THE BOMB IN THE YELLOW BOX

By GROUP-CAPTAIN LEONARD CHESHIRE, VC

THERE were two teams out on Tinian, the _ scientists and the aircrew. The scientists,

under the administrative control of Brigadier " :rell, were charged with' the technical aspects of the problem, while the aircrew, commanded

?S' Colonel Tibbetts, were responsible for deliver- ing the bomb. Both teams were amalgamated 1' One unit and were given the title of the into one

Bombardment Group, so that together they were much the same as a squadron of the RAF.

T° the headquarters unit was added a security detachment and a communications flight, both Of which carried their own authority and were not liable to jurisdiction from anyone else, no matter where they might be. The communications flight, with its five C54s T14:1 seven crew, plied back and forth between Man and Salt Lake City, ferrying equipment ,,Or Personnel as the need arose. These 'Green vtlornets,' as the aircraft were called, gave the room staging bays along the route plenty of which for thought. Air Transport Command, 'vnich controls all out and inbound flights, work LI a rigid and stereotyped formula. Every aero- il Plane that lands,. unless it carries the President a five-star general, has to follow the formula, ad there are never any exceptions. The Green rhets. however, carried a slip of paper which '"owed them to come and go as they pleased Z°1:1 gave them the right to break all ATC regula- irt theyrefused wanted to take off ahead of turn or _ellused to take onon passengers when their acre- ? ahe was empty, not even a general could stand

In their way. -

4 One day towards the end of July a Green Tinian landed at Honolulu on the way to `thian carrying nothing but two officers and a rlleuliar yellow box. It was a very peculiar box; i fact, the only way you could describe it is 1.,° say that it was the sort of box that must have something unusual inside it. In point of fact, what it had inside it was the vital part of an atom bomb. , The colonel and the major climbed out on to , _e tarmac carrying the box, and for the rest otht_ their stay on the island they neversdet it out oj.their sight. The steward asked them to check n In the baggage room, and, when they refused,

said it was very irregular and that he would have to report it. After lunch, and just as they were waiting to take off, there appeared a group of senior officers who had been stranded through engine failure and who wanted to be taken on in the Green Hornet. The colonel said he was very sorry but it could not be done, which. being contrary to the usual regulations, led to an argument. The senior officers threatened to call in the commanding general and demanded to know what was in the box, pointing out that whatever it was it couldn't be anything as im- portant as they had in their brief-cases. To all of this the colonel quietly produced his slip of paper, saying that the box contained his shaving tackle and that if they didn't choose to believe him he was sorry, but there was nothing else he could tell them. The incident was not forgotten. The next time a Green Hornet landed, the ground crews said, 'We don't know what the hell you're carrying, but the sooner you get off again the better we'll be pleased'; so from then on every- thing went very smoothly.

The 509th was more or less secluded from the rest of the island. It had its own administrative and living quarters, its own compound, and its own dispersal area on the North Field, all of which were closely guarded. If anyone, whether he belonged to the project or not, had tried to approach one of the aeroplanes or any of the equipment without first identifying himself to the guard, he would probably have been shot. One day a small fishing boat came close inshore immediately opposite the compound. It turned out to be a handful of Japanese fishermen under marine escort who had to collect more bait. None the less, the reception they met from the shore cau:ed them to make for the open sea in no small haste, to the evident astonishment of the marines, who did not know of the compound.

The compound itself was tucked away in a low- lying stretch of the North Shore. It looked across the sound towards the hills of Saipan and opened on to the navy's anchorage, wherein day and night there plied a seemingly endless stream of ships. The road leading to the living quarters ran past the cemetery of the 1,100 marines who died in the battle for the island almost exactly a year earlier. It was in this compound, with the three barbed-wire-guarded enclosures, that the work of assembling and testing the bomb was carried out. In the third enclosure was the inner sanctum, a Nissen hut, air-conditioned against the damp and the humidity. There, amongst a disorderly mess of equipment and test gear, lay the atom cores before their final assembly into bombs. About them there was nothing special and nothing secretive. Anyone who had access to the but could inspect them and even handle them, so long as they did not touch them with bare hands. To me the most fantastic spectacle of all, more fantastic even than the explosion at Nagasaki, was when Alvarez walked me across to the box and opened it. After all that I had heard and read during the past few weeks, after the speculation and rumours that had filtered through into print about the atom in the course of the last twenty years, I should have expected to find it, if I ever found it, entrenched behind steel and concrete. I should have expected it to be high on a pedestal or deep in the bowels of the earth; but not just lying casually in a box in an ordinary Nissen hut. Equally, I should not have expected the man who showed it to me to open the box in the course of conversation, and after I had glanced at the contents and looked away again because it did not seem to be any- thing particularly interesting, to say, 'That is the atom,' as though it were straw or anything else that is normally found in boxes.

