Footage of Fat Man bombing

[Ben H]

Thought you boys would find this interesting. Vid on the prep and drop of Fat Man.

[utube]

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[ghentjr]

Quite a weapon.

[Jim Baird]

Is this cut from "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Quit Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb"?

BTW the image of the cloud is referred to in Denis Johnson's novel "Tree of Smoke", supposedly drawn from three different Bible references. The novel is about Vietnam, and won the National Book Award.

[Chad Fabry]

I am at once mesmerized by the casual attire and attitude of the soldiers then mortified at the glimpse of the cloud, knowing full well it is comprised of 70,000 people.

My father was stationed on Tinian. It was a treat to see what he saw 65 years ago.

I have a cool pic of a car he built there- I'll try to find it.... found it

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[kurt]

Way cool ride. Crazy cool. Pimp my ride Tinian style.

In history mode, today is the day in '43 that Victory was declared on Guadalcanal.

[Scottpat]

We can only hope an pray we, our children and their children never see something like that again.

[Steven Hockstein]

Very sobering to think that 70,000 people died in an instant. The weapons that have been developed since this explosion are substantially more powerful and plentiful. It is a scary world we live in.

[Mark P]

I spent a lot of years in the Pacific and particularly Japan during which time I read a lot of books on WWII history written by both Japanese and Americans. Two books that come to mind that relate somewhat to this thread and I highly recommend are:

1. ?Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, which is a very famous novel in Japan and required reading in school. It is based on diaries and first hand interviews of survivors of Hiroshima. In fact my 16 old son (who is half Japanese) just started reading it for a book report due in his history class.

2. The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis by Dan Kurzman. The Indianapolis was the ship that carried the 2 atomic bombs from California to Tinian and was then sunk by a torpedo on its way to Pearl Harbor, but no one knew it was sank and rescue did not come for the 900 men for many days. Many of the men were eaten by sharks.

[ghentjr]

http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm