Dan Snow's History Hit - Hiroshima: As It Happened

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence and may not be suitable for all listeners.On the morning of August 6th, 1945, a single American bomber unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen - Little Boy, the first atomic bomb used in war. In a blinding flash, the city of Hiroshima was levelled. In this episode, we chart that fateful day moment by moment, from the daily routines of the city's mayor and the preparations of the American air crews to the instant of unimaginable destruction.Joining us is Ian MacGregor, author of ‘The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It’. He takes us through the horror of this fateful day and the dawn of the nuclear age.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask!Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

Hello folks, Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. Hulu Original Limited series that blends gripping pacing with emotional complexity, offering a dramatized look as it revisits the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox for the tragic murder of Meredith Kircher and the relentless media storm that followed. The twisted tale of Amanda Knox start streaming August 20th, only on Disney Plus. It was a beautiful morning.

The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright. Very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission. Those are the words, those are the memories of Theodore Dutch Van Kirk.

He was a navigator on an American B-29 bomber. It's called the Enola Gay. And in that brief passage, he is describing the last few seconds of the pre-nuclear age perched in his aircraft at 30,000 feet looking down at the city of Hiroshima in Japan. His crew were on the brink of deploying the most powerful weapon in history,

one that destroyed that city. By the summer of 1945, 80 years ago, World War II in Europe had ended, but the war in the Pacific was raging on with devastating ferocity. On the Japanese mainland, the United States had unleashed months of punishing bombings of Japanese cities, particularly incendiary air raids, hoping to burn and smash the Japanese government to the point of surrender. In March 1945, for example, Tokyo was struck with a massive firebombing that may have killed as many as 100,000 people in a single night,

most of whom were civilians. Dozens of other cities, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and more were similarly targeted. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women and children were killed, and its urban infrastructure lay in ruins. Further afield, Japan's once and briefly expansive overseas empire was now a disarticulated zombie, routed in Burma, strangled in Borneo, its navy wiped out,

island garrisons in the Pacific annihilated or just left the rot on the vine by the American steamroller. A suicidal stand in Okinawa cost tens of thousands of... lives and a hopeless but savage battle that brought the Americans step by bloody step closer to the Japanese home islands. And yet despite this, the Japanese leadership spat defiance. Despite overwhelming losses, they appeared publicly committed to continuing the war and resisting any eventual invasion of Japan itself. The Allies began preparing for that invasion. They began the planning process. They called it Operation Downfall, an invasion so massive that it

would dwarf D-Day. Allied estimates predicted horrific casualties, potentially over a million allied soldiers, and Japanese military and civilian deaths, well, a multiple of that. Another crisis for Japanese planners was Stalin's veteran, massive battle-hardened Red Army, now massing on the borders of Japan's empire and mainland China. There was absolutely not one shred of hope for the Japanese. And the terrible thing is, in that summer of 1945, it was much, much worse than they knew. In the United States, a top-secret scientific and military project had delivered the unimaginable. The Manhattan Project was initiated in 1942, building on foundations laid by the British, after fears that Nazi Germany might exploit the vast potential of atomic physics

to develop a bomb unlike any other in history. The Manhattan Project brought together some of the world's leading physicists, including Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr and Leo Zillard under American military oversight, personified by General Leslie Groves. It was a vast collaboration between the US, the UK and Canada, spanning facilities in Los Almos, New Mexico, Oakridge, Tennessee, and many other places from Washington State to Alabama. After years of theoretical work and engineering breakthroughs, an enormous expense, the Manhattan Project achieved its goal in July 1945,

the first successful detonation of a nuclear device in the New Mexico desert. It was known as the Trinity Test. The final product of all that time, expense and huge, human genius was delivered to Tinian in the North Mariana Islands that summer. All the parts needed to assemble initially two bombs, nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man. They were in fact two different designs. Little Boy was a uranium gun type design with the equivalent explosive force of 15,000 tons of TNT.

Fat Man was the larger of the two, a plutonium implosion-type design, with an equivalent explosive force of 21,000 tonnes of TNT. Bear in mind, the biggest single conventional bombs then in use had an explosive force equivalent to six tonnes of TNT. The bombs now being put together on Tinian Island had very different methods of construction. As I said, they represented enormous investment. In fact, all of the purified uranium 235 available in the world at the time, went in to the construction of the little boy bomb. Following the Trinity test, with the weapons now proven, military and political leaders prepared to use them

in an effort to force Japan's unconditional surrender. To deliver the bombs, the US had formed the 509th composite group, especially trained unit equipped with modified B-29 superfortress bombers. They trained in secret for 18 months in Utah and New Mexico, and then deployed to Tinian Island, a major US air base, the launching point for many bombing raids over Japan. In this episode of the podcast, 80 years on, we're going to take you through step by step of what happened on August 6, 1945, the day that the little boy, Atomic Bonn, was dropped on Hiroshima, changing the course of human history. We'll hear about that moment from two extraordinary perspectives, from the sky, aboard,

the Inola Gay, as it carried out its grim mission, and from the city itself, through the eyes of Hiroshima's mayor, Sankichiawaya. This is not just the story of a transformative military mission. It's a tale of human choices, of terrible loss, and what it meant to witness the birth of the nuclear age. For this, we're joined by Ian McGregor, historian and author of The Hiroshima Men, the quest to build the atomic bomb and the fateful decision to use it. He's a great friend the podcast he's been on before. It's fantastic to have him back and talk about his new book. Before we get started, though, this is a friendly warning that this episode contains descriptions of a graphic nature. It might not be best for all listeners. Let's get into it, the step-by-step