None of that did I expect, and yet that is how it happened. The image of that commonplace Nissen hut, just one among a row of others, with its piles of equipment lying so aimlessly and without order, has stayed in my mind more vividly than anything else. Farther along the road from the compound lay the dispersal area, with the squadron and the aircraft. The aircrews had been more or less hand-picked and most of them had had battle experience either in Europe or the Mediter- ranean. For many months past they had been isolated from the world undergoing an extensive course of training. The problems they had to overcome were twofold: first, to drop the bomb accurately: and, second, to avoid the effects of the explosion. The problem of enemy defences

Was nil, provided they flew high enough, because the Japanese had nothing to match a B29 at height. The danger of damage from the explosion of the bomb resolved itself purely into the question of being far enough away. According to calculation, the bomb was equivalent to the instantaneous detonation of 20,000 tons of high explosive, so that as long as the aircraft was out of range of the lethal area of the resultant blast it would be perfectly safe. This area the scien- %Lists estimated to be approximately four miles. Forking to this formula, the squadron devised a simple and effective plan of attack which guaranteed the aircraft's safety.

When a bomb is dropped, it tracks forward, at the speed of the aircraft, as well as down- Wards, so that the aircraft, provided it does not alter course, will be almost directly overhead When the bomb hits the ground. If, for example, a bomb takes thirty seconds to fall from an aircraft flying at 20,000 feet and at a speed of four miles a minute, it will be dropped two the short of the target. In the case of Lo

‘e atom, the bomb was to be dropped from J0,000 feet with a time of fall of forty-five seconds and a forward speed of six miles a minute, which meant that it would be released three and three-quarter miles short of the target. As soon as it was clear, the aeroplane was to turn as .raPidly as possible on to a reciprocal course and the off at a speed of seven miles a minute. Since toe crews needed twenty seconds to turn the aeroplane on to the reciprocal, they had twenty- ' five seconds' flying time left to make good their escape, which gave them another three and a quarter miles. Thus, at the moment of impact tAheY would be seven miles away and well clear of "auger.

This manoeuvre was practised by the crews for Weeks on end, and there was no doubt that they could follow the routine as well as they could the Path to the cookhouse. There was equally 110 doubt that, so long as the weather was clear and they could see the target, they could guarantee delivering the bomb within two hun- dred yards of the aiming point. In addition to their training in the United States, the squadron started trying out their tactics on the Japanese mainland, dropping single large-calibre bombs. The object in this was Partly to test out their bombing accuracy and Partly to give the crews battle experience in '"e Pacific. These single and two-plane raids, carried out in. clear weather during the daylight, Proved conclusively not only that the squadron's standard of bombing was high, but also that the !,Panese had nothing to offer in the way of "efence. Furthermore, they gave the ground crews the chance to acclimatise themselves and their equipment, and to make certain that nothing would go wrong on the da'y itself. The work of the ground crews has faded deep into the background of the bomb itself, and n° one has troubled to tell their story. And yet their story is a good one. It is a story which, although without glamour and no doubt similar i Many others across the battlefields of the World, played a crucial part in the story of the tti°m, for had the aircraft at Hiroshima or Nagasaki developed engine trouble, the clear weather which lasted only so short a time would have been wasted. So far as the world is con- ,verned, those two aircraft took off, dropped their bombs and returned to base without developing engine failure, in which there is nothing unusual.

in the world does not know, however, is that in all the attacks that the squadron carried out, „v°Ivirtg over one thousand operational flying hours not a single aeroplane ever failed to corn-

plete its mission because of mechanical failure. That this record was achieved in the hot, humid Pacific climate is a remarkable tribute to the teamwork and energy of the 509th ground crews.

