"" The harrowing story
of the Nagasaki
bombing mission

Seventy years ago, on August 9, at
approximately 3:47 a.m. local time on the
island of Tinian, a massive B-29
Superfortress aircraft roared down a
tropical airport runway, carrying 13 men
and what was then the world’s most
destructive weapon—an atomic bomb called
Fat Man. It was the second atomic bomb in
existence, and far more powerful than the
first, called Little Boy, which had been
dropped on Hiroshima just three days
earlier.
For nearly eight hours, the crew sped
toward mainland Japan, each man
hunkered in a cramped workspace with no
access to external radio communication.
Outside, monsoon winds, rain, and
lightning lashed at them. Inside, they
experienced moments of terror, such as
when the bomb began to arm itself—a red
light blinking with increasing rapidity—
midway to their destination. One of them,
bearing the newly minted title “weaponeer,”
grabbed the Bomb’s blueprints and raced to
figure out what was wrong.

The story of what transpired inside the
plane carrying Fat Man to Nagasaki, Japan,
has not really been told in detail to this
extent, although some excellent overall
renditions have been written of the atomic
bomb program as a whole. Bits and pieces
of the story have appeared in the diaries of
the men who flew the mission—although
sometimes the diaries appeared years after
the event, or were based on hurriedly
scribbled, hand-written notes jotted down
during the flight. Scrubbed versions have
been published in military archives. A
couple of accounts differ, suggesting false
memories or outright lies, making the
whole tale reminiscent of the famous
Japanese film Rashomon .
It is a story of astonishing screw-ups that
easily could have plunged the plane, the
men, and the bomb into the Pacific Ocean.
That the mission succeeded is genuinely
miraculous. New, in-depth particulars of
what went wrong, recounted here in a
single narrative for what may be the first
time, matter a great deal.""

Article is long and can be read in its entirety here:

http://thebulletin.org/harrowing-story-nagasaki-bombing-mission8592

could have easily gone wrong!

In a similar vain, watched the documentary last night "The Man Who Saved the World". It is the story of a Russian Rocket Forces officer Stanislav Petrov, who in 1983 prevented WW III from starting.

A week earlier, the Russians shot down a Korean airliner. Killing all aboard, including Americans, Ronald Reagan had given some rousing speeches, indicating the world was clearly lining up to condemn the Russians and start dealing with them.

It's in this environment, that the missile warning systems at a bunker outside of Moscow go off just after midnight, with the computers calculating with 100% reliability an American ICBM had been launched.

It takes several minutes, but the launch warning is found to be erroneous. Then suddenly, another warning goes off, a new launch, and then another, and another. Over several minutes, 5 missile launches are detected, and American warheads are thought to be speeding towards Russia to rain nuclear death on the citizens asleep in their beds.

As always, there are those urging instant retaliation. Petrov alone must seek permission to launch Russian missiles that will annihilate America before the incoming bombs take them out!

Instead, the Russian thinks for a moment and realizes the computers doing the warning are only a week old. They were wrong about the first missile, and if America was to launch a first strike, why would it only launch 5 missiles?????

Taking a deep breath, he orders his troops to hold fast and wait for ground radar to confirm the incoming missiles. That confirmation never comes, as there were never any missiles launched by the U.S.

Hailed as hero by his unit, it's tears and handshakes all around realizing they could have accidentally launched the missiles that would would have meant death for hundreds of millions to billions of people, and would have turned the planet into a radioactive desert.

Surely Petrov would be awarded the nation's highest honor they thought. He saved the homeland from American nuclear obliteration as surely Russia would have been destroyed once America understood what the Russian launches would have meant for them!

Instead of being publicly recognized by the Russians, and the world by extension, Petrovs commanding officer actually tears him a new orifice for not actually doing the required paperwork noting the 'attack' in the logbook for the facility!

His story came to light some 15 years later, and some low key events were eventually provided in his honor. Seems the most important honor for the Russian was to meet the actor Kevin Costner. He is seen in the documentary entertaining Petrov is his trailer on set, and assembling the cast and crew to tell them all how if not for Petrov, they would all likely be dead or for some, never born. A toast is made, the assembled group gives him polite applause, and he has some pictures taken.

It was a very compelling story, and we see that today Stanslav lives in a pitiful Moscow flat with his cigarettes and vodka. Simply running out the clock on what's left of his life. The world not really knowing who he is or what he did. In fact, we see during the story, that for years even his own family never knew what he had done, and the heroic act he had performed.

I highly suggest you see the documentary when you have the chance.