That second, the crew reported a huge flash and it had gone off.Ī few seconds later I felt the first blast wave. I just thought this was devastating.īut in the excitement I had counted too fast. I knew how long it took for the bomb to fall and detonate - 43 seconds - so I counted but nothing happened. Unlike the others, this was the only combat mission I had been on, but there was only one point when I was apprehensive. The most important thought in my mind was that this would detonate and end the war. I took out three testing plugs that isolated the bomb and put in three red firing plugs. My final job was to climb down into the bomb bay, crawl around the bomb and manually arm the device. There was a box in the plane's forward compartment that connected to the bomb via a cable system. But where we stayed we were made very welcome and I think people were glad that the war had ended. We didn't hide the fact that we were American and many people turned their faces away from us. We flew low over Hiroshima but could not land anywhere and eventually landed at Nagasaki. In the weeks afterwards, I actually flew back to Japan with some US scientists and some Japanese from their atomic programme. We concluded that it would be over - that not even the most obstinate, uncaring leaders could refuse to surrender after this. We were pleased that the bomb had exploded as planned and later we got to talking about what it meant for the war. At the base you could see nothing but thick black dust and debris - it looked like a pot of hot oil down there. We turned to look back at Hiroshima and already there was a huge white cloud reaching up more than 42,000 feet. The tail-gunner later said he saw it coming towards us - a bit like the haze you see over a car park on a hot day, but moving forwards at great speed. Within a minute of the blast a white cloud had reached 42,000ft Someone called out 'flak' but of course it was the shockwave from the bomb. There was a great jolt on the aircraft and we were thrown off the floor. We'd been told that if we were eight miles away when the thing went off, we'd probably be ok - so we wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the blast.Īll of us - except the pilot - were wearing dark goggles, but we still saw a flash - a bit like a camera bulb going off in the plane. The next thing I felt was 9,400lbs of bomb leaving the aircraft - there was a huge surge and we immediately banked into a right hand turn and lost about 2,000 feet. Once we verified the target, I went in the back and just sat down. I'd flown 58 missions over Europe and Africa - and I said to one of the boys that if we'd sat in the sky for so long over there we'd have been blown out of the air. It was perfectly clear and I was just doing all the things I'd always done as a navigator - plotting our course, getting fixes to make sure we were on course and reading the drifts so we knew the wind speed.Īs we flew over an inland sea I could make out the city of Hiroshima from miles away - my first thought was 'That's the target, now let's bomb the damn thing'.īut it was quiet in the sky. We flew in low over Iwo Jima while the bomb crew checked and armed Little Boy (the uranium bomb) and once we cleared the island we began climbing to our bombing altitude of just over 30,000 feet. There was a lot of picture-taking and interviewing going on - by the military - and it was a relief to get in the Enola Gay about an hour before we took off.