Bockscar drops a second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki
Three days after Hiroshima, American planners had a second atomic bomb ready and a second target chosen. On the morning of August 9, 1945, the B-29 Bockscar, piloted by Charles W. Sweeney, took off from Tinian carrying the Fat Man bomb, an implosion-type weapon built by the Manhattan Project. Clouds over the primary target forced a diversion to Nagasaki, where the bomb detonated at 1,650 feet, destroying 44 percent of the city and killing an estimated 35,000 people. Bockscar, low on fuel from a failed transfer pump, landed on Okinawa with less than five minutes to spare.
Nagasaki was the last atomic bomb the United States has used in war, and the decision to drop it, made under weather delays and a failing fuel pump rather than a clean plan, has shaped six decades of American argument over Truman's choice and the ethics of the bomb. Bockscar itself now sits in Dayton, Ohio, a permanent, physical prompt for that unresolved national debate.
QWhy did Bockscar's tail number change from 7 to 77 just before the mission?
Bockscar originally carried the Victor number 7, but on August 1, 1945, ground crews repainted it as 77. The switch wasn't cosmetic. An actual aircraft from the 444th Bombardment Group already used a number close enough to cause confusion in flight logs and radio traffic, and commanders wanted no chance of mixing up a routine bomber with the plane assigned to carry an atomic weapon. The renumbering happened just over a week before the mission, during the same stretch when Bockscar was running practice drops. The renumbering was a paperwork fix meant to keep Bockscar from being confused with another B-29 on any manifest.
QWhat did Bockscar practice in the week before dropping Fat Man?
Bockscar flew three test-drop rehearsals with inert Pumpkin bombs in the eight days before the mission, letting the crew practice the exact release profile they would need for the live weapon.
QWhy did the crew give up on Okinawa's control tower before landing?
Bockscar circled Yontan Airfield for 20 minutes trying to reach the control tower by radio, got no response, and finally decided its own radio was broken rather than that no one was answering.
