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73 years ago today: the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. For reasons I have written about, I think it is in many ways a much more interesting set of circumstances than the Hiroshima bombing:https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/nagasaki-the-last-bomb …
Namely: 1. Whereas Hiroshima was very well-planned and executed, Nagasaki was not. It was added to the bombing order almost as an afterthought, written in by hand, to compensate for Kyoto having been removed from the list, and Niigata being too far away to be an alternate target.pic.twitter.com/rYFqQZIdb9
2. It was the only target not seriously considered by the Target Committee, because it had already been conventionally bombed, had very poor geography for an atomic bomb, and was a low-priority target. http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html …
3. It was never put on the list of "reserved" targets for the atomic bomb. This is a factor of its late addition to the target list, but it is a commonly-repeated error to say that both of the atomic bombed cities were "reserved." Again, it had been conventionally bombed.pic.twitter.com/KsELp2Nl9T
4. The mission almost went completely sideways. The main target, Kokura, was obscured by smoke and/or clouds, for reasons that have never been really definitively determined.http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/22/luck-kokura/ …
5. After wasting a lot of time, first trying to rendezvous with an observer plane after flying through a storm, and also over Kokura, Bockscar went to Nagasaki with barely enough fuel left. But Nagasaki was also obscured by clouds.
6. With the alternative being to drop the bomb without really seeing the target, or drop it in the ocean (because they didn't have enough fuel to fly it back), they opted to countermand their main orders about visual bombing and drop it based on radar.
7. The bombardier would later claim there was a miraculous hole in the clouds... but observers even at the time would note that they missed their target by a substantial margin, the same margin you'd get if it was radar-bombed.pic.twitter.com/4382f2Avy9
8. The bomb actually ended up detonating over one of the most civilian areas of Nagasaki, and (ironically) one of the most Christian areas of Japan. The USAAF's own maps indicate that almost everything near GZ was civilian: houses, schools, hospitals.pic.twitter.com/sIpsBOyMqZ
9. It is essentially coincidental that two factories that produced munitions happened to be at the northern and southern fringes of the blast zone. The geography of the city also meant that, unlike Hiroshima, it was still functional (in the large "lower" half) after the bombing.
10. There were more mishaps and near-misses than I could even fit into my New Yorker article. Here's one of my favorites: that time in which the Fat Man bomb appeared to indicate, mid-flight, that it was armed and ready to detonate. From John Coster-Mullen's book.pic.twitter.com/EqEmZR7CGf
11. The bomb itself was christened with the acronym JANCFU: Joint Army-Navy-Civilian F*** Up. I think this was about as prophetic as one might imagine. The Nagasaki bombing run was as clear an indication that the nuclear age would be full of unpredictable mishaps and risks.pic.twitter.com/ikvtyAXKJ8
12. I'll just finish with my conclusion paragraph in my New Yorker piece on Nagasaki — which, as an aside, is still perhaps my favorite piece of writing I've ever done. FIN. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/nagasaki-the-last-bomb …pic.twitter.com/c2pMyyXz11
Fascinating stuff. My great grandfather was a captain in the merchant navy & led 1 of the 1st ships into Nagasaki harbour after the bomb dropped. Not sure of timescales but he died suspiciously young.
I thought I read that the Japanese were utterly confused as to what happened at Hiroshima. They were willing to surrender, but US didn't want to wait.
He has another thread on surrender timeline. By 8/8 they knew what had happened at H, and were deliberating when N happened. Bombs were supposed to be 7 days apart, but weather delayed H and accelerated N. Supposed to be 8/3 & 8/10.
thanks. Infrastructure in Japan had been decimated by then. I still think they dropped the 2nd one to prove that the first wasn't a fluke.
Bockscar as she appeared today, during a visit to the National Museum of the US Air Force.pic.twitter.com/lWulp9dmfn
if they took a shot in the dark why didn't they just hit the primary? If the anti air got heavy drop it and leave.
Nagasaki is southeast of Kokura. It's closer to Tinian and much closer to Okinawa (a divert airfield if they were going to run out of fuel returning to Tinian).pic.twitter.com/eMKxsyYtGM
thnx,could they have made Tinian/Okinawa if they dropped on Kokura clouds be damned?
I don't know. Probably?
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