Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki - Aug 09, 1945 - HISTORY.com Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki Share this: Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki Author Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan’s unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called “Bock’s Car,” after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. Nagasaki was a shipbuilding center, the very industry intended for destruction. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city.

The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 (exact figures are impossible, the blast having obliterated bodies and disintegrated records). General Leslie R. Groves, the man responsible for organizing the Manhattan Project, which solved the problem of producing and delivering the nuclear explosion, estimated that another atom bomb would be ready to use against Japan by August 17 or 18—but it was not necessary. Even though the War Council still remained divided (“It is far too early to say that the war is lost,” opined the Minister of War), Emperor Hirohito, by request of two War Council members eager to end the war, met with the Council and declared that “continuing the war can only result in the annihilation of the Japanese people…” The Emperor of Japan gave his permission for unconditional surrender.

Related Videos Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - World War II - HISTORY.com Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Author Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki URL A+E Networks Introduction On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” Google The Manhattan Project Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists–many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe–became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the U.S.

government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the U.S. entry into World War II . The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with spearheading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program, codenamed “The Manhattan Project ” (for the engineering corps’ Manhattan district). Did You Know? After World War II, most of Hiroshima would be rebuilt, though one destroyed section was set aside as a reminder of the effects of the atomic bomb. Each August 6, thousands of people gather at Peace Memorial Park to join in interfaith religious services commemorating the anniversary of the bombing. Over the next several years, the program’s scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission–uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239). They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico , where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb.

Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico. No Surrender for the Japanese By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused. General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.” They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S.

casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided–over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists–to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb–such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state–believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world. “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets).

The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city. Hiroshima’s devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian. Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles. At noon on August 15, 1945 (Japanese time), Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast.

The news spread quickly, and “Victory in Japan” or “V-J Day” celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri , anchored in Tokyo Bay. Tags Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima: 1945 Back to "World War II" Chronology With the destructive capabilities of this weapon in mind, using the bomb certainly would have been one of the most difficult decisions for Truman to make. He decided to use the bomb in order to shorten the war. His reasoning was that innumerable allied lives would be saved while delivering all people who were currently under Japanese rule. He gave Japan a chance to surrender, but they declined so he proceeded with the plan to drop the bomb called "Little Boy." This "Little Boy" happened to weigh 8,000 pounds and contained destructive power equal to 12.5 kilotons of TNT. Once the decision was made, the decision of when and where the bomb was to be dropped shifted to General Carl Spaatz.

A committee chose to drop the bomb on Hiroshima based on three main factors: Hiroshima was a very industrial city, had a military base, and had not yet been bombed, making it a good target to display the destructive power of the US's new super bomb. The bomb was dropped at 8:15 am on August 6, 1945 from a B-29 bomber. The bomb fell from the Enola Gay (the name of the bomber) with a parachute and the bomb exploded several hundred feet above the ground. "A bright light filled the plane," wrote Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay. "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up, mushrooming." For a moment, no one spoke. Then everyone was talking. "Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!" exclaimed the co-pilot, Robert Lewis while pounding on Tibbets' shoulder. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission; it tasted like lead. Then he turned away to write in his journal.

"My God," he asked himself, "what have we done?" The bomb destroyed houses and buildings within a 1.5 mile radius. It was actually the winds created by the bomb which caused the most damage. The true damage however would not be realized for years to come. The long term effects of the bomb were discovered to be: genetic problems, malformed babies, retardations, radiation sickness, and mental trauma. The total death toll of "Little Boy" was about 200,000. After the bomb was dropped Truman once again warned Japan of the devastation which was to come if they did not surrender. "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" Japan failed to comply, however, and the plan was put in motion to drop a second bomb. The second bomb was called "Fat Man" and was to be dropped on the city of Kokura. Because Kokura had heavy cloud cover, the second choice city was Nagasaki. The "Fat Man," as its name would attest to, was much larger and had the destructive capabilities of 22 kilotons of TNT. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945.

