Today’s Incendiary Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
At exactly 8:15:17 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb was released from the bomb bay of the Enola Gay as it passed over Hiroshima. Among those killed by the heat flash were several members of the crews of the B-24s that had been shot down over the city the previous week. Nevertheless, flash burns were only to account for the deaths of some 20-30% of the immediate casualties of the bomb.
For a few seconds after the heat flash passed over them, the people of Hiroshima could have been forgiven for thinking that the worst was over, but in its wake came an even more devastating effect of the cataclysmic chain reaction: the shock wave.
The TNT equivalent ‘yield’ of the Hiroshima bomb has been vaguely estimated but, in all probability, the most likely figure is around 12,500 tons. According to the US Strategic Bombing Survey:
Within a radius of 7000 feet almost every Japanese house collapsed and others received serious structural damage.
Along with the structural damage, of course, went the effects on the human inhabitants in the city:
I saw what seemed like an incendiary bomb exploding to the rear of the plane (in the sky to the south). It was followed by a flash (1 to 2 seconds duration). Thinking it was an incendiary bomb, I started to take shelter in the station building but had only gone a few steps when I felt a tremendous concussion strike me from behind. I immediately fell to the ground and covered my face…” (Kure dockyard worker)
I felt as though I had been struck on the back with something like a big hammer, and thrown into boiling oil… I seem to have been blown a good way to the north, and I felt as though the directions were all changed around… (Schoolgirl)
The blast wave, as it flattened the city, threw up an immense cloud of dust and dirt:
When I opened my eyes after being blown at least eight yards, it was as dark as though I had come up against a black-painted fence… The first thing that my eyes lighted upon then was the flat stretch of land with only dust clouds rising from it. Everything had crumbled away in that one moment, and changed into streets of rubble, street after street of ruins. (Schoolboy)
When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see a thing. It was as if it had suddenly become midnight in the heat of the day…” (Tsutomu Yamaguchi, ship designer)
Hiroshima aftermath.
Culled from: Eyewitness Hiroshima: First-hand Accounts of the Atomic Terror that Changed the World
Adventures in Antiquing!
Of course I had to buy this vintage game when I saw it at an antique store. I mean, how could I not? It’s soooooo wrong, but so of of its time.
Mine was missing the back, but I found this one online.