropping only propaganda and small explosives. While this was happening, the United States Air Force also started sending huge squadrons of bombers to incinerate entire military bases and factory complexes. By doing this the Japanese were “trained” into ignoring the smaller three-plane units and focus on the large squadrons, making it safe for the atomic bombs to be delivered2.
On July 26th the United States, Great Britain, and China issued a demand for Japan’s immediate and unconditional surrender lest it face destruction. This Potsdam Declaration was dismissed, though the Japanese government did send leaflets to cities that seemed like good targets to evacuate3.
The Japanese also had a nuclear program; in fact they had two as to breed competition and as a failsafe in the event one did not pan out. The Japanese also know that the Americans and the British government had similar programs, but were operating under the conclusion that it would be impossible for these programs to pan out before the war ended. One of the Japanese programs was actually studying what would become the best way to separate U-235 from U-238; however the technology of the day did not allow the process to be effective. In any case, one program was completely destroyed in a bombing, and the other went bankrupt4.
On August 6th Colonial Tibbets got into the Enola Gay and took off from Tinian Island with two scientific escort planes at 2:45 AM. The threesome of planes got into formation over Guam and flew to Japan. The bomb was detonated at 8:16 AM5.
The Japanese assembled a team and correctly identified the explosion as nuclear. They then made the fatal error of thinking themselves secure in their knowledge that the United States could not have enough U-235 for another atomic bomb. What they did not realize was that a bomb had been made with another material – plutonium6.
On the 9th Nagasaki was hit by Fat Man, the plutonium bomb. After the science team identified the debris from this explosion they realized that it did contain plutonium, meaning that the United States had a nuclear reactor. They also realized that the plutonium could be produced at much faster rates than the uranium, and therefore advised the government to concede to the demands of surrender. The Emperor of Japan did so after several days of dispute with his cabinet, and so the bombs were dropped and the World War II came to its unfortunate conclusion7.
A picture of the flight path of the Enola Gay delivering its bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This picture was found on the United States
Government Department of Energy Office of History & Heritage's "The
Manhattan Project" Site.
Sources for This Page
1. The Nuclear Weapon Archive. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/.
2. Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009.
3. Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009.
4. Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009.
5. Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009.
6. Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009.
7. Reed, Thomas C., and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009.