I would be most impressed by the man who says he was already armed with the facts revealed in this documentary. You will learn things.

Any discussion in this thread will avoid rehashing the decision to use these two bombs on Japan. I am of the opinion that the United States had no choice but to deploy these bombs, and on that particular point, that's all that will be said in this thread.

Excellent.

Yes, I learned several things that I never knew and a few that I learned were incorrect, now set straight.

I am grateful that we had such men with the fortitude to stay the course in such distressing a time.

Outstanding documentary!

On the way home from the NRA convention in Indianapolis in 2014, I sat next to and had a fascinating conversation Russell Gackenbach. He was the navigator on the camera plane, Necessary Evil, for the Hiroshima bombing and the navigator on the weather reconnaissance plane over Kokura, Enola Gay, for the second bombing.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with him:

Levy: Can you tell us now about the lead-up to the second mission, the Nagasaki mission? When did you find out that there would be a second atomic bombing mission?

Gackenbach: First of all, I don’t know what they told us, but you assume, since you were trained for special missions, that it was going to be another atomic bomb. As it turned out, my crew from the Up an’ Atom was selected to be the weather ship over Kokura, which was the target. Again, our regular plane was out of service, being checked over. We did fly, and I found Kokura. My navigation was correct for that day. That was always a relief, when you find your target.

The one plane out of—I’m trying to think of the name of the thing—was the Bockscar, was the one dropped. That mission had a few costly errors in it that affected our program, but did not affect my plane at all.

Levy: Which plane were you on for the Nagasaki mission?

Gackenbach: The Enola Gay.

Voices of the Manhattan Project

Look forward to watching the documentary. The incidental mention of "Indianapolis" in the post just above triggered my memory of the horrendous story of the USS Indianapolis after it had delivered the bomb(s) to Tinian.
Everything those days was done with such high stakes. Destroyers flung at Jap battleships to try to protect the Leyte invasion. Hundreds of lives lost on the Indianapolis because of poor communication. Cities destroyed with a single bomb unlike anything seen before. And the stakes again: a million GI's lives; many millions of Japanese lives. A heroic time. I pray we never see such another.

Thanks for posting. An excellent documentry. My dad was stationed at Tinian and flew many B29 missions over Japan.

Paul Tibbetts, command pilot of the Enola Gay, with his grandson Paul Tibbetts IV, B-2 bomber pilot, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, USAF. His grandfather had been commander of the 509th Composite Group.

The photo shows them piloting a restored B-29, the only time they flew together.

quote:

What do you think your grandfather would say about the bombings 75 years later?

He said many times that, on order from the president, they were given a mission that was expected to accelerate the end of World War II and save countless lives. It was their job to ensure its success. That type of mission had never been done before, and it required an enormous amount of teamwork—the military and political leadership, scientists, weapons experts, and the airmen who would ultimately maintain, load, and fly the aircraft. On this significant anniversary, I think he would say how proud he is of our men and women serving in the military today, who are carrying on the legacy of all who have served before them.

Link: Los Alamos National Laboratories

Very interesting. I never realized that the second mission was that much of a cluster f***. Sweeney sounds like a real clown. Surprising that Tibbets picked him, a guy with no combat experience, to command that mission.

Thanks for posting this. There were a number of details I hadn’t heard before.
My dad was about to start training as he was recovering from malaria, in the mountains of northern Luzon. He had been in the Pacific for a year and an half and always said he wouldn’t have survived the invasion, so I know what that means for me.
He was in the 32nd Division, Army and after the surrender they were sent to Japan to start the disarmament process, going to towns where the weapons were being gathered. They had anyone capable of carrying a weapon trained, including women and children.
They actually drove around the outskirts of Nagasaki in their travels and saw the destruction from a short distance.

The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War pod cast did some great episodes on this subject.

The uncle of my 4th grade teacher was Jacob Beser. He was the radar specialist on both missions, the only man to do that.

Interesting statistic at the end. There were 495,000 Purple Hearts made available for the invasion of Japan. Those lasted through the Korean War, the Vietnam War and today (whatever the date that person was being interviewed) 3 of every 4 Purple Hearts awarded are left over from the expected causalites of the invasion of Japan.

After watching the video and seeing all the possible failure points that could have caused this to not happen, I thought about the possible effects.

One possibility was they would have had to scrub the drop and could have ended up dropping the bomb (unexploded) into the ocean or ditching. Either way, no second bomb would have been dropped within days of the first. Either way, weeks or months before we continued.

Would the Japanese have decided they/we didn't have the resources to continue bombing and gone back the the Plan A thinking, make the Allies invade and bleed our side with casualties until we would have a negotiated peace.

The world might be a much different place had things not happened as they just barely did.

Thanks for that. I had read about much of what was covered, but not all, and so it was definitely worth watching even though my attention span for videos is usually much less.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
The world might be a much different place had things not happened as they just barely did.

That was my thought as well. For that reason the success of the second mission was actually more important than the first’s. If the first had not succeeded for some reason nothing would have changed. If the second failed, however, and there had been a significant delay before a follow up, that would have supported the Japanese hardliners who believed the US could not have produced more than one weapon. It would have also given them time to recover from the psychological shock and dig in both figuratively and literally.

It really does raise the question of “What were they thinking?” in the decisions about how the second mission was handled. I suppose that the purpose of two rapid missions may not have been explained to the relatively low level on-scene commanders such as Tibbets—?

After hearing of the numerous failures of judgement by Sweeney, It made me wonder how a guy like that was selected to lead that mission, given the critically important nature.

Tibbets on the other hand, was the kind of guy you'd expect and he (and the mission planners) didn't have the benefit of any prior experience a mission would offer. Sweeney even went on that first mission in another plane. maybe that made it look too easy to him.

While you can't fault Sweeney for a variable like the weather, thank God for the flawless expertise and execution by the bombardier.
The fact the engines started to die during the landing due to fuel starvation shows just how close to failure this mission was.

quote:

Originally posted by jsbcody:
The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War pod cast did some great episodes on this subject.

Those guys did a great job. One piece of information that stood out for me was during the invasion of Okinawa, there were more sailors killed & injured onboard ship as a result of the relentless Kamikaze attacks, then the number of casualties of US ground forces on Okinawa were dealing with.

Just looking at the continual escalation of numbers killed as each campaign progressed, from Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa and it becomes clear that the casualties were only going to go up, combined with the horrendous situation that the troops had to face with civilians committing suicide, using sharpened sticks and pressing children into solider-roles; there no shortage of dairies & letters home expressing the anguish US troops were dealing with. Leadership needed to find a way to end it fast. It was total war.

That was GOOD!! I'm a "nukaholic" and military history nut, so I was familiar with most of the details. I did not catch any errors.

I was impressed with the color film from Tinian (which I visited 35 years ago) and so many interviews, some from 1945 and others from later.


Bockscar is on the floor at the AF Museum in Dayton, there are no special security measures as they have the for Enola Gay in DC.

https://www.nationalmuseum.af....-b-29-superfortress/

Tinian history with lots of photos:

https://www.airfields-freeman....cific.htm#northfield