“My God, what have we done?”
[a fictionalized account of the possibilities]
August 9, 1945
Altitude: 22,000 feet
“Tom, how does it look down there?”
“Can't say, Paul. This cloud layer is a lot heavier than we anticipated.”
“Ted, how do we look?”
“You're off, Paul. Make an easy 180 heading due north and climb to 32,000.”
“Tom, let me know when you're clear.”
“Alright. So far we got nothing. We may have to make a go-round until I can get a good look.”
“Ted, can you give me a ceiling on this cloud layer? I may have drop below.”
“Check. Looks like 7000 or 8000 feet, but we should clear 15 - 20 miles out.”
The Enola Gay buffeted against a strong wind from the north, making it difficult for Paul to maintain course. He had flown blind before, but never in the new B-29, an aircraft that was drastically altered to carry a heavy load that included Little Boy and a crew that was larger than usual. The Enola Gay was cumbersome and difficult to handle, but she held her own at 32,000 feet, despite the brutal headwind. Below us was a thick cloud layer that made it impossible for the pilot or the bombardier to see anything but gray overcast.
The plane was heavy with brass, but we had flown together before and that, coupled with the nature of the mission made formality unimportant. First names were sufficient. The crew consisted of Captain Theodore J. Van Kirk, navigator; Major Thomas W. Ferebee, bombardier; Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot; yours truly, Captain Michael Smith, copilot; Lieutenant Jacob Beser, radar countermeasures officer; Sergeant Joe Stiborik, radar operator; Sergeant George R. Caron, tailgunner; Pfc. Rich Nelson, radio operator; Sergeant Robert Shumard, assistant flight engineer; and Sergeant Wyatt Duzenbury, flight engineer. Not counting Little Boy, (the payload) it was a heavy package for the retrofitted B-29 Stratofortress.
As a crew, we weren’t strangers - we spent some time together the night before getting re-acquainted. There was a rule about drinking the night before a mission, but there were enough stripes in the bar to quietly overlook the regulation. I sat at a corner table with Van Kirk, Ferebee and Shumard.
“Smith, did you see the new logo?”
“What?”
“The new logo on the front of the plane,” Ferebee said.
“No, why?”
“We are now flying the Enola Gay.” I was dumbfounded. It was a long story, but originally, I had been selected to pilot the mission. I could only guess that this last minute change was a result of Tibbets’ close involvement with the plane’s construction and the number of training missions he had flown. Still, I felt slighted, and now this, well…
“What the hell does it mean?”
“Enola Gay? It’s Paul’s mother’s name,” Shumard said.
Paul was concerned about the cloud layer when he handed the controls to me. He un-strapped and climbed back to the navigator, who showed him the map. A circle around a red "X" pinpointed the target.
I wrestled with the controls, trying to keep Paul’s mother namesake on course. It seemed like only moments ago that we had roared down that rutted runway in the pre-dawn mist on Tinian Island. Paul had his favorite smoking pipe and the usual supply of cyanide tablets. We all knew what they were for and hoped there would be no reason to use them. We had made two flyovers last month, and people on the ground seemed to regard us as a routine nuisance. Some of them even waved. We didn’t expect any anti-aircraft fire.
When we lifted off, Paul told me what General Ent had said to him. “If this is a success, Paul, you’re going to be a hero. If it’s not, you could wind up in prison.” I thought about that remark - it should have been the other way around. But everything about Special Bombing Mission #13 was twisted, including the mission number. Who came up with that bright idea? Less than 24 hours ago, the ground crew painted “Enola Gay” on the plane’s fuselage. Paul, who was only 24, insisted that the plane be named after his mother, Enola Gay. I wondered how she might feel about that, or how his father, Paul Tibbets Sr. might feel. How could it possibly feel to know that your son had your wife’s name painted on a plane that would unleash hell on earth?
We caught a sharp downdraft just as Paul returned to his seat, causing him to spill his coffee on the controls. Oddly, it seemed to speed up the response of the hydraulics.
