Reckless (7 page)

Colonel Paul Tibbets handpicked his crew from guys he had flown with in bombing missions over Europe. He asked for Dutch Van Kirk as his navigator and Tom Ferebee as his bombardier. These three knew each other well. Then there was Wyatt Duzenbury for flight engineer, and Deak Parsons looking after the weapon. Tibbets had spent time at Los Alamos, he had been at meetings where Robert Oppenheimer chain-smoked, and General Groves, who hated people who smoked, worked alongside him, and he knew about the atom bomb. He knew it was a big deal, and would shorten the war, but mostly it was a bunch of technical challenges. The bomb was so heavy that the plane that carried it would have to be stripped down to its shell. Then there was the matter of getting away after the drop. The usual bombing pattern was you dropped your load and went on flying straight ahead over the target, but you couldn’t do that with this new gadget, because it was going to be a big bang. Oppenheimer told Tibbets he had to turn tangent to the expanding shockwave, 159 degrees in either direction, and get the hell out of there. They timed the drop with dummy bombs and reckoned he had forty to forty-two seconds to make that turn, which was not an easy matter in a B-29 Superfortress at twenty-five thousand feet. Tibbets practised turning, steeper
each time, until the big plane’s tail was shaking, but he got so he could make the turn and get eleven miles away in forty seconds. Eleven miles from the detonation and the plane could ride the shockwave.

‘I sure am happy to hear that,’ said Dutch Van Kirk.

‘You just get us there on time,’ said Tibbets. ‘I’ll get you home.’

The crew shipped out to North Field airbase on Tinian in the west Pacific to await orders. The words ‘atom bomb’ were never spoken. They had been told the weapon they were going to drop would destroy an entire city. So the Japs would finally get paid back for Pearl Harbor, and the Bataan death march, and all the cruelties they’d inflicted on American POWs. Everyone knew the Japs were monkeys. Just about everyone back home wanted to see the whole bunch exterminated, men, women and children. Tibbets told his crew what General Uzal Ent told him at Colorado Springs.

‘Paul, be careful how you treat this responsibility, because if you’re successful you’ll probably be called a hero.’

‘And if we fail?’ said Tom Ferebee.

‘Our worries are over,’ said Tibbets.

He named the B-29 after his mother, Enola Gay Haggard, who herself had been named for the heroine of a novel called
Enola, Or Her Fatal Mistake
. His mother had backed him up in his dream to be a flyer even when his father said he was going to be a doctor. He did some time at med. school in Cincinnati but he quit to join the Army Air Corps. His father was angry and said, ‘If you want to kill yourself, go ahead, I don’t give a damn.’ But his mother said, ‘Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you’re going to be all right.’ So he called the plane the
Enola Gay
; had it painted on the side.

*

The order came through on August 3, requiring the delivery of
‘the first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing’. It was authorised by Henry Stimson, Secretary of War. No order was ever signed by President Truman.

The weather station on Guam predicted that the skies over Honshu would be clear on the sixth day of August. On August 5 Tibbets was cleared to go. Target time was 09.15 next morning, Tinian time, 08.15 Japanese time. Tibbets told Dutch to figure out what time they had to take off to be over the target at 09.15 and Dutch calculated 02.45. The crew were then ordered to get some sleep. Tibbets, Van Kirk and Ferebee had no inclination to sleep. They stayed up playing poker.

Deak Parsons, the weaponeer, oversaw the loading of the bomb into the aeroplane. This was an anxious time. ‘Little Boy’ was three metres long, weighed almost ten thousand pounds, and was extremely vulnerable to accidental detonation. Crash impact, or an electrical short, or fire, or lightning could all set it off, and if it blew it would take out Tinian Island and all five hundred Superfortresses based there. So Deak did not load the four silk powder bags, each containing two pounds of slotted-tube cordite, into the gun breech, and he instructed Morris Jeppson to remove the three safety plugs that connected the bomb’s internal battery to its firing mechanism.

That night the airstrip was floodlit as if for a Hollywood premiere or, as Dick Nelson said, ‘like a supermarket opening.’ The crew were filmed and photographed as they climbed on board, but none of them had too much to say. They each had their job to do and their minds were on the mission.