As the days went by and passed into August there grew a noticeable air of tension. Zero hour, which had originally been set for the second week, was brought forward to August 8, and then to the fifth and finally to the third. The work in the compound went on later in the evenings and more and more conferences were called. By the evening of August 2 the bomb was assembled and ready for the squadron, but there was other work that still needed to be done.. It was not enough to drop the bomb; the ex- plosion had to be measured and readings taken. To do this required recorders and the recorders had to be built; they had to be checked, too, because they were unique instruments and no one was quite certain how they would work.

At the same time, the crews chosen for the attack were briefed and re-briefed to make sure they knew the routine. A few changes were made in the plan, and a special camera was flown in from America. This camera was a fastex, capable of taking 1,600 shots a minute, and its purpose was to measure the size of the flame at the instant of explosion. A suggestion was made that a B29 be filled with movie cameras and ex- perienced operators in order to accompany and film the attack, but the idea was discarded. Why do not know since there was no tactical reason against it.

AS August 3 passed with a typhoon covering the targets. more and more interest was taken in the weather office. The weather over Japan is worse even than Europe. The climate is humid with frequent cloud cover. In the month of August there are on average only seven clear days, and the difficulty of making an accurate forecast from so great a range makes it almost impossible to know all the seven days sufficiently far in ad- vance to make use of them. The reports said that the typhoon was beginning to clear the area, and, since a period of fine weather usually follows in the wake of a typhoon, it looked as though the fifth or the sixth might be the day.

In readiness against the event, the aircraft and equipment were given their final check. The attack was to be delivered by three crews, one to drop the bomb and the other two to make visual observations and secure technical record- ings. Penney and I would have liked to have gone, but the Americans preferred that we stayed behind, so we relegated ourselves to the role of onlookers. The lead aircraft was to go in on the bombing run at 30,000 feet, with number two a mile or so behind at approximately the same height. Number three, which carried the two 16 mm. cameras, was to break formation on the final turn in to the target, circle around for five minutes, and then follow in the wake of the others. This manoeuvre was designed to position the aircraft some twenty miles away, and head- ing towards the target, at the time of the explosion, so that the camera operators in the nose would have the best possible chance of taking their shots.

For defence the formation relied upon speed and height. The only guns they carried were two in the tail; the rest had been taken out in the interests of speed.

On the afternoon of August 4 the weather office reported the weather clear for the following day, and a zero hour was given for 9.15 a.m., August 5. And the project had reached its conclusion.

Of the flight to Hiroshima that morning, and the second one to Nagasaki on August 9, there is not much to tell, because the tale was finished when the aeroplane and the bomb left the run- way. From that moment the issue was no longer in doubt. There might be some mechanical failure to prevent the bomb exploding or the aeroplane might have to return to base. But in either case there was another to follow and behind that another still. It was not a battle between two strong enemies, but the destruction of the impotent by the invincible.

To those who dropped the atom bomb the one reality was the war—the most terrible war the world has yet known. In their minds only two questions mattered. Would the bomb end the war? Would it cost fewer lives than the one alternative, an all-out invasion of Japan? Undeniably the answer to both questions was yes; and, therefore, undeniably the bomb was right.

Today the emphasis has shifted. It is the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not the suffering that the world was spared nor even the tyranny and evil with which it was threatened, who have become the one lasting reality, and it is in their light that the bomb is now judged.

Which of these two views, one may ask, is right?

In my opinion neither. If twenty years ago we were right to have used the bomb to end the war, we were not right in the particular way in which we used it. The honour of the cause for which we were fighting demanded that we should give the enemy at least one chance to think twice--by dropping the bomb offshore or some- thing of the sort. Because we did not give them that chance, both our own honour and the justice of our cause have been degraded in the eyes of the world.

If today we are right in giving priority of remembrance to those whom the bomb destroyed. we are wrong in judging its use in isolation from the threat which called it into being. Whether we like it or not, the bomb is a reality of modern life; it is an expression not just of our present scientific age, but of a rapidly integrating world which increasingly thinks and acts in terms of total involvement. The evil is not so much in the bomb itself, which by virtue of its deterrent power can also be an instrument of great good, but in the hearts of men, who if deprived of one weapon will soon enough find another. Our role, it seems to me, is to prove by our actions that we have the good of all men at heart, not just our own.