story of one of the most important days of human history. In early August, 1945, on the Pacific Island, island of Tinian, some 1,500 miles south of Hiroshima. The air crews of the 509th composite group have been waiting in tense anticipation. Rumours are swirling among the men. Something big is coming. They've been flying long-range high-ltude training missions for months in modified silver-plate B-29 super fortresses, practicing for a mission that they know nothing about. The island's airfield is currently the largest in the world, sending aerial armadas of bombers to strike targets across the Pacific. And to the consternation of their comrades from other conventional bombing groups

who risk life and limb on daily missions over Japan, the men of the 509th seem to be getting off easy. They seem to train endlessly rather than join the other units on the hazardous round trips to and from Japan and actually get involved in the war. Only a handful of officers know the full details their mission. The man in charge of the 509th, Colonel Paul Tibbitt, has been careful to maintain the utmost secrecy, even among the crews. Strict compartmentalisation means that few understand exactly what they're preparing to deliver. Their top secret payload is the uranium atomic bomb, little boy. It has been delivered. delivered to the island in pieces, but by July the 31st, it has been assembled on site by the

engineers of the Manhattan Project. Ian picks up the story from here. Ian, good to see you, great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for the invite. Right. Where are we in the world? What's going on on this Pacific Island? General Curtis LeMay, commander 20th bomber command, landed on Tynion on August 3rd. He was carry sealed orders to Colonel Tibbets, special bombing mission number 13. Within it, what he would discuss with the strike leader was the authorized date of the attack on Japan with the weapon. The date agreed would be August 6, and LeMay discussed with Tivots, the targets that had been assigned by the target committee. The primary one would be Hiroshima. Secondary would be Kokura, which housed a major military arsenal. And the third one

would be Nagasaki, an urban area, but it did house a port and a lot of small scale, almost like a cottage industry of armament's factories. The order confirmed that, luckily, no friendly aircraft other than those listed would be within a 50-mile area of the targets from the strike during the period of the hours that they would be over, the target had been coming away from it. 32 copies of this order were distributed to the senior commanders in Guam, Iwo Jima, and Tinian, and Tivots obviously locked his copy in his office safe, and then took LeMay because he hadn't seen it to go and see a little boy.

which was in the tech area, which was heavily guarded. The most important commanders on the base had been barred from entry to see this by the armed MPs. And even when the mayor was trying to get through into it, the vigilant MP demanded that he hand over his cigars and matches. Your military men and scientists on the base, they were called the Tinian Joint Chiefs. It was a mixture of scientific civilian and military. They were General Thomas Farrell, who was the Manhattan Project Senior Officer on the island, and General Groves his eyes and ears on the base, really. Admiral R. Pernell, representing the U.S. Navy, commander Frederick L. Ashwa, and then from the Manhattan Project

professors Norman F. Ramsey and Professor Robert Brod, the argument was debated about whether the device, the weapon, should be armed either on the island before takeoff or armed once they got away from the island. Captain William S. Parsons from the U.S. Navy. He was an integral member of the scientific team for the Manhattan Project. He would be flying with Tibbets in the Inola Gate, and he would arm the device. He made the convincing case that to have a bomb armed before the actual takeoff risked destroying the whole of Tinian Island, should the plane, as many had done already on bombing missions, suffer a malfunction, and crash. The fear of this haunted all of them. Parsons suggested, once they'd taken off,

got to a relative stable altitude, he would crawl through the bomb bay early in the flight and insert the uranium plugs and the explosive charge into the bomb to fully arm it. That was agreed. When do those crews, when do they learn about the nature of the bomb, the weapon that they will be flying with? Or do they ever learn about it before it actually gets dropped? A lot of the crew, they knew they were dropping something incredibly powerful. Timots had said that to them. He briefed them several times. That was the whole point of the training for the mission that they were doing. They were just dropping one bomb on a specific target from way, way up. Sometimes it was at least 30,000 feet. And that's the practice they've

been doing that he drilled into them for months and months and months. So they knew that something big was happening. These guys are not stupid. They think, okay, this is going to be a big one, probably the biggest of my career. Now, weather in the Pacific and frankly, any ocean, really, is unpredictable. It's changeable and it can be violent. On the first of August, an attack with little boy has been delayed because of a typhoon tearing its way towards Japan. For several days, Tibbets and the mission planners wait for the weather to clear. On the morning of the 5th of August, weather reports and other intelligence comes in. The mission is finally greenlit for the next day. Tibbitts assembles the crews for a briefing. So that morning, Tibbitts had

cooled the crew together to the briefing group, which was now surrounded by armed MPs as we're getting closer to the time of take-up. This is where he announced the mission and which planes and their crews would fly it. Tibbics had already ordered the naming of the plane. It would have the iconic name Inola Gaye after his mother. So it's not just the Inola Gaye. It's a grief of planes, some of which are the observational weather planes, and some are backup as well.

And some are the ones that are the weather planes that are going over those three targets to relay back on radio-coded messages, what the conditions are. and they'll direct an alligator to the strike. Takeoff would be scheduled for 2.45 a.m. the following morning. The strike crew with Tibbets would be his co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, the bombardier, Major Ferroby, the navigator, Captain Vancouver, both these men he'd flown with numerous times in action over European skies. Radarman, Lieutenant Jacob Besser, Weppernier, Navy Captain Parsons, assisted by another Weppineer Lieutenant Morris Jepson.

the radio operator Sergeant Joseph Stilberick, tail gunner staff sergeant George Karen, more impoverator, radio operator, private first class Richard Nelson, and flight engineer technical sergeant Wayne Duesenbury. These men's names would go into history for what they're about to do. The other planes, the great artiste, would be commanded and piloted by Major Charles Sweeney and Lieutenant Charles Albury,

who would carry the observation equipment. Another plane called the 91, but was later renamed necessary evil would be flown by Captain George Marquard and was kitted out with photographic equipment and observational material to record a detonation. And then the big stink, piloted by Lieutenant Charles McKnight. You don't really hear much about this plane, primarily because it was acting a standby.