It killed 150,000 people as well as causing the same long term effects as "Little Boy." By four o'clock on August fourteenth Japan had accepted unconditional surrender thus ending the war. Sources: Baudot, Marcel ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World War II. Facts on File, Inc, New York: 1980. Dear, I.C.B. ed. The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford University Press, New York: 1995. Manhattan Project: The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945 THE ATOMIC BOMBING OF NAGASAKI (Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945) The Manhattan Project and the Second World War, 1939-1945 The next break in the weather over Japan was due to appear just three days after the attack on Hiroshima, to be followed by at least five more days of prohibitive weather. The plutonium implosion bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," was rushed into readiness to take advantage of this window. No further orders were required for the attack.

Truman's order of July 25th had authorized the dropping of additional bombs as soon as they were ready. At 3:47 a.m. on August 9, 1945, a B-29 named Bock's Car lifted off from Tinian and headed toward the primary target: Kokura Arsenal, a massive collection of war industries adjacent to the city of Kokura. From this point on, few things went according to plan. The aircraft commander, Major Charles W. Sweeney, ordered the arming of the bomb only ten minutes after take-off so that the aircraft could be pressurized and climb above the lightning and squalls that menaced the flight all the way to Japan. (A journalist, William L. Laurence of the New York Times, on an escorting aircraft saw some "St. Elmo's fire" glowing on the edges of the aircraft and worried that the static electricity might detonate the bomb.) Sweeney then discovered that due to a minor malfunction he would not be able to access his reserve fuel.

The aircraft next had to orbit over Yaku-shima off the south coast of Japan for almost an hour in order to rendezvous with its two escort B-29s, one of which never did arrive. The weather had been reported satisfactory earlier in the day over Kokura Arsenal, but by the time the B-29 finally arrived there, the target was obscured by smoke and haze. Two more passes over the target still produced no sightings of the aiming point. As an aircraft crewman, Jacob Beser, later recalled, Japanese fighters and bursts of antiaircraft fire were by this time starting to make things "a little hairy." Kokura no longer appeared to be an option, and there was only enough fuel on board to return to the secondary airfield on Okinawa, making one hurried pass as they went over their secondary target, the city of Nagasaki. As Beser later put it, "there was no sense dragging the bomb home or dropping it in the ocean." As it turned out, cloud cover obscured Nagasaki as well. Sweeney reluctantly approved a much less accurate radar approach on the target. At the last moment the bombardier, Captain Kermit K.

Beahan, caught a brief glimpse of the city's stadium through the clouds and dropped the bomb. At 11:02 a.m., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, Fat Man (right) exploded over Nagasaki. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 21 kilotons, 40 percent greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Nagasaki was an industrial center and major port on the western coast of Kyushu. As had happened at Hiroshima, the "all-clear" from an early morning air raid alert had long been given by the time the B-29 had begun its bombing run. A small conventional raid on Nagasaki on August 1st had resulted in a partial evacuation of the city, especially of school children. There were still almost 200,000 people in the city below the bomb when it exploded. The hurriedly-targeted weapon ended up detonating almost exactly between two of the principal targets in the city, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works to the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works (left) to the north.

Had the bomb exploded farther south the residential and commercial heart of the city would have suffered much greater damage. In general, though Fat Man exploded with greater force than Little Boy, the damage at Nagasaki was not as great as it had been at Hiroshima. The hills of Nagasaki, its geographic layout, and the bomb's detonation over an industrial area all helped shield portions of the city from the weapon's blast, heat, and radiation effects. The explosion affected a total area of approximately 43 square miles. About 8.5 of those square miles were water, and 33 more square miles were only partially settled. Many roads and rail lines escaped major damage. In some areas electricity was not knocked out, and fire breaks created over the last several months helped to prevent the spread of fires to the south. Although the destruction at Nagasaki has generally received less worldwide attention than that at Hiroshima, it was extensive nonetheless. Almost everything up to half a mile from ground zero was completely destroyed, including even the earthquake-hardened concrete structures that had sometimes survived at comparable distances at Hiroshima.

