You could see the city of Hiroshima from 50 miles away, so you just went in and turned on the bomb run and at this time it was in the bombardiers hands and you sat there and waited for the drop. You could see the city of, the coast of Japan from a good 200 miles away, or maybe 100 miles away. And with what we had prepared for and had been expecting and everything of that type all this time.
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There wasn’t a surprise in the whole bunch. Theodore Van Kirk: It was easy, because everything went exactly according to plan. Lindsay Garfield: Once you got up in the plane, what did it feel like, how were you feeling? So, then we finally finished all that we get into the airplane and took off. At 8 o’clock at night they came and got us finally and then took us over and gave us the final breakfast and this sort of business, I call it final breakfast, they call it the mission breakfast and over the final briefing, where they gave you the latest metro data told you where all the air sea rescue ships were and everything of that type, any final things that you needed to know. How they expect to tell you you’re going to drop the first atomic bomb and then go get some sleep. The day before we had a briefing in the morning and then they told you to go back and get some sleep cause you were going to take off at 2.45am, everything started at 2.45, and so then you went back to get some sleep, but nobody slept.
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So if we didn’t know how to drop it by this time we never would. And we knew we were having a weapon to drop and so then we had to prepare to, we had already been preparing to drop it. After that everything started to get hotter and everything of that type. And then they had a test of one of the first atomic bombs in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16 of 1945.
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If you were a poker player you would say you were betting on the call. And we had started preparing to drop the atom bomb in the fall of 1944 before we even had a bomb. So this effort had been going on a long time ever since the beginning of the war when Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt saying that it might be possible to make an atomic weapon.
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They built three cities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico and Hanford, Washington just to produce, to research how to make the bombs and make the materials then from which to make the bombs. There were hundreds of thousands of people working on the Manhattan Project. The Bomb was developed by the Manhattan Project. But the day before was the important day, because you have to go back and realise what happened during this period. Theodore Van Kirk: Well that day wasn’t that the important today because the bomb was dropped by, 9.15 and 8.15 in the morning Tinian time, 9.15 Tinian time, 8.15 Hiroshima time. So, if you could now, take us through the steps of that fateful day. I am joined by that man today Theodore Van Kirk. Lindsay Garfield: Today only one of these twelve crew members of the Enola Gay live to tell the story.