It would follow the planes up until Iwo Jima, which is roughly 900 kilometers off the Japanese mainland, and then it would land. It was just there plainly as standby. Even at this stage, with takeoff time set, crews picked and planes prepped, Tibbitts to still not reveal the exact nature of the bomb to his men. Secrecy was paramount, as was the safety of his crews. They were not only entering contested enemy airspace, but they were delivering the first nuclear payload in history.

As Ian has mentioned already, B-29s were not immune to malfunction. Just a couple of days before, four B-29s loaded with ammunition and bombs had crashed on take-off and exploded. The incident worried everyone for obvious reasons. This was an exceptionally dangerous mission. They'd go wrong in a hundred different ways, and Tibbitts had tried to plan for every one of them. Tibbets then went on to assure the crews that all precautions for their safety had been made by the US Navy.

There was a thorough area stretching for hundreds of nautical miles of safety net of vessels, submarines, and they were situated at points along the route below to retrieve them if they had to ditch in the water. but also what he decided to do was take the units insignia off the plane too so the distinctive 509th arrow inside a circle was removed and he just asked it to be replaced with a simple bold black R he just didn't want Japanese interceptors to maybe maybe it was paranoia

he didn't want the Japanese to know this special unit was on his way the plane was towed to loading bay for little boy to be loaded it was anything but little it was plum-shaped gunmetal grey 900 pounds in weight, 12 feet long and a diameter of 28 inches, with sharp tail fins protruding. Within that, there would be the parachute that would come out, it would be radar-active, and that would slow the descent, which would allow Timit's time to get away once he dropped it. What had been scrawled on it by some of the technicians was to Emperor Hirohito from the boys of the Indianapolis. That was the warship, the USS, Indianapolis, which had delivered the final parts of the

bomb to Tinian for his assembly. And infamously, that would be the ship that's captured in the film Jaws where, on his return home, it would be torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine and shark-infested waters of barely any of the crew escaped to lie. But Timits himself said, in his memoirs later, as he's studying the bomb, it was not little by any standard. It was a monster compared with any bomb that I'd ever dropped in action. By nightfall, on the evening of the fifth, things are well underway. Little boy has been loaded into the bomb bay of Tibbets' super-fortress and placed under tight security. Just past midnight on the 6th of August tinian time, the crews are making final preparations for the mission ahead. Tibbitts briefs them one final time.

He gathers them at one end of the crew lounge. They will take off in the early hours of August 6th. Their target is Hiroshima, unless weather intervenes. the crews were brought together one final time for Tibbets to address them. This is where they were getting serious. He stood in front of all the crews and said, Tonight is a night we have all been waiting for. Our long months of training are to be put to the test. We will soon know if we have been successful or failed. Upon our efforts tonight, it is possible that history will be made. Everyone went silent, as he's saying this. We are going on a mission to drop a bomb different from any you have ever seen or heard about.

I would imagine when he's saying this, you can hear a pin drop. He then went on to confirm the scientific nature of the mission the crews were going to go on. What resembled welders' goggles, but they were fitted with poloid lenses, were then distributed to all of them. Professor Ramsey then went and stood on the stage and reassured them that these goggles that they were looking at now wondering what to do with. They were to prevent blindness from the bomb flash that was going to be brighter than the sun, he warned. they left and I would imagine whispering wow I mean the enormity of what they're about to do must have been almost suffocating then at midnight they were called together again and they all made their way to the mess hall to eat a breakfast of eggs sausage rolled oats pineapple fritters apple butter and plenty of coffee while his men ate tivots quietly without them noticing tucked away a packet of cyanide pills into his breast pocket he'd been told by the senior surgeon on the island that they weren't allowed to be taken prisoner. So if they were shot down over enemy territory, or perhaps they crashed landed just off the coast, and it looked likely

that the survivors were going to be picked up by Japanese fishermen or military vessels, they were to kill themselves. As they ate, as the crew were sitting around having this delicious breakfast, kind of like the last supper, I suppose, the three weather planes, straight flush, jabbit three and full house, they all took off. They were flying an hour ahead. head of Tivit's strike force to report back the weather conditions for the visual drop that he would make. At 0-1-15 Tinian time, the crew of the Inola Gay are picked up by a truck. Tivots and Parsons sit in the front. They all wear pale green combat overalls, and the only identification they carry are the dog tags around their necks. Tivet's crew finally drove to the Anola Gay. They were

surprised to be met by media teams as well as all the Tinian chiefs. They're taking photos of the crew, but it's not like there's a mass press audience there because obviously they're about to go on the mission. And then when you compare it to how it looked once they come back from a successful mission, the world's waiting for them. seemingly every single general in the Pacific's there wanted to check the hand. It's very different when they take off because obviously everyone's on tender hooks. This is the big deal. They want to make sure it works. It's a top secret mission. So yeah, you've got the photograph and you've got the photograph of Tibbitt's looking out of his cockpit window as well. But everyone's on edge. The only game was heavily

laden, not just with the bomb itself, because also they'd put gasoline stowed away in the rear of the plane to balance it out. So it was a lot heavier than they'd had before. Coming up to take off, Timits behind the controls focused on the eight and a half thousand feet of coral runway ahead. Checked in with his crew to confirm all was ready. He announced to the radio station. Dimples 8-2 to North Tinian Tower, ready for take-off on runway Able. Less than a second later came in the reply.