According to a Nagasaki Prefectural report "men and animals died almost instantly" within 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) of the point of detonation. Almost all homes within a mile and a half were destroyed, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly burst into flames as far away as 10,000 feet from ground zero. Of the 52,000 homes in Nagasaki, 14,000 were destroyed and 5,400 more seriously damaged. Only 12 percent of the homes escaped unscathed. The official Manhattan Engineer District report on the attack termed the damage to the two Mitsubishi plants "spectacular." Despite the absence of a firestorm, numerous secondary fires erupted throughout the city. Fire-fighting efforts were hampered by water line breaks, and six weeks later the city was still suffering from a shortage of water. A U.S. Navy officer who visited the city in mid-September reported that, even over a month after the attack, "a smell of death and corruption pervades the place." As at Hiroshima, the psychological effects of the attack were undoubtedly considerable.

As with the estimates of deaths at Hiroshima, it will never be known for certain how many people died as a result of the atomic attack on Nagasaki. The best estimate is 40,000 people died initially, with 60,000 more injured. By January 1946, the number of deaths probably approached 70,000, with perhaps ultimately twice that number dead total within five years. For those areas of Nagasaki affected by the explosion, the death rate was comparable to that at Hiroshima. The day after the attack on Nagasaki, the emperor of Japan overruled the military leaders of Japan and forced them to offer to surrender (almost) unconditionally. Sources and notes for this page . Portions of the text for this page were adapted from, and portions were taken directly from the Office of History and Heritage Resources publication: F. G. Gosling, The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb (DOE/MA-0001; Washington: History Division, Department of Energy, January 1999) , 53-54.

Also used was the report on "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" in the official Manhattan District History, produced by the War Department in 1947 at the direction of Leslie Groves, especially pages 1-19; the "Atomic Bombings" document is available in the University Publications of America (UPA) microfilm collection, Manhattan Project: Official History and Documents (Washington: 1977), reel #1/12; the report itself is a government document. For an account of the mission, see the "Eye Witness Account: Atomic Bomb Mission Over Nagasaki" press release, written by William L. Laurence of the New York Times and released on September 9, 1945; this is also available on reel #1/12 of the UPA Manhattan Project microfilm collection. Summaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki casualty rates and damage estimates appear in Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 319, 329-330, 346, and Vincent C.

Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1988), 545-548. For a description of Kokura Arsenal and interesting reflections on its postwar fate, see "Chapter 4: Kokura" of Paul Saffo's essay "The Road from Trinity: Reflections on the Atom Bomb"; this is available on Paul Saffo's web site at . The map showing the flight paths for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions is reproduced from Gosling, Making the Atomic Bomb, 52. The photographs of Fat Man and of the general devastation at Nagasaki are courtesy the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (via the National Archives (NARA) ). The photograph of the destruction at the Mitsubishi facility north of ground zero is courtesy the Los Alamos National Laboratory ; the photograph was taken by Robert Serber and is reprinted in Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra, Picturing the Bomb: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1995), 190.

The photograph of the mother and child is courtesy the Department of Energy (via NARA). The photograph of the bodies in the trench is reprinted from Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1988), 548. Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 1945 | Atomic Heritage Foundation Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 1945 Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 1945 History Page Type: Date: Thursday, June 5, 2014 After the Interim Committee decided to drop the bomb, the Target Committee determined the locations to be hit, and President Truman issued the Potsdam Proclamation as Japan’s final warning, the world soon learned the meaning of “complete and utter destruction.” The first two atomic bombs ever used were dropped on Japan in early August, 1945. For a detailed timeline of the bombings, please see Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing Timeline . Hiroshima On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.

