Lewis: I do not believe so at the time because the simple fact was that our target was the center of the city, which housed the Second Imperial Army Headquarters. Interviewer: Did any of the men show any qualms about using the weapon of that type? Robert Lewis: Well there was quite some discussion-perhaps the most important points that we are interested in is the safety and the resulting turning we were to make to avoid the results of this detonation. Did the men and the crew discuss this among themselves? He is married and the father of five children all born since 1945.Ī few days before the Hiroshima mission, the crew of the Enola Gay were shown movie films of the first atomic explosion, the detonation of a plutonium bomb in a New Mexico desert. Today, Robert Lewis is an executive of a candy-manufacturing firm in New Jersey. Captain Lewis flew as copilot on that mission. In the raid on Hiroshima, the Enola Gay was flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets Commanding Officer of the group. In 1945, Robert Lewis was a Captain in the 509 th Composite Bomb Group. Today, I am talking with men who were aboard the Enola Gay and the Great Artiste on those missions. Three days later on August ninth, the B-29 Great Artiste dropped the plutonium atomic bomb, called the Fat Man, on Nagasaki. Puny by today’s one hundred megaton standards, but powerful enough to kill seventy-eight thousand one hundred and fifty people. The Gimmick, also known as Little Boy, was a uranium atomic bomb with the explosive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT. The time was fifteen minutes and seventeen seconds past 8:00 AM, just seventeen seconds behind schedule. Aboard the plane were thirteen men a thing called “the Gimmick.” Some fourteen hundred miles and six hours later, the Enola Gay reached her appointment with history. Interviewer: At two forty-five in the morning of August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay took off from North field on Tinian.
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