Dimples 8-2. Dimples 82. Cleared for take-off. Special bombing mission, 13, was now a go. Above Iwo Jima, several hundred kilometres from the Japanese of mainland, the B-29s met each other, formed up in the V-formation, and flew up to the IP. At the IP, in Oligay and the Great Artis

flew in towards the city of Hiroshima. At 0-200 Hiroshima time, on the 6th of August, the die is cast. The crews are packed into their super fortresses and are slicing through the sky towards their target. Gunners nervously swivel in their cramped turrets, scanning the skies for enemy fighters. The last thing they need is to be intercepted with their precious cargo. Pilots try to focus on the task at hand. They grip the steering columns of their planes. They monitor the various dials in front of them. Navigators are kept busy plotting courses.

The weaponiers, Parsons and Jepsen, have the important job of crawling into the bombay to insert the charge into little boy. In the bellies of these hulking bombers, all of the men are afforded a moment to think about the task that lies ahead. Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, another side of this story is playing out. On the ground, Mayor Sinkichiawaya is at the family home. unaware that the story of his city is about to change forever. On the ground in Orozhima, there's the mayor Sinkichiawaya. He'd been in charge of the city in terms of the civilian administration since the spring of 1943.

So this is a man who was born in 1893. He belonged to a family that had benefited greatly by the Western expansion of industry commerce education since about the 1850s in Japan. So he belonged to a very prosperous middle-class family that were based just northeast of Tokyo. First generation to go to university, star student. He'd been chosen to have a job in the civil service.

He worked for the Ministry of Home Affairs. And even though he started with the Ministry of Agriculture, it was plain that he was a gifted man-manager and also he was adept at reading the law, reading the law, knowing the law, and implementing civilian law in their home islands. So from a very young age, literally within a year and a half of coming out of university,

he was in the Office of Home Affairs. Age of 26, he's given his first major senior role, which is to run the police force in, of all places, Hiroshima. That's where he would meet his wife. They would go on to have several children, two of which died from disease in the late 20s and early 1930. So by the time of the war, 1941 Pearl Harbor

he has five children between the ages of roughly around seven to 17 and he had had a mixed career in terms of he would go from job to job that's what civilian administrations did they would be in charge of various cities but he had major roles

for instance he was the head of police in Osaka as well in the 1930s and the key thing and there's one thing I had to stipulate one of the reasons why I really respected him was even though you've got this time of economic hardship in the 1930s, Japan's dissent into militarism, authoritarianism government, he still believed in the rule of law. I can't argue the point that he was 100% Democrats, but he believed in the law of the land as was practiced at the time he should implement.

So he had many run-ins with senior leaders in the armed forces. He believed that the armed forces could just do what they wanted on the home islands, as they were doing in other places such as China, Manchuria, et cetera. And he went head to head with them. To the point, which he took early retirement through illness, which must have come on from the stress of the job. So they actually brought him out of retirement in the spring of 1943 because the war's going badly. They know the Americans are getting closer to the home islands. They can probably figure out an invasion would happen eventually. The major city in the south of Japan, where the attack will probably come is Hiroshima. It's a military hub. The Japanese fleet that attacked

the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941 had set sail from Holland. Hiroshima. Most soldiers fighting in mainland China had set sail from Hiroshima. Major works there, military works, major arsenals. So it's a target. But equally, they want a gifted administrator there. So they bring him out of retirement. And he's not asked, he's ordered. So he has to go down there. So he'd been there for at least 20 months by the time we're getting close to this atomic attack where Kinneon's occupied, Tibbitts 509th is there training. A wire is there. He's already brought down some of his family. His eldest child is. children are now either mature students or working in munitions factories in around northern

Tokyo. They're a little bit safer, I suppose, from the bombings that are going on in the capital. But he brought down two of his youngest children with his wife to say it's safe in Hiroshima. We haven't been bought much anyway. You'll be safer here. So he brings them down ironically, tragically. So on that morning, his wife's in the kitchen, August 6th, beautiful blue sky, the weather playing that the 509th have already sent over to gauge conditions over the city to report back to Tibbets to say this potentially could be the strike. That's exactly what they do. While they're doing that, the air raid sirens are going off. People are scurrying, but the weather plane goes. So it's not bombing anyone. So the air

sirens go off. And people are going about their day of work. So it's 8 o'clock in the morning because Tivots hadn't arrived yet. They're just going about their day. They're either stopping in cafes, to get some cheap tea, scouring the markets to see if they can buy any food, which is heavily rationed. In a wires case, he's in his residence on the river, literally two, 300 metres away from what we now know today and see as the atomic dome. That's how close he was to Ground Zero. He's playing with his granddaughter and his youngest son. His wife is in the back of the house preparing breakfast. And that's where they are when Tibbitts and his crew in the Inola Gaye are flying over, ready to drop the bomb. You listen to Dan Snow's history at there's more

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At the same time, in the skies above, the Inola Gay is preparing for its final run. Jepsen had removed little boy's safety devices and inserted the arming devices. At 0.630 Hiroshima time, Tivitz had announced the crew. We are carrying the world's first. atomic bomb. At 0805, the navigator Dutch von Kirk, calls out 10 minutes to the IP. The Inoligay is flying at over 30,000 feet when the city of Hiroshima comes into view for the first time. The seven channels of the Ota River are full and motionless, reflecting the morning sun. On the ground, students are making their way to the munitions factory, while groups of schoolchildren

are already hard at work, demolishing buildings to clear firebreaks in case of air raids. They were soon to learn of the abject futility of their efforts. Ten miles out from the target at 30,000 feet, bomb under Major Ferribee was in the nose of the Inola Gate. Their approaching speed was roughly 330 miles per hour. We also pilot, as a practice, was engaged, as the northern gun site took control and was guiding the play towards the T-shaped target