The bomb was known as "Little Boy", a uranium gun-type bomb that exploded with about thirteen kilotons of force. At the time of the bombing, Hiroshima was home to 280,000-290,000 civilians as well as 43,000 soldiers. Between 90,000 and 166,000 people are believed to have died from the bomb in the four-month period following the explosion. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that after five years there were perhaps 200,000 or more fatalities as a result of the bombing, while the city of Hiroshima has estimated that 237,000 people were killed directly or indirectly by the bomb's effects, including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer. The bombing of Hiroshima, codenamed Operation Centerboard, was approved by Curtis LeMay on August 4, 1945. The B-29 plane that carried Little Boy from Tinian Island in the western Pacific to Hiroshima was known as the Enola Gay, after pilot Paul Tibbets' mother.

Along with Tibbets, copilot Robert Lewis, bombardier Tom Ferebee, navigator Theodore Van Kirk, and tail gunner Robert Caron were among the others on board the Enola Gay. Below are their eyewitness accounts of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan. Pilot Paul Tibbets: "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud... boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall. No one spoke for a moment; then everyone was talking. I remember (copilot Robert) Lewis pounding my shoulder, saying 'Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!' (Bombardier) Tom Ferebee wondered about whether radioactivity would make us all sterile. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission. He said it tasted like lead." Navigator Theodore Van Kirk recalls the shockwaves from the explosion: "(It was) very much as if you've ever sat on an ash can and had somebody hit it with a baseball bat... The plane bounced, it jumped and there was a noise like a piece of sheet metal snapping.

Those of us who had flown quite a bit over Europe thought that it was anti-aircraft fire that had exploded very close to the plane." On viewing the atomic fireball: "I don't believe anyone ever expected to look at a sight quite like that. Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains." Tail gunner Robert Caron: "The mushroom itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. As we got farther away, we could see the base of the mushroom and below we could see what looked like a few-hundred-foot layer of debris and smoke and what have you... I saw fires springing up in different places, like flames shooting up on a bed of coals." Six miles below the crew of the Enola Gay, the people of Hiroshima were waking up and preparing for their daily routines. It was 8:16 A.M. Up to that point, the city had been largely spared by the rain of conventional air bombing that had ravaged many other Japanese cities.

Rumors abounded as to why this was so, from the fact that many Hiroshima residents had emigrated to the U.S. to the supposed presence of President Truman's mother in the area. Still, many citizens, including schoolchildren, were recruited to prepare for future bombings by tearing down houses to create fire lanes, and it was at this task that many were laboring or preparing to labor on the morning of August 6. Just an hour before, air raid sirens had sounded as a single B-29, the weather plane for the Little Boy mission, approached Hiroshima. A radio broadcast announced the sighting of the Enola Gay soon after 8 A.M. The city of Hiroshima was annihilated by the explosion. 70,000 of 76,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and 48,000 of those were entirely razed. Survivors recalled the indescribable and incredible experience of seeing that the city had ceased to exist. A college history professor: "I climbed Hikiyama Hill and looked down. I saw that Hiroshima had disappeared... I was shocked by the sight... What I felt then and still feel now I just can't explain with words.

Of course I saw many dreadful scenes after that—but that experience, looking down and finding nothing left of Hiroshima—was so shocking that I simply can't express what I felt... Hiroshima didn't exist—that was mainly what I saw—Hiroshima just didn't exist." Medical doctor Michihiko Hachiya: "Nothing remained except a few buildings of reinforced concrete... For acres and acres the city was like a desert except for scattered piles of brick and roof tile. I had to revise my meaning of the word destruction or choose some other word to describe what I saw. Devastation may be a better word, but really, I know of no word or words to describe the view." Writer Yoko Ota: "I reached a bridge and saw that the Hiroshima Castle had been completely leveled to the ground, and my heart shook like a great wave... the grief of stepping over the corpses of history pressed upon my heart." Those who were close to the epicenter of the explosion were simply vaporized by the intensity of the heat. One man left only a dark shadow on the steps of a bank as he sat.

