pjmedia.com By RICK MORAN
The date of Aug. 6, 1945, is solemnly remembered in Japan and much of the world as marking the first use of an atomic weapon. Whether that act by the United States was necessary has been the subject of scholarly debate and barroom disputes for 77 years.
What isnât in dispute is that 77 years ago, Col. Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group and pilot of a plane he named after his mother â the Enola Gay â flew over Hiroshimaâs Aioi Bridge and began to bank his aircraft.
Just as Tibbets started his turn, the B-29 lurched violently as 10,000 pounds of American technical, industrial, and scientific ingenuity fell out of the bomb bay almost exactly on schedule (navigator Capt. Theodore Van Kirkâs calculations of time over target were 15 seconds off). Little Boy, they called it, in an ironic juxtaposition to its massive bulk. It was a gun-type nuclear bomb â a crude, primitive, inefficient device by our standards. And for all the effort, money, time, and brainpower that went into designing it, Little Boy was simplicity incarnate…