that had been agreed and they practiced on called the I.O. Bridge. As soon as Ferraby announced, he could clearly see it, Tibbets took his hands off the controls, giving Ferrivy command of the plane. Radio silence was a signal to the accompanying B-29s, that the Inola Gay's bomb doors were now open, and little boy had been dispatched. The bomb hurtled towards Earth, heading for the I-O bridge. Five miles down, as had been designed,

the bomb's thin radar system activated the detonator. Parachute had already opened, slowing the bomb down, which was allowing Tibbitt's a time to really do almost like a handbrake turn going left and get back away from the bomb as quickly as possible, the explosion, I should say. At 8.15, some 43 seconds after it had dropped from the Inola Gaze Bomb Bay, the weapon exploded at 1,890 feet above the ground. Timits and his crew were by then approximately six miles away, having turned away as instructed by Oppenheimer. Ferrabi's aim, however, had been off, missing the bridge by roughly 800 feet. The atomic bomb detonated instead

above the Shima surgical hospital. It didn't matter for the men, women and children of Hiroshima within the blast radius that affects obviously what's going to be the same. Witnesses remember the blinding flash that seared across the sky. Almost immediately came the deafening roar, trailed by an overwhelming blast wave

that shattered windows, flattens walls and hurls people and debris through the air. In less than a second, the fireball swells nearly 900 feet across, radiating heat upwards of 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's nearly 4,000 degrees centigrade. The Inferno vaporizes wooden buildings and instantly turns many victims to ash with temperatures that fuse steel and concrete. Destinating at that altitude, the blast tears through two-thirds of Oroshima's structures, igniting fires that merge rapidly into a massive firestorm, engulfing entire neighborhoods and layering the

layering the skies in thick black smoke. Survivors emerging from collapsed buildings describe the surreal aftermath, a dusty grey darkness cloaking ruins. Soon the skies unleash black rain, a toxic downpull of ash, soot, and radioactive fallout that tars streets sears the skin and will bring suffering long after the fires die down.

On the ground, one survivor later recounted, Everywhere there was dust. It made a greyish darkness over everything. It was a really terrible scene. It was just like something out of hell. Eight out of ten people within a half-mile radius of the bombast, instantly killed, evaporated, gone. Birds in the sky, evaporated, gone. Anything living within that half-mile radius is pretty much gone.

Housing completely flattened. You've got to remember traditional Japanese. housing was made of wood and paper, hadn't changed for centuries. There are various modern buildings that are made of reinforced concrete. So as we know, what's called the now famous atomic dome, that's shattered, but it's still kind of in one piece. There's very few modern buildings in that center of the city that are still standing. Roughly between 66,000 and 75,000 people die within a matter of seconds, and that's a city of over 300,000. A third. A third, of a second after detonation, the blast wave is moving at two miles per second. That's over

7,000 miles per hour. At its maximum size, about a second after detonation, the fireball is approximately 100 feet in diameter? At least, yeah, and all-consuming. And miraculously, a few people witnessed it and survived, but it's biblical. It's the only way to describe it. It's literally incinerates the city. Incinerates is the right word. There's nothing left. It's just gone. And people that would go and research this afterwards

once they'd listen to this podcast, you go and look at the pictures. All that's left is the imprints of where the roads crisscross. There is nothing left. The temperature is something at 7,000 degrees. Several thousand degrees. Several thousand degrees Fahrenheit at this point at the hypercenter, just beneath the blast.

I mean, stone, stone, mel. at that temperature. Stone melts, roof tiles melt, disintegrates. If you go to the Hiroshima Memorial Museum, they've got some very emotive but amazing artifacts that are now stored there that you can see, as in semi-melted roof tiles. People that have literally just been disintegrated,

all that's left is a shadow of where they were sitting or standing on a doorstep. And it happens in a click of a finger. It's just the power is incredible. So yes, you get these shadows. There's a shadow of a young woman on the bank of the river. There's a shadow of a man pulling a cart across the street. So that the only remnants of these people is the shadow that they cast at the nanosecond of their death.

Yeah. And for the survivors, then it becomes a case of what were you wearing when you were exposed to the bomb blast and the gamma radiation? So again, people that I interviewed, someone would later, they had cancer, developed cancer, radiation poisoning, but they survived. But some of them were lucky they were just wearing long-sleeved clothes, full trousers, long-sleeved shirts and dresses or smocks, and that's what saved them, whereas others were in short sleeves or skirts and died of their wounds, died of the burns that they would receive that would develop from the radiation poisoning and the bomb blast.

For those that have been to Hiroshima, it's a beautiful city, the settings, amazing. It's surrounded almost in a kind of horseshoe shape by mountains, at least three, four, five thousand foot high. They did rebound the bomb blast that swept across the city, which caused even more destruction. It's something like 4.7 square miles of the city would be destroyed at 69% of housing and everything else, utilities. But on top of that, the mushroom cloud is raging above a boiling kessel of dark purple, yellow, white clouds that's rising 40, 50,000 feet into the air. That's what shocked and surprised and awed the crew of the Inola Gay and the other two B-29s following them. They just couldn't get over just the size of this thing, shrouds the city, and that's scooping up all the debris and dust and everything else and human body parts, I would imagine, from the city.

and then rain eat down on them. That's famously where you get the black rain, the radioactive rain that would then shower the city immediately afterwards, which caused even more devastation. A mini tsunami is happening because of the force of the shock wave, which then engulfs the lower end of the city by the port. People are trying to escape that, and they're trying to escape the flames.