The mother of Miyoko Osugi, a 13-year-old schoolgirl working on the fire lanes, never found her body, but she did find her geta sandal. The area covered by Miyoko's foot remained light, while the rest of it was darkened by the blast. Many others in Hiroshima, farther from the Little Boy epicenter, survived the initial explosion but were severely wounded, including injuries from and burns across much of their body. Among these people, panic and chaos were rampant as they struggled to find food and water, medical assistance, friends and relatives and to flee the firestorms that engulfed many residential areas. Having no point of reference for the bomb's absolute devastation, some survivors believed themselves to have been transported to a hellish version of the afterlife. The worlds of the living and the dead seemed to converge. A Protestant minister: "The feeling I had was that everyone was dead. The whole city was destroyed... I thought this was the end of Hiroshima—of Japan—of humankind... This was God's judgment on man." A six-year-old boy: "Near the bridge there were a whole lot of dead people... Sometimes there were ones who came to us asking for a drink of water.

They were bleeding from their faces and from their mouths and they had glass sticking in their bodies. And the bridge itself was burning furiously... The details and the scenes were just like Hell." A sociologist: "My immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about... I had never seen anything which resembled it before, but I thought that should there be a hell, this was it—the Buddhist hell, where we were thought that people who could not attain salvation always went... And I imagined that all of these people I was seeing were in the hell I had read about." A boy in fifth grade: "I had the feeling that all the human beings on the face of the earth had been killed off, and only the five of us (his family) were left behind in an uncanny world of the dead." A grocer: "The appearance of people was... well, they all had skin blackened by burns... They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back... Many of them died along the road—I can still picture them in my mind—like walking ghosts...

They didn't look like people of this world." Many people traveled to central places such as hospitals, parks, and riverbeds in an attempt to find relief from their pain and misery. However, these locations soon became scenes of agony and despair as many injured and dying people arrived and were unable to receive proper care. A sixth-grade girl: "Bloated corpses were drifting in those seven formerly beautiful rivers; smashing cruelly into bits the childish pleasure of the little girl, the peculiar odor of burning human flesh rose everywhere in the Delta City, which had changed to a waste of scorched earth." A fourteen-year-old boy: "Night came and I could hear many voices crying and groaning with pain and begging for water. Someone cried, 'Damn it! War tortures so many people who are innocent!' Another said, 'I hurt! Give me water!' This person was so burned that we couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The sky was red with flames.

It was burning as if scorching heaven." Nagasaki Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 – a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as "Fat Man.” On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war. Prior to August 9, Nagasaki had been the target of small scale bombing by the United States. Though the damage from these bombings was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and many people were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the nuclear attack. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 75,000 people died immediately following the atomic explosion, while another 60,000 people suffered severe injuries. Total deaths by the end of 1945 may have reached 80,000.

The decision to use the second bomb was made on August 7, 1945 on Guam. Its use was calculated to indicate that the United States had an endless supply of the new weapon for use against Japan and that the United States would continue to drop atomic bombs on Japan until the country surrendered unconditionally. The city of Nagasaki, however, was not the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Instead, officials had selected the city of Kokura, where Japan had one of its largest munitions plants. The B-29 "Bockscar", piloted Major Charles Sweeney, was assigned to deliver the "Fat Man" to the city of Kokura on the morning of August 9, 1945. Accompanying Sweeney on the mission were copilots Charles Donald Albury and Fred J. Olivi, weaponeer Frederick Ashworth, and bombadier Kermit Beahan. At 3:49am, "Bockscar" and five other B-29s departed the island of Tinian and headed towards Kokura.

