WW 2.5

The damned thing didn’t go off! The bombardier’s almost panicked voice was painfully loud in the pilot’s earphones.

Calm down, Ferebee, the pilot’s voice came soothingly over the intercom, picked up by the carbon, throat microphone that was standard for military aircraft in those days. The Enola Gay’s pilot had had many occasions to calm jittery crew members on previous missions, and he had learned that a calm, fatherly-like tone of voice could work wonders. Are you sure you’ve given it enough time? He had also learned that in a combat situation (which technically they were in), one lost a sense of time.

Yeah, it’s way overdue. It must be on the ground by now! The bombardier’s voice was more controlled now, but still contained a note of desperation.

The pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, was thinking furiously. He had the plane in a relatively steeply descending dive to gain maximum speed and distance from the world-shattering blast he’d been assured would occur. He decided to continue the programmed course of action as a safety precaution, remembering well the childhood experience of picking up a firecracker that he thought had gone out.

Pilot to crew, he intoned, what’s the bandit situation? He had been amazed at the lack of harassment the mission had drawn. The Japanese were either asleep at the switch or were husbanding their fuel, aircraft and pilots in anticipation of more of the huge formations of planes that had been wreaking havoc with fire-bomb attacks.

Negative, came the rough voice of the tail gunner, the man with the best view of the cone of potential attack upon a retreating aircraft. The tail gunner spot required a man of unusual visceral fortitude because of its vulnerable position. The tail control surfaces were the Achilles Heel of the lumbering bombers, and Japanese fighter pilots would concentrate their fire upon them. The tail gunner was thus in the unhappy position of being adjacent to the primary target of the fighters, and the haphazard aim of a fighter pilot often snuffed out the tail gunner’s existence. Of course, the tail gunner was the attackers’ immediate enemy, so his neutralization was not entirely unimportant.

A secondary but equally lethal hazard of that position in the plane was the spin that a dying aircraft often fell into. The centrifugal force of the rotary motion could pin the gunner in place, making it impossible for him to make his way to a bail-out port.

Tail gunners , as a class, therefore, were perforce a happy-go-lucky lot, fatalistic and philosophical. The Enola Gay’s was no exception. Usually there would be lively chatter with other gunners in a plane, but George Caron was the sole protector for this aircraft because all the other armament had been removed to afford the special B-29 sufficient range for the mission.

It was somewhat ironic that this particular model, the latest produced, had only one gun, because the fully equipped versions had a new system that allowed a single gunner to automatically direct the firepower of the entire aircraft at a target of his choosing.

Pilot to bombardier … still nothing? The question was somewhat rhetorical because there had been no shock wave such as that they had been warned to expect.

Nothing, came the reply. Bombardiers, more than any other crew members, keenly felt the sting of failure of a mission. Though they would never say it, they felt that the plane was just a launching platform for the devices of destruction they took exquisite pains to drop on their intended target. The portrait of desolation was the bombardier of a plane who had found both the primary and secondary targets socked in and was therefore compelled to drop his bomb load through the clouds onto nothingness. The biblical admonition against spilling one’s seed upon the ground was no less damning than the blue funk that attended such a mission.

The rest of the crew, however, was understandably less than put out by a Milk Run with no fighters or flak to keep their hearts in their mouth for half an hour of hell.

This particular mission had indeed been special, however, and the entire crew (not to mention the specialists who had come along) was desolate over the result.

Parsons! Bill Parsons was the ordnance expert who had performed the task of arming the bomb after they had been airborne from Tinian island for half an hour.

Aye aye sir. (Parsons was a Naval officer.)

What do you make of it?

I don’t know. It’s long overdue … I think it’s a dud.

A dud? Paul had been briefed thoroughly on the weapon, and he could imagine the consternation back on Tinian, and for that matter, back in Los Alamos, where the eggheads who had dreamed up this thing must be filling their drawers. But of course they couldn’t know yet, except indirectly. They should have received the signal of success by now and hadn’t.

The reply came back calmly, but in a tone charged with emotion. I’ve gone through the checklist twice already. Every damned item is checked, and I remember doing each one. The only thing I can think of that could have gone wrong in the arming process is the insertion of the safety retractor pin. I may have crossed the threads as I started it in, and it may not have seated itself properly.