“Wow, what happened? She’s handling like a Rolls.”
“I think it’s the caffeine,” I joked.
“Smith, now I know why they picked you for the mission. We needed a lunatic on board.”
“Pleasure to be of service, sir.”
“Screw you, Smith.”
“Same to you, Colonel.”
“Call me Colonel again, Smith, and I’ll force feed you one of these.” He showed me the little green pillbox.
“I heard they work fast.”
“Yep. Listen, if we have to take them, I won’t be seeing you afterwards.”
“I don’t know about that. We’ll probably all go to the same place.”
“Yeah, but Smith, according to Ent’s logic, who knows? Hey, they do have good furnaces down there.”
“Why shouldn’t they? The devil himself got them from Hitler.” Everyone on the flight deck cracked up, but it was nervous laughter. We were all tight.
Though informality was the order of the day, trouble invariably brought rank into the picture quickly.
"Colonel, I have two zeros below us at 18,000 and climbing. They have us locked on radar."
"Lieutenant, can you pick-up any chatter?"
"Yes. My Japanese isn't the best, but it sounds like they're joking about something."
"Can you translate?"
"I don't think...wait...yes...they're talking to us! Something about garbage...oh, I got it. They say 'Go ahead and drop your damned leaflets again, but you better send someone to clean up the mess.' They're laughing."
"Unbelievable. Are they still climbing?"
"Yes."
"Colonel, they're right behind us. Should I open up?" That was Caron, the tailgunner.
"Hold up a second, Sergeant. This happens all the time. Wait."
"Wow! They're passing us. You should be seeing them go by now," George said buoyantly. He had to be relieved that they didn’t attack - they rarely did. We were in open airspace over the ocean and the Japanese had lost too many aircraft to risk engagement that might bring American fighter squadrons.
“Thanks, George - I see them. One of them waved! Incredible.”
I thought about the leaflet drops. They had started two months ago and by now, the Japanese regarded them as harmless jokes. They saw no threat and I think they believed we thought they might surrender without engagement or bombing. The only real fighting was on the ground; mostly in the Philippines. If my thinking was correct, we had a ruthless strategy in place that would allow us safe access to Hiroshima. On my last five runs, there had been absolutely no anti-aircraft response.
“George, tell them the Yankees will win the World Series.” A minute later, George radioed back.
“They say the Yankees stink of fresh feces...they like the Red Sox.” There was something perverse about it...we were talking baseball with the enemy and soon there would be a city full of dead Red Sox fans. Our mission could not have been more amicably invited. I wondered if the Japs would give us an approach profile to Hiroshima as well.
Ted called out the ten mile marker. Suddenly, silence replaced the forced banter that had gotten us this far.
"Colonel, I think the wind has changed; you need to adjust your heading - 16 degrees northwest. Our instructions are to drop to 10,000 feet. On approach, we drop to 5000."
"Is that our payload altitude, Ted?" Paul asked. I don't know why he did - we had all been briefed. Little Boy would detonate at 500 feet above ground. We would make a steep climb as soon as the bomb was released. There would be a powerful updraft and an electrical impulse that could knock out our systems if we didn't climb fast enough. We had been told about radiation - the exposure would be minimal on flyover, at which point Bob Shumard, assistant flight engineer, would take photographs.
"Yes, Colonel, 5000 feet."
"Well, let's hope this baby can haul, because from what I hear, the blast itself will blow us to Kansas if she can't. Tom, can you see anything yet?"
"No. The cloud cover won't break until you get below 7000 feet."
"Five miles," Ted called out.
"Here we go, boys. Welcome to hell."
Tibbets handed the controls to me again while he armed the bomb, which consisted of opening a bright red panel, dialing in a code, and then flicking two red switches and a green one. We were almost at 5000 feet when I gave the controls back to him. Tom Ferebee, the bombardier, radioed in.