When the plane arrived over the city nearly seven hours later, thick clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid on nearby Yawata the previous day covered most of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point. Pilot Charles Sweeney made three bomb runs over the next fifty minutes, but bombardier Beahan was unable to drop the bomb because he could not see the target visually. By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close, and Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser, who was monitoring Japanese communications, reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands. Running low on fuel, the crew aboard Bockscar decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki. When the B-29 arrived over the city twenty minutes later, the downtown area was also covered by dense clouds. Frederick Ashworth, the plane's weaponeer proposed bombing Nagasaki using radar. At that moment, a small opening in the clouds at the end of the three-minute bomb run permitted bombardier Kermit Beahan to identify target features. At 10:58 AM local time, Bockscar visually dropped Fat Man.

It exploded 43 seconds later with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of 1,650 feet, about 1.5 miles northwest of the intended aiming point. The radius of total destruction from the atomic blast was about one mile, followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to two miles south of where the bomb had been dropped. In contrast to many modern aspects of Hiroshima, almost all of the buildings in Nagasaki were of old-fashioned Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings with wood walls and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also situated in buildings of wood or other materials not designed to withstand explosions. As a result, the atomic explosion over Nagasaki leveled nearly every structure in the blast radius. The failure to drop Fat Man at the precise bomb aim point caused the atomic blast to be confined to the Urakami Valley. As a consequence, a major portion of the city was protected from the explosion. The Fat Man was dropped over the city's industrial valley midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works in the north.

The resulting explosion had a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, roughly the same as the Trinity blast. Nearly half of the city was completely destroyed. Bockscar's copilot Fred J. Olivi published a detailed account of the effects of the atomic explosion over Nagasaki. Here are some of his reactions: Olivi: "Suddenly, the light of a thousand suns illuminated the cockpit. Even with my dark welder's goggles, I winced and shut my eyes for a couple of seconds. I guessed we were about seven miles from "ground zero" and headed directly away from the target, yet the light blinded me for an instant. I had never experienced such an intense bluish light, maybe three or four times brighter than the sun shining above us." "I've never seen anything like it! Biggest explosion I've ever seen...This plume of smoke I'm seeing is hard to explain. A great white mass of flame is seething within the white mushroom shaped cloud. It has a pinkish, salmon color. The base is black and is breaking a little way down from the mushroom." "The Mushroom cloud was coming right at us.

I immediately looked up and could see that he was right, the cloud was getting close to Bockscar. We had been told not to fly through the atomic cloud because it was extremely dangerous to the crew and aircraft. Knowing this, Sweeney put Bockscar into a steep dive to the right, away from the cloud, throttles wide open. For a few moments we could not tell if we were out-running the ominous cloud or if it was gaining on us, but gradually we pulled away from the dangerous radioactive cloud before it engulfed us, much to everyone's relief." Tatsuichiro Akizuki: "All the buildings I could see were on fire... Electricity poles were wrapped in flame like so many pieces of kindling... It seemed as if the earth itself emitted fire and smoke, flames that writhed up and erupted from underground. The sky was dark, the ground was scarlet, and in between hung clouds of yellowish smoke. Three kinds of color—black, yellow, and scarlet—loomed ominously over the people, who ran about like so many ants seeking to escape... It seemed like the end of the world." Aftermath On August 14, Japan surrendered.

Journalist George Weller was the "first into Nagasaki" and described the mysterious "atomic illness" (the onset of radiation sickness) that was killing patients who outwardly appeared to have escaped the bomb's impact. Controversial at the time and for years later, Weller's articles were not allowed to be released until 2006. Controversy The debate over the bomb – whether there should have been a test demonstration, whether the Nagasaki bomb was necessary, and more – continues to this day. The bombing of Hiroshima, from 10 km away Hiroshima after the bombing Hiroshima's financial district after the bombing Hiroshima after the bombing 6 and 9 August 1945 Hiroshima / Nagasaki: CTBTO Preparatory Commission 6 and 9 August 1945 Hiroshima / Nagasaki The test site after detonation: a crater of fused soil, also known as “Trinite” radiates from ground zero. On 16 July 1945, U.S. scientists working on the Manhattan Project successfully detonated the first-ever nuclear explosion in the ‘ Trinity ’ test at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