It's kind of a mirror of what happened in Tokyo a few months before in March. To get away from the heat, you obviously look for water. You jump in the rivers. The rivers are just as hot as anything you're stepping on out. outside, you're boiling to death, basically. And there were hundreds, if not thousands of bodies floating in the rivers that separated the city to days on end until recovery teams could fish them out and burn them. As Hiroshima is still experiencing this catastrophe, we get the first sort of Japanese official reaction. The first report out of it that Hiroshima had been destroyed

was actually sent by a 14-year-old communications officer, Yoshioca. She was one of thousands of students that had joined early in the military that were working almost like a militia administration force and worked in the headquarters of major army groups across Japan, really. So she's working in the one that's in Hiroshima. And so she was part of this. And she worked in the communication division. She was monitoring air defenses, enemy radio traffic and such. And what saved her life is she's sitting in a concrete bunker. So the initial explosion, the little boy,

rocked the bunker, and despite the protection of the office, she was knocked off of feet, as most of the people in the office were, and for a moment she lost consciousness, but she was alive. When she recovered out for a few seconds, she calls frantically Fukuyama headquarters

on a special hotline that was still intact, and obviously they're not believing her. She's telling them that the city, the whole city has been hit in one fell swoop, a surprise attack almost, because obviously it's just one bomber coming out of nowhere. So at first, the officer at Fukuyama didn't believe her. He tells her, you need to go up out of the bunker, onto the ground, and see what's going on,

see for yourself, and then come and ring me back. She does this. She witnessed a, I suppose, a dystopian nightmare. The fireballs there off in the distance. The mushroom cloud is literally towering above her higher than Everest, boiling and mad hot. The air must have been suffocated. But crucially, she comes across a survivor, an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army, badly burnt, half his clothes missing. And he says, what she's kind of thinking and what she's wanted to say up the chain of command, we've been hit by some new weapon.

It came out of nowhere. It's destroyed the city. She scrambles back downstairs, gets back on the line to Fukuyama. And that's what she says. Hiroshima has been attacked by a new type of bomb. The city is in a state of near total destruction. And it was. The core of the city's municipal government office had been destroyed and had 90% of the

buildings within the city centre, a mile radius. Of the thousand employees fit for work that day, who normally worked for mayor or wire, after the dropping of the bomb, just 80 reported for duty the next day, the rest of either dead or die. The few civilian servants alive were able to walk into the inferno, I suppose, and try and deal as best they could with trying to get emergency medical treatment from the tens of thousands of people that were still alive that managed to survive. Obviously, 80 or000 had literally just disappeared, had been evaporated. So throughout the next 48 hours, huge columns of survivors now

and those that badly injured are making their slow procession out of the city to what they think is the safety of the mountains. Cities Emergency Medical Services have been decimated, 14 and 16 major hospitals in and around Hiroshima were destroyed. Of medical personnel, 270 of 298 hospital doctors were dead, along with 1,654 of a total of 1,780 registered nurses. I mean, that's the city's medical blanket just disappeared. The central telephone exchange was in ruins and all that's been been poised dead. The tram car system was no longer tenable as the tracks running through the centre of town melted and disappeared. Street cars that had been caught in the blast were just charred husks. And again, some of your listeners, if they go online, they can see

those photographs. And the main train station was a wreck. And Hiroshima Harbor, you would hope you'd try and get supplies in that way. That was a wreck, too. That was destroyed. To tackle the thousands of fires now of controlling around the city, only 16 firefighting equipment pieces of the hundreds that had been available seconds before were now destroyed. It was reminiscent of the catastrophic fire raids on Tokyo, because most firemen had been killed in the blast. And the military complex based within Hiroshima Castle had literally disappeared. It had been destroyed. Several thousand people had died. And ironically, there had been two dozen American POWs that had been gardening in front of the castle. Again, they died instantly. Their shadows were burnt into

the ground where they stood. So the estimated 320,000 human beings present within the city barringes at morning, approximately 80,000 were dead, which would rise to well over 100,000 in a couple of weeks. Mayor Awaya, his son Shinobu, and his granddaughter Ayako, are in the dining room of their house as the Inola Gay passes above them. His wife, Sachio, has walked across the courtyard of their home to fetch some fresh fruit. They're practically at ground zero when the bomb explodes. Ian explains what happened to them. So as the Inola Gay is approaching Eroshimo towards 8.15, Mayor O'Waya, he'd be in the dining room of his house, preparing for breakfast. with his youngest son Shinobu and his granddaughter Ayako.

She'd come across from where her parents were in Osaka because that had been heavily bombed over the last few weeks by the B-29s. So her parents, his daughter, had said, can she come and stay with you for a while? Because Hiroshima is obviously untouched at the moment, so that's why she was there. Awaya's wife would walk across the courtyard to the rear of the residence to retrieve some fruit from the store next to the shrine they played that daily.

his residence is right on the river. It's a beautiful place to live, very quiet, surrounded by trees and bushes. I suppose it's the kind of place a very senior official would have if they're running a city. And then there's a wise having breakfast and I suppose he's urging his son and his granddaughter to eat the food. That's when the blinding flash of light fills a room and the fireball strikes the city. And his residence is less than half a mile from ground zero. So it was swept away in this quadrant of heat. dust and explosion. Crucially, his wife survives miraculously because she was at the back of the residence. And a lot of the research and interviews I've done with survivors, they do talk

about they themselves either survived because they were at the back of the building, which took the brunt of the explosion at the front, or one of their relatives was then, and they miraculously survived. And that's how Mrs. Awire survived. She was in the kitchen. It practically collapsed on her, but it created a slight air pocket cushion, so it didn't completely collapse and crush her. But she had severe injuries. The next few days for her would be clearly a nightmare. She managed to stagger out. She would eventually be rescued by fire teams that got into the city. But eventually she would pass away a few weeks later from radiation poison. This is Dan Snow's history here. More after this.