"Clear, Captain...gray, but clear. I have the target."
"Alright Tom...wait on my word. I see it - the cluster of five red buildings, right?"
"Yes."
It was an eerie sight. We could see people on the ground and it looked like some of them were waving to us. I had a strong urge to puke, but I clenched hard and held on.
"Paul, it-"
"What?"
"There are thousands of civilians down there."
"Yeah. This is a war, remember? Bombays?"
"Opening now," I said. Something happened then that I can never forget. I can only describe it as a brief flicker; as if the picture had changed in some incomprehensible way. There was a dream-like quality to it - was it deja vu?
"Yeah. This is a war, remember? Bombays?"
"Opening now," I said once again...Paul looked at me as if he expected me to say something.
"Smith? Please don't ask Tom if he heard that."
"Heard what, Paul?"
"Fine. Great. Thanks."
At target release point, Paul radioed to Tom.
"Now!"
"She's out and gone, Captain." Tibbets pulled hard on the wheel and throttled up to max as we climbed; on the edge of stall. The plane shook and shivered...then the flash blinded us. A shock wave followed, hitting us like a ton of bricks and Paul had all he could do to hold Enola together. For a few seconds, we lost electrical power and hydraulics. Enola pitched sideways and Paul couldn't do anything without hydraulics. I thought we might go down. At 10,000 feet, we leveled off. No one said anything as we looked down at the mushroom cloud billowing up toward us. We made a wide circle around it and Paul took us back down to 5000 for Shumard's photos.
Shumard was the one to break the silence.
"My God! What have we done?"
Three days later, I made a flyover with Chuck Sweeney, who had dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. Shumard was with us for photos again.
"You might not want to look at this," Sweeney remarked. I did anyway. The entire city was gone - completely leveled, fires raging everywhere. "Hey, Smith, did you notice that?" I was busy puking into a can brought along for that purpose.
"What?" I gasped, wiping vomit dribble from my chin.
"That flicker?"
"What flicker?"
"I can't describe it...an impulse, maybe, but for a second there, I could have sworn I saw the city before the bomb."
"I don't know, Major. Do you want a report written up?"
"Hell no. The de-briefings are bad enough. Did you see the shrink yet?"
"Yeah. What a jerk. He asked me how I felt about it. I told him it was routine. He asked if I slept okay. I told him I slept fine."
"Me too. I don't want to see that idiot again. Can you imagine? How did I sleep? I haven't slept in three days. No...no report."
"Shumard, did you get your photos?"
"No. There was some kind of pulse. It knocked out the camera."
"What?"
"Nothing...never mind." Shumard noticed the flicker and saw the same thing Sweeney saw.
“Uh, Colonel?”
“What is it, Shumard?”
“Well, just before…I…Colonel, there was this flicker and-”
“I know - I saw it,” Sweeney interrupted.
“Colonel?”
“What?” Sweeney looked annoyed and I figured he was probably worried that Shumard would want to file a report.
“Colonel, this flicker thing…well…I could swear I saw the city…I saw how it looked before we dropped.” Sweeney took his time answering. He looked at me; a pained expression seemed to come over him.
“Shumard, think about what you’re saying. Do you get my drift?”
“Yes…yes, Colonel.”
That was the end of it. As far as we were concerned, it never happened. Whatever it was that they saw, I was glad that I missed it. In any event, there would be no report. The flickers, however, would continue, and occasionally, like this morning while I was shaving, the word CLIC popped into my head for no reason at all. CLIC? The really odd part about it was that I imagined the word spelled without a “k,” and that bothered me for some strange reason that I couldn’t comprehend.
All I know is that it gave me a bad feeling…the same kind of feeling you get when you wake-up from a dream and aren’t sure if you are awake yet. None of this makes any sense. Maybe Weekler, the shrink assigned to the de-briefing, was right.
“You have probably been traumatized by what you saw. Don’t worry, the memory will fade.”