Tibbetts took off from Tinian accompanied by two other B-29s, “The Great Artiste,” which carried instrumentation to measure the blast, and “Necessary Evil,” which served as the photography aircraft. The plane belonged to the 393rd Bombardment Squadron of the 509th Composite Group. Tibbetts piloted the B-29 “Enola Gay,” named after his mother. The primary target was Hiroshima with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. Fearing that a crash upon takeoff would result in a nuclear explosion, Tibbetts had the engineers modify the Little Boy bomb design to incorporate a removable breech plug that would permit the bomb to be armed in flight.Īfter the Japanese rejected the Allies’ surrender demand, the mission was given the green light. The components for the bomb were delivered by the USS Indianapolis to Tinian on July 26. created the 509th Composite Group, commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbetts to conduct the drops. There were even proposals of using poison gas on the Japanese, as well as dropping it with a warning in an unpopulated area but those proposals were rejected. decided that the atomic bomb would be attempted. casualties in the planned invasion ever increasing as the Japanese rushed troops back from China and created more homeland divisions, the U.S. Japanese firefighting equipment was not able to keep up. Just in one bombing of Tokyo, over 100,000 people died. Over 100 of Japan’s largest cities and towns were firebombed by June. The results of the fire-bombing were horrific. In many of the largest cities in Japan, most buildings were of paper and wood. The aim was to destroy the Japanese war machine by targeting the industries. In preparation for the planned invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall), the B-29 raids over Japan went from high-altitude precision bombing to low-level area bombing with incendiaries. Since the battle of the Philippine Sea, Japanese suicide pilots (kamikaze), had also been taking a toll on American warships and lives. Japanese troops would rather fight to the death than surrender. Where Japanese casualties had been five to six times that of American troops earlier in the war, by the time Okinawa was finally secured in June 1945, the ratios had dropped to 2-1. But those American victories were very costly. B-29 bombers could now hit Japanese cities and were close enough to have fighter cover all the way to Japan and back. The Japanese still had massive numbers of troops in China but defeats in the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa had the U.S. Although they still controlled parts of New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, and Indochina, their forces there were cut off and had no hope of coming to the assistance of the Japanese islands. The Japanese had been pushed all the way across the Pacific, had their war industries smashed, and were starving. It was the only time that nuclear weapons have been used in war.īy August of 1945, there was little doubt that an invasion of mainland Japan was going to happen. Following the bombings, Japan surrendered. According to some estimates, more than 226,000 people, mostly civilians, died in the two blasts. The atomic bomb was dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. casualties and millions of Japanese, the decision by President Truman to drop the atomic bomb on Japan was not made lightly. In the face of increasingly fanatical Japanese resistance during the island-hopping Pacific campaign, American casualties were increased dramatically.įearing that an invasion of Japan would cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. In the closing days of World War II, the United States was facing a difficult decision.