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The wall of this massive shockwave reaches the Enola Gay as her engine strained to carry her as far away as possible. The plane is buffeted, and the crew immediately enter survival mode. By the time the shockwaves hit the plane, they were roughly around about 18 and a half kilometres away. And they assume they're being hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire.

It's that strong. It really shakes the plane mercilessly. And it's only the tailgunners telling them, no, no, we're not being hit by anything. It's a blast wave. And I can see the next one coming in a minute. Hold yourselves. So he could see Bob Karen in the tailgun. They could see these blast waves approaching.

Yeah, these concentric circles just emanating from the mushroom cloud. Did the crew experience, apart from the physical shot, could they sense somehow in any other way, the explosive yield that they just delivered? I would say yes. Judging by the interviews that I researched in American archives, quite a few that have done memoirs as well, they're all experienced bomber crews. They know the power of the ordinance that they've been dropping over the last few years, especially in Europe. To see that kind of explosion must have been an incredible sight for them. I suppose for Tibbitts, he's banking the plane around. He's not literally just taking off at Bob Carrad in the

tale is getting the only look at what they've done to the city. They're departing to the southwest, and so he can see out of the cockpit, the atomic cloud that's rising. And I'll just quote this from him from his memoir. The giant purple mushroom, which Karen had described, had already risen to a height of 45,000 feet, three miles above our own altitude, and were still boiling upward like something terribly alive. It was a frightening sight. And even though we were several miles away by now, it gave the appearance of something that was about to engulf us. If Dante had been with us in the plane, he himself would have been terrified. Even looking back on the fiery inferno in their wake, none of the crew of the Inola

Gay are aware at this point of the scale of the damage the bomb has inflicted. But from the size and appearance of the mushroom clouds soaring through the atmosphere behind them, they know for certain they have ushered in a new epoch in history. its mission a success. Inoligay sets a course to return to Tinian. So 258 Gunoligay returns to Tinian. Their mission had covered 2,960 miles, taken 12 hours and 13 minutes,

and used approximately 6,000 gallons of fuel. Timitz always said it was the easiest mission he ever flew. They clearly weren't interrupted by any enemy activity towards and over the target. And on the way back, it was the same. same. It was literally cruise control. But this time, an even bigger crowd awaited them than they'd seen the night before when they were sent off. 200 officers of men crowded onto the apron where the Noligay would park and several thousand more of the airbase crew, MPs,

supply units, etc. were lining the tarmac, waving at them, greeting at them as they'd landed. And as soon as Tivitz managed to park in Noligay and the crew disembarked onto the tarmac, General Carl Spatz, who was the head of the Air Force, quickly marched up to shake his hand for the cameras. Clearly, it's a big PR opportunity. And he pinned a distinguished service cross on his chest, and then the media takeover to start interviewing the crew. So, as this is going on, right on the other side of the world,

at 1145 a.m., crossing the Atlantic in the USS Augusta, President Truman sitting down for breakfast in the aft mess hall of the ship with his Secretary of State James Byrne, his chief of staff, Admiral William Lay, and the ship's captain James K. Foskitt. Gentleman has seen down to have breakfast. It was now 16 hours since Ferrabi had released Little Boy over Hiroshima, and this is when the news arrives for General Groves. Hiroshima bombed visually with only one-tenth cover. There was no fight for opposition of Black. Captain Parsons reports 15 minutes after drop as follows. Results clear-cut and successful in all respects. Visible effects greater than in any

other test. Conditions normal in the airplane following delivery. You could imagine Truman's reaction. He launched himself from his seat, startling everyone, because you've got to remember, it's not just senior men and politicians sitting around him. The ship's crew are having their breakfast. They know the president's sitting there. I would imagine it's quite hushed and quiet, and they're just getting on with things. Maybe there's a slight hubbub. But the president of the United States is jumping out of his seat like it's Christmas. He did startle everyone close to him and pumped the young messenger's hand and given him the cable from General Groves. And he shouted to the ship's captain Foskitt, Captain, this is the greatest thing in history. So while the buzz

among the ships drowned out any private conversation, another cable arrives, and this time it's from Henry Stimson. It says, to the president from the secretary of war, big bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 5th, at 7.15 p.m. Washington time. First reports indicate complete success, which was even more conspicuous than the earlier test. So now he's got everything confirmed. So Groves has confirmed the military aspect and Stimson's given the official political green line from Washington, D.C. So he's clutching both of these communicates in his hands. Quite biblical, I imagine this visualization. And he exultantly turns to Secretary of State Burns and shouted over this, you know, the increased noise in the canteen from the other

crew, it's time for us to get on home. That's when he thinks the politician in him, he wants to address the crew, the crowd. So he turns to the men now looking at him, and he picks up his fork and strikes it against the glass. They can hear it like a wedding so he can get silence all round. And he tells the excited room of men, I suppose he reads the cables out. He reads both cables out to them. And then the room explodes and cheering and clapping, which then spreads through the ship in the next few minutes. And I would imagine, argue that that was a very pleasant isn't voyage home. Little boy was not the only atomic bomb dropped in August 1945.

The Hiroshima bombing failed to elicit an immediate Japanese surrender. And so, three days later, on the 9th of August, a plutonium-based bomb, codenamed Fat Man, was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Although estimates vary, we think up to 40,000 people were killed in the initial Hiroshima detonation. By the beginning of 1946, some 30,000 more people were dead. And overall, we think some 100,000 deaths were directly attributable to the bombing of Nagasaki. Whereas the first mission to deliver little boy over Hiroshima went like clockwork, and everyone involved said the same thing.