The
Enola Gay
took off right on time and made its rendezvous in mid-air with the instruments plane that would measure the blast and the picture plane that would take the pictures. Flying time to target was six hours, if Dutch had got it right. When the three planes were in formation, Tibbets left the pilot’s seat and crawled down the tunnel to speak to the crew. Eight of
the twelve men on board had been kept in ignorance of the nature of the bomb, at least in theory. But they weren’t stupid. No one had ever before seen a bomb like the one they were carrying.

‘We’re going on a bombing mission,’ Tibbets told them. ‘But it’s a little bit special.’

Bob Caron, the tail gunner, said, ‘Colonel, we wouldn’t be playing with atoms today, would we?’

‘Bob,’ said Tibbets, ‘you’ve got it just exactly right.’

Then Deak Parsons loaded the bags of cordite into the bomb’s gun breech, and Morris Jeppson climbed down into the bomb bay and pulled out the green testing plugs and put in the red firing plugs. After that the bomb was armed. There was a timer device that stopped it going off for fifteen seconds after release, then a barometric switch took over, a thin membrane that got pushed in as air pressure increased during descent, and closed the final circuit at two thousand metres. Then the three gun primers ignited and blew the cordite, which shot the uranium projectile down the gun barrel inside the bomb at three hundred metres a second to smash into the solid uranium target, and set off a chain reaction. Once the bomb was armed, who knew what might go wrong? Some random radar signal could do it, or plain old water leakage.

Tibbets had orders not to use the radio but he reckoned he owed it to his crew to talk them down to the drop. So the
Enola Gay
flew on, and the sun rose, and it was a clear day down there. Japanese early warning radar picked up the incoming planes and sounded the alert, but when they confirmed that it was only three aircraft they assumed it was a reconnaissance mission and lifted the alert. The Japanese Air Force was so short of fuel they no longer made any attempt to intercept small formations.

Then the rivers and the bridges and the big shrine of Hiroshima
came into view and Tibbets began the countdown. They were over the target at 08.15:15 local time and that’s when the bomb dropped. As soon as it was away the whole plane gave a great jump and Tibbets took it into its tight turn, losing height fast. Then the bomb went off with a bright flash and the shock wave chased the plane and Bob Caron in the tail said, ‘Here it comes!’ and when it hit them the plane snapped all over, even though by then they were ten and a half miles away. They looked back to see what had happened to the target but all they could see was black smoke and dust and this tall, tall cloud, and right at the top, the colours. Salmon and pink and yellow flame. Then they headed away over the Sea of Japan.

‘Dutch,’ said Tibbets, ‘what time were we over the target?’

‘Target time plus fifteen seconds,’ said Dutch.

Tom Ferebee snorted.

‘What lousy navigating. Fifteen seconds off!’

No one spoke about what was happening on the ground. Don Albury, co-pilot on the picture plane flying with the
Enola Gay
, looked down at that great cloud, and the rainbow colours streaming out of it at the top, and said a little prayer.

‘Lord, please take care of them all down there.’

*

General Groves phoned Dr Oppenheimer at 2 p.m., Santa Fe time, that same day.

‘I’m very proud of you and all your people,’ Groves said.

‘It went all right?’ said Oppenheimer.

‘Apparently,’ said Groves, ‘it went with a tremendous bang.’

*

The president learned the news while he was at lunch on the USS
Augusta
, en route to Newport, Virginia. Excited, he turned to shake Captain Graham’s hand.

‘This is the greatest thing in history!’ he said.

He then made an announcement to all the crew gathered in
the mess hall that a successful attack had taken place on Japan with an extraordinary new weapon that was twenty thousand times more powerful than a ton of TNT. The crew cheered and clapped. The president and his party then attended a programme of boxing bouts on the ship’s well deck. The display came to an abrupt close when the ring collapsed, injuring a crew member, who was struck on the head by a post. The president and Secretary Byrnes visited the injured man in the sickbay to be sure he wasn’t seriously hurt.

In his statement released to the press, Truman said, ‘The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.’ He revealed the scale of the Manhattan Project: up to 125,000 individuals working for two and a half years. ‘We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history, and won. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.’