With World War II still dragging on in the Pacific, preparations moved forward to use nuclear bombs against Japan. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a reminder of what horrors nuclear weapons can inflict. CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo Pilot Paul Tibbets (centre) had named the aircraft after his mother. On 6 August 1945, at 08:15, the first bomb was dropped on the centre of Hiroshima. ‘Little Boy’ was a gun-type fission bomb, using a conventional explosive charge to fire one sub-critical mass of uranium into another. This kind of device had never been tested before, but the scientists were confident it would work. And it did. The bomb had an explosive yield of around 13 kilotons . At the moment of detonation, a fireball was generated that raised temperatures to 4,000 degrees Celsius, turning Hiroshima – where many buildings were made of wood and paper - into an inferno. The blast created shock waves faster than the speed of sound. This and the radiation immediately killed everything within one kilometre of the hypocentre.

A victim of the Hiroshima bomb (AP Photo/The Association of the Photographers of the Atomic (Bomb) Destruction of Hiroshima, Yotsugi Kawahara) After the blast, those who approached ground zero searching for the missing were exposed to radiation. Black rain, containing large amounts of radioactive fallout , caused widespread contamination. Estimates of casualties vary greatly. A more conservative estimate by the atomic archive lists 66,000 people killed immediately and a total death toll of 135,000, while the U.S.-Japanese Radiation Effects Research Foundation indicates a range of 90,000 to 166,000 deaths within the first four months. Hiroshima’s many messages of peace and hope have educated the world about the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, inspiring a global campaign focused on the unacceptability of using these arms under international humanitarian and human rights law. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's message for Hiroshima Day 2014 'Fat Man' yielded 21 kilotons. Three days later, on the morning of 9 August, a second U.S. aircraft rose from the airbase at Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The nuclear bomb it carried was code-named ‘Fat Man’. It was a more sophisticated plutonium-based implosion-type bomb which had been tested in the Trinity test. The primary target had been the city of Kokura. However due to a thick layer of clouds, the airplane’s crew reverted to the secondary target - Nagasaki. Nagasaki before and after The bomb detonated at an altitude of approximately 500 metres and had a yield of 21 kilotons. Casualty estimates by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation for immediate deaths range from 60,000 to 80,000. In the weeks that followed the bombings and Japan’s surrender, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the object of intense studies by U.S. scientists. The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission was founded to study the effects of radioactive contamination on the victims. Its results, including the extensive film and photo material taken at the time, remained classified for decades. Boy carrying his injured brother a day after the Nagasaki bombing. The bombings were officially justified as a necessary evil to end the war and avoid an invasion of Japan, which proponents claimed would have led to a greater loss of life.

Critics inside and outside of the United States, however, questioned the morality and necessity of the bombings, arguing that the main reason for Japan’s surrender was the Soviet Union entering the war on the side of the allies and that the diplomatic means were not exhausted. Also the possibility of bombing an unpopulated area as a demonstration has been pointed out. With nuclear testing, countries can develop even more powerful nuclear weapons. The CTBT bans all nuclear testing. At the CTBTO, we stand ready to implement this Treaty. CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo The 1951 U.S. 'George' Test was already over 10 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out after 1945 by different countries. They aided the proliferation of nuclear weapons and helped to develop weapons orders of magnitude more destructive than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Following decades of public campaigning and arduous multilateral negotiations, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature in 1996. It bans all nuclear explosions. The Treaty has yet to enter into force .

To commemorate the victims of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Vienna, a GENBAKU NO-HI celebration took place in the Rotunda of the Vienna International Centre on 6 August 2015 at 12:00. External links:

Question: What was the name of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945?
Answer: Fat Man