And as I said already, Tibbitt said it was the easiest mission he flew. The second mission to deliver the plutonium bomb, Fatnang, delivered by the B-29 called Boxcar. Same setup where the plane's going ahead, and then the communications and observation planes behind. It was a bit of a mess, truth be told, in terms of their first target, which was Kikura. They couldn't get to, they were missing the rendezvous points as a unit together. They then were told, we can't do this one, we need to go further on, and Nagasaki is now the target. They managed to deliver the bomb, but the conditions over the target were nothing like it had been over Hiroshima. It was difficult to observe where ground zero was going to be to deliver the bomb.

They managed to deliver it by the skin of their teeth with just enough fuel to get home. At one point, they thought they may have to land emergency landing at Okinawa, which was passing the plan anyway. But they did manage to get home. But it was fraught with difficulty, with anxiety, and there was a lot of name-calling and a blame game afterwards. In someone who's been immersed in this material now for years, how have you come away? thinking about this new chapter in our story as a species, the importance of it, the necessary, the cruelty. What are you thinking now about those atomic strikes? I sympathise, empathise, I should say, with Truman, who would give the order in terms of

he wants to finish the war. Ultimately, as a politician, he's looking to, this will save lives. And indeed, it ended the war quickly, the fighting finished in the Pacific, the daily casualty rates he's looking out for his own troops as well as civilian death. and the incredible losses in China that was going to stop. So I can see that pragmatically he's thinking that's a situation. But as I've done with my research, you're charting the progress of the war in the Pacific. It's as vicious compared to the Eastern Front, which we all look at as a really, you know, racially driven, vicious war, no weapon off the table. I would argue the Pacific War is just like that.

Absolutely. There is no weapon off the table. If you're prepared to incinerate a whole country with napalm over six, seven months of operations, why would you not then think the logical next choice is to use something like an atomic bomb? You look at the Great Tokyo Raid, which has been covered to a degree by some excellent historians. That killed well over 100,000 people in a night with napalm. and I would say that's a far harder way to die than if you're right under an atomic bomb and you die in the bomb blast.

You're dead instantly, whereas, as I've done with the research and interviewing people with the Tokyo fire raid, the deaths say they were appalling, and it went on for hours. It must have been absolutely terrifying. From a moralistic point of view, I admire Tibbitts in terms of his message discipline. You've got to remember this guy, once he finished the war, how many interviews must have he gone through hundreds upon hundreds of interviews in the press, on TV, on radio, that he was asked to justify, is it morally correct to drop an atomic bomb? And he says, and it's on, if you go on to the Atomic Heritage Foundation website, and front and center is his quote,

and the more often I read it, I should say, I thought, actually, he's got a point. He said, there is no morality in warfare. There just isn't. And if you think that you're a fool, what is the difference between dropping a conventional bomb, using napalm, using a flame throw a poison gas, they're dropping an atomic bomb. At the end of the day, they're killing people. He said, that's what I did. And I just, there is no morality. There is no moral argument in what I did. We're fortunate. We're looking at it from 80 years down the track. And we've lived with the atomic bomb, you and I, all our lives, we're children of the Cold War. So we know the horrors. Back then, he would not have known the horror because someone like John Hersey hadn't

gone yet to interview the survivors. The hydrogen bomb hadn't been developed. which is a genocidal bomb, that finishes off humanity, just doesn't finish off a city. They hadn't gone there yet for someone like Tibbet. So that's why I think someone in his position, he would think it completely normal to do this kind of bombing mission. It would have been nothing strange for him to drop something like this. So you've got to judge him at that point in time to say, this is what he was thinking, this is what he'd experienced.

You can't judge him on anything else. were the end point of a story that began with our first hominid ancestor picking up a rock or a stick to strike their enemy. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the lethality of our weapons has increased until one man was able to release a single weapon that could destroy a city. What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was unlike anything the world has ever seen.

In just a few seconds these cities were leveled. Tens of thousands of lives were lost in an instant. Then the weeks and months that followed countless more suffered the slow agonizing effects of radiation, injury and trauma, not to mention alienation from their fellow citizens. According to the crew, the mission of the Inola Gaye was carried out with an unwavering belief that the bomb would help to end the war. And they did help to end that.

war. Just nine days after Hiroshima bombing, Japan surrendered. World War II was over. For some, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil, a horrifying but decisive act that saved millions of lives by avoiding a bloody land invasion. For others, they remain one of history's darkest chapters, a massive use of force against the civilian population, one that unleashed a new era of warfare that humanity has struggled to reckon with ever since. Earlier I said that the bombings were an end of the story of human weapon development. But of course they weren't. In the decades that followed, bombs were developed that dwarfed even those devices. Later generations of nuclear weapons have given individuals

the power to effectively destroy human civilization on our planet. As these bombs have strengthened and multiplied, so too of the questions about their use. Was it justified in a 1945? Could there have been another way? Was it a genuine attempt to get Japan to surrender or a signal to the Soviet Union? And, really, most haunting, perhaps most importantly of all, could it happen again? Today, Hiroshima stands as a city of peace and remembrance, a symbol of resilience, a dark reminder of what nuclear weapons are capable of, and a desperate warning to all future generations. Well, a huge thank you to Ian McGregor for guiding us through this.

His book is The Hiroshima Men, The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb and the Fateful Decision to Use It. It really is a masterful account of the development of the bomb and the experiences of four particular men at the heart of the story. I'd thoroughly recommend it. If you've enjoyed this episode of the podcast, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. They really do help us.

And if there's any topics you'd like to hear more about, please send me an email at ds.h.h.hathistoryhit.com. Thanks so much for listening. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is an eight-episode Hulu Original Limited series that blends gripping pacing with emotional complexity, offering a dramatized look as it revisits the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox for the tragic murder of Meredith Kircher and the relentless media storm that followed. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox start streaming August 20th only on Disney Plus.

Thank you.