Atomic Bomb Mission
Bockscar was flown on August 9, 1945, by the crew of another B-29, The Great Artiste, and piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, commander of the 393d BS. The plane was co-piloted by 1st Lt. Charles Donald Albury, the normal aircraft commander of Crew C-15. The Great Artiste was designated as the observation, instrumentation support plane for the second mission, and another B-29, The Big Stink, flown by Group Operations Officer Major James I. Hopkins, Jr., as the photographic aircraft. The mission had as its primary target the city of Kokura, Japan, and as its only secondary, Nagasaki.
Bockscar had been flown by Sweeney and crew C-15 in three test drop rehearsals of inert "Fat Man" assemblies in the eight days leading up to the second mission, including the final rehearsal the day before. The Great Artiste, which was the assigned aircraft of the crew with whom Sweeney most often flew, had been designated in preliminary planning to drop the second bomb, but it had been fitted with observation instruments for the Hiroshima mission. Moving the instrumentation from The Great Artiste to Bockscar would be a complex and time-consuming process, and when the second atomic bomb mission was moved up from August 11 to August 9 because of adverse weather forecasts, the crews of The Great Artiste and Bockscar instead exchanged aircraft. The result was that the bomb was carried by Bockscar but flown by the crew C-15 of The Great Artiste.
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Famous quotes containing the words atomic bomb, atomic, bomb and/or mission:
“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)
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—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation “alter” nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
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—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)