The poor kid was obviously beside himself over the matter, and Paul regretted bringing the matter up. He scanned the sky for their photography plane but it was nowhere in sight. His orders forbade breaking radio silence unless the mission was successful. In that event, it had been judged that it would make no difference.

Glancing at his watch, he noticed that it was a good ten minutes since they had dropped the ill-fated bomb. One and a half minutes would have been consumed in its reaching its intended detonation altitude, so little time that it was deemed necessary to throw the plane into a violent diving turn to escape the expected shock wave, heat flash and radiation that would otherwise have destroyed the aircraft and killed the crew, either immediately or inexorably over a brief period. That meant that it had already been on the ground for some eight minutes. He could imagine the reaction of the Japanese to the huge weapon’s arrival.

CHAPTER 2

Bowing very low, the young man spoke: Honorable Sir, there is a report that the Americans have dropped a very large bomb on the center of the city. It did not detonate. No one was harmed, but it damaged two buildings.

Editor’s Note: The bow is an extremely significant component of Japanese society. The angle of the bow relative to the vertical is a symbol of the individual’s position in the hierarchy. For insignificant people, it may exceed 90 degrees, while important personages barely nod their head. Females bow deeply.

Barely nodding, the Chief of Police regarded the messenger with distaste. The insatiable demand for manpower for military duty had forced the use of teenagers for many of the civil duties normally manned by men twice their age. Overawed by the incredible authority invested in them at such a tender age, many of them were paralyzed with apprehension when reporting to an elder official for fear that their unworthiness for their duty would be recognized.

Are you sure it is a bomb? he intoned with a scowl. The boy flinched at the deep voice projected from the diaphragm of the man, quite unlike his own almost soprano voice.

Oh yes, honorable sir, I saw it myself, and it is shaped exactly like the ones I have seen in pictures, but it is much larger.

The Police Chief paced slowly back and forth, his back ramrod straight, as befitted one of his station. What were those accursed Americans about now? Chief Sato had heard the air raid warning siren followed unusually quickly by the all clear. But he had heard no explosions, no distant rumbles or earth tremors. Why would the Americans fly over Hiroshima and drop a single bomb? Perhaps it was not a bomb; perhaps it was a container for a message to be delivered to some high official forthwith. Still, it was a most unusual way to deliver a message. On the other hand, the crazy Americans were well known for doing strange and unconventional things. After all, America was a land of mongrels, people from all over the world. No respect for tradition, no ancestral devotion. No wonder. In Japan, one could trace one’s background back for generations. The Japanese were capable of acting as one person, the way a great nation should. It was not at all impossible that the undisciplined Americans had chosen this unorthodox method of delivering a message, instead of going through the proper diplomatic channels.

In case it were a bomb, however, he had probably better order an evacuation of the area. From the description of its size, a couple of blocks in each direction should be sufficient. He had heard of the ‘blockbusters’ that were used in other war theatres; perhaps this was such a one. But only one?

After ordering the evacuation, he phoned the office of the military commander of the local garrison and explained the situation. Colonel Aranu was not immediately available, but after some delay came on the line and indicated that he would send a specially trained bomb disposal squad.

Breathing a sigh, Chief Sato then called the Mayor and filled him in on the bomb, but did not detail the evacuation order he had given nor his call to the military garrison. Instead, he suggested that he take such actions with the Mayor’s approval. As always, the Mayor immediately gave his approval. Chief Sato was a student of human nature, and not surprisingly, of oriental reasoning. By his actions, he had saved time without disturbing apparent protocol.

***

The bomb disposal squad, under the command of Lieutenant Nagata (most Japanese surnames are multisyllabic), arrived on the scene within twenty minutes of Chief Sato’s call, and scrambled quickly from the specially designed truck. The men lined up quickly in anticipation of the lieutenant’s orders. Unconsciously, they had aligned themselves not parallel to the street, but at an angle that gave them all a full view of the bomb. They were all shocked by its size. None of their training had prepared them for a monster such as this, which would turn out to weigh almost 10,000 pounds.

Little Boy (the name given it in Los Alamos) lay at a rakish thirty degree angle to the vertical, protruding through the roof of the one-story building it had punctured on it’s descent. Its tail fins had collapsed from the shock of the impact, and the paint was badly scratched, but the body of the bomb was essentially intact.

