Hiroshima Page #3

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Angle of approach: bomb drop like this.

Prevailing winds from the north.

You may want to come in this way,

then you'll be flying with the wind,

and you'll clear the target zone.

Too risky. We'll fly into the wind.

That way we're slower and

more accurate.

You may get caught in the blast.

Once I make the dive turn,

I'll have a tail wind,

we'll be out quicker.

Anyway, we'll take that risk.

We want to be as accurate

as possible, don't we?

Hiroshima was an

important military base,

the Headquarters of

the Second General Army,

with a key role in the defence

against the expected invasion.

Akiko Takakura,

who was nineteen,

and working as a bank clerk

in the city centre,

remembers the atmosphere at the time.

People called it an army city.

Everywhere you looked

you saw the army,

and there were always a lot of ships

transporting soldiers from the port.

All the major cities of Japan had already

been the targets of bombing raids,

so everybody living in Hiroshima expected

that Hiroshima would be targeted soon.

What no one could realise was that

the city had been preserved for a reason:

the Americans had deliberately

avoided firebombing Hiroshima

so they could measure the

precise effects of the atom bomb.

On the evening of 4th August,

Paul Tibbets called his men together.

The bombing mission was

set for the following night,

when the clouds over Japan

were due to clear.

The moment has arrived.

This is what we've all

been working towards.

Very recently the weapon we're about to deliver

was successfully tested in the States.

We have received orders

to drop it on the enemy.

There will be three possible targets.

In order of priority, they are Hiroshima,

Kurkurra, Nagasaki.

The bomb you are going to drop

is something new in the history of warfare.

It is the most destructive

weapon ever produced.

We think it's going to knock out

everything within a three-mile area.

Roll film.

Kill the lights.

Weapons specialist Deke Parsons

had brought film of

the New Mexico explosion.

But the projectorjammed.

The film you are now not about to see

was made of the only test

we have performed.

I was in a B-29,

looking down on the target,

in the darkness,

and I can say that it is the brightest

and the hottest thing

on this earth since creation.

This is what happened.

The flash of the explosion

was seen for ten miles.

A soldier 10,000 feet away

was knocked off his feet.

Another soldier,

more than five miles away,

was temporarily blinded.

Those of us who were there,

knew it was the

beginning of a new age.

No one knows

exactly what will happen

when the bomb

is dropped from the air:

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