On the second evening of Mary Brennan’s visions the priest was out on the sand of Buckle Bay as the sun was setting, along with Ned and Betty Clancy, who’d heard the tale from Eileen Brennan, and Michael Gallaher, who had followed out of mere idle curiosity. As the sun went down in the west Mary Brennan walked out alone towards the water’s edge and stood there, very still. They couldn’t see what she saw, but they could see the way her arms went out, and the look in her eyes that shone like the setting sun. They heard her speak, she said, ‘Yes, Lord,’ and, ‘I’ll tell them, Lord.’ The priest watched closely and he was moved. This is true faith, he told himself. Whether the vision was real or not, he could not doubt the child’s ardent and innocent surrender to her God.

Then Eileen Brennan was nudging him and saying, ‘The sea! The sea!’ The priest turned his gaze from the girl to the sea, and saw to his amazement that it was no longer moving. Just as the girl had said, a stillness had fallen over the world. He looked at the others and saw that they saw it too.

Mary Brennan let out a cry, and fell to the sand.

‘Mary!’

Her mother ran to her, and drew her up to her feet again.

‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What did you see?’

‘The chastisement,’ said Mary. ‘Oh, Mam, it was terrible! The great wind will take everything!’

‘Our Lord is warning us,’ said Eileen Brennan, turning to the priest. ‘You must tell the Holy Father what my child has seen.’ And to Mary, ‘When will it come, this great wind?’

Mary shook her head. She didn’t know.

‘Sure, you should ask him,’ said Eamonn, who saw matters in a practical light.

‘The sea was still,’ said Eileen Brennan. ‘Just like you said. The father saw it too.’

‘I did so,’ said the priest.

‘He’ll come again,’ said Mary. ‘One more time. Oh, Mam, I do love him so.’

‘I’m sure we all do,’ said her mother.

‘Wouldn’t it be the war?’ said Bridie. ‘There’s terrible things been doing in the war.’

‘There’s always war,’ said Father Flannery. ‘I’m thinking it’s the godlessness. The young people today have no respect.’

‘Our Mary has respect,’ said Eileen Brennan.

‘Your Mary is a child of God,’ said the priest. ‘When she lifted up her sweet face to the west I saw the light of heaven in her eyes.’

‘You must send word to the bishop, Father.’

‘I shall send word to Monsignor McCloskey,’ said the priest. ‘In Donegal.’

*

Monsignor McCloskey drove up to Kilnacarry the very next afternoon and met Mary Brennan in the priest’s house. Monsignor McCloskey was much of an age with Father Flannery, but he was a varsity man with a narrow face and sharp little eyes. Father Flannery begged him to go easy on the girl, aware as he was that these varsity men had little time for peasant superstitions.

‘If this is a true revelation, Dermot,’ said Monsignor McCloskey, ‘it will be proof against my reasonable doubts. If it is nonsense, then the sooner we put a stop to it the better.’

The monsignor requested that he interview Mary Brennan alone; which is to say, without the rest of the clan. Father Flannery remained in the room, and took notes. Mary bore herself with great composure, and seemed unafraid of the monsignor, for all his close-fitting cassock and his wire-rimmed spectacles.

‘Now then, Mary,’ said the monsignor. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that sometimes we think we see things when we don’t. Just the same way we have dreams that feel so real, but when we wake we know it was all in our imaginations.’

‘Yes, Monsignor,’ said Mary.

‘Having a dream of Our Lord is a holy thing, and a blessing, and shows what a good girl you are.’

‘It was no dream, Monsignor.’

‘Dreams don’t only come when we’re in bed at night, Mary. They can come in broad daylight, when we’re wide awake and have our eyes open.’

‘Then am I dreaming now, Monsignor?’

‘No, Mary. Not now.’

‘How am I to know when it’s a dream and when it’s real, Monsignor?’

‘Ordinary life is real, Mary,’ said the monsignor. ‘When something extraordinary happens to us, we have to ask ourselves if maybe we’re dreaming.’

‘Maybe Jesus came to me in a dream, Monsignor.’

‘That is what I’m trying to establish, Mary.’

‘But Monsignor,’ said Mary, her innocence striking like a sword, ‘if Jesus wanted to come to me, it would never be ordinary. So it would have to be a dream.’

‘Well, yes, Mary … ’

‘I don’t see that it matters what you call it,’ the girl went on.
‘What matters is that he was so beautiful, and so loving, and I am to be his voice and give his warning, before it’s too late.’