Lieutenant Nagata retained his composure as he examined the weapon, but he was in a state of shock. Tall by Japanese standards, he felt like a pygmy beside this thing. What kind of infernal machine was this that the relentless Americans had dropped?

Seeing that the equipment they had brought was inadequate, he sent for a crane and a large, flat-bed truck. Though it was taking some risk, it might be better to try to defuse this monster in more secluded surroundings. If it went off while they were loading or transporting it, it could do no more damage than it would if it detonated where it fell.

Waiting for the equipment to arrive, he mused upon why a single bomb had been dropped, and why it had been aimed at such an innocuous part of the city. Either it was intended to reach the earth and detonate on impact, destroying a great deal of nonstrategic property, or it was meant to explode at some preset altitude, in which case it might contain a multiplicity of incendiary charges to be scattered over a wide swath; the latter seemed the most rational intent.

In either event, however, it could not have done enough damage to justify a special, one-bomb mission. Another possibility tickled the edges of his consciousness, but he did not want to bring it forward. Finally it insisted, and he considered the possibility that the bomb was some unusual design powerful enough to destroy both the army garrison some half mile to the east, and the harbor facilities some three-quarter of a mile to the west.

But no bomb on earth was powerful enough to destroy such a wide area. At least none that he had heard of. He was concerned. After hearing of all the secret weapons that their allies, the Germans, had produced, he would not be that much surprised if the Americans had stumbled across one of them during the European invasion.

He mentally counted off the innovations German ingenuity had spawned. There was the pocket battleship: adhering to the strict formula imposed by the treaties of the first World War, designed to hobble the potency of any war ship, it had nonetheless managed to mount the largest Naval guns in history. Their use of the 88 mm antiaircraft guns as field pieces and as tank armament could be counted. Then came the V1 buzz bombs, using a new kind of propulsion system, followed by the V2 rockets that had wreaked havoc on London. There was the M262 jet propelled airplane that the Japanese had learned of by dint of their status as allies of Germany, and finally, there had been the hint of a grander weapon. It was being worked upon feverishly by German scientists, but no further information had issued before the German surrender. Lieutenant Nagata had learned to rely heavily on his intuitive hunches. A former engineering student whose academic career had been interrupted by the war, he had through diligent study, acquired a deep insight into the engineering side of weapons design, and he sensed a new breed standing slightly askew before him.

Before he finished his second cigarette, the heavy equipment he had ordered arrived and he began barking instructions on how he wanted the bomb handled. With the rubble stripped away, the tail of the weapon became totally visible, and he had himself hoisted up on the roof of the building to inspect the vanes to determine whether the fusing mechanism was a conventional, wind activated safety type that would move the fuse into active position only after the bomb had been dropped, and if so, whether it had successfully armed the bomb or not.

Seeing no such mechanism, he personally affixed the crane cable to the still-sturdy roots of the tail fins and directed the operator to raise the bomb a few feet until it was totally suspended. The crane took up the slack and then began straining to dislodge and raise the mass of metal. For a moment, it appeared that it might be inadequate to the task, as it began to tip under the load, but as the bomb stirred, it righted itself and resumed its lifting. Nagata then returned to the ground level to inspect the battered nose of the bomb to evaluate the nature of the contact fuse if such existed. It did not.

This was indeed an unusual device, and the lieutenant was becoming very worried. The men had spread a bed of straw and shredded bamboo on the truck to cushion the process of laying the giant cylinder down, though the lack of a nose fuse made the process much less touchy.

His crew was well trained, and he watched with satisfaction as they efficiently bedded down their prize.

He and the chief of police discussed the route to be taken out of the city with considerable care. With a map spread out on the hood of the truck, they weighed the lives of children who would be attending a large school that lay next to one route against a nursing home full of elderly people which lay near another. They chose in favor of the children by electing the nursing home route, though it was slightly longer. Japan had already lost a huge proportion of the flower of its youth, and could ill afford to lose the future workers and statesmen who would one day bind up her wounds. They also knew that the elderly people would have agreed with the choice had they been given the opportunity.

He instructed the driver on the route to be taken and the care to be exercised to avoid bumps and sudden shocks, then he waved them on. Turning to his own crew, he indicated the preparations to be made in the bomb