CITY OF 300,000 VANISHED IN CLOUD OF SMOKE
Bomb crew wore black spectacles: Heat could be felt 10 miles away ATOM BOMB: 1am cable gives first EYE-WITNESS STORIES
possible to avoid the full effect of the explosion. We stayed in the target area two minutes. The smoke rose to a height of 40,000ft.
‘Only Captain Parsons, the observer, Major Ferebee, the bombardier, and myself knew what dropped. All the others knew it was a special weapon. I made a sharp turn in less than half a minute to get broadside to the target.
‘All of us in the plane felt the heat from the brilliant flash and the concussion from the blast.
‘Nothing was visible where only minutes before there was the outline of a city, with its streets and buildings and piers clearly to be seen.
‘Soon fires sprang up on the edge of the city, but the city itself was entirely obscured.’
Said Parsons: ‘ After the missile had been released I sighed and stood back for the shock. When it came, the men aboard with me gasped “My God” and what had been Hiroshima was a mountain of smoke like a giant mushroom.
‘A thousand feet above the ground was a great mass of dust, boiling, swirling, and extending over most of the city. We watched it for several minutes, and when the tip of the mushroom broke off there was evidence of fires.
‘When the bomb fell away we began putting as much distance between us and the ball of fire which we knew was coming as quickly as possible. There was a terrific flash of light. The visual shock was apparent for several miles.’
GREAT FIRES
General Spaatz, C-in-C Strategic Air Forces, Pacific, said: ‘One of these bombs is equivalent to a raid by 2,000 B-29 Super-Fortresses. Photographic evidence taken at the time the bomb was released shows nothing but tremendous smoke.
‘A reconnaissance plane over Hiroshima four hours later still could not see anything of the city except great fires around the outskirts.
‘It looks like enormous damage. That column of smoke — 40,000ft high — was still there after four hours.’
Spaatz only smiled when asked if another bomb would be dropped in the near future. He would not comment on what would happen i f 600 Super-Fortresses — a normal-sized raid — all carried the new bomb against Japan.
He waved aside all questions as to how the bomb was carried, its size, or from what altitude it was dropped.
MORE TO COME
He announced that a leaflet campaign would let the Japanese people know that they had been ‘atom-bombed’, and could expect more in the future. Whether specific cities would be warned in advance was not made clear, but it seemed unlikely. Spaatz a nnounced t hat more Super- Forts were ready to f ollow Enola Gay (Tibbits’ plane). Atomic bombers would operate from the 20th Air Force’s bases in the Marianas General Thomas Farrell, executive assistant to General Groves, who is in charge of Army development projects, said that the date for the dropping of the first atom bomb was fixed more than a year ago