The B-29 Bockscar, finding its primary target Kokura obscured by clouds, then diverted to its secondary target, Nagasaki.
At 11:02 AM, it dropped Fat Man on the city, with the bomb detonating between the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Arms Factory’s Ohashi and Mori-Machi plants with 60,000-80,000 deaths as a result.
Japan then announced it was surrendering on August 15th, with the formal surrender taking place on September 2, 1945, bringing the Second World War to a close. The surrender saved millions of lives that would have been lost in a ground invasion of Japan in fact we still haven't gone through all of the 500,000 Purple Hearts specifically minted in anticipation of the invasion.
3 comments:
And we are STILL fighting the revisionist historians that are trying to make the US the 'bad guys' for doing this, rather than going forward with the invasion which would have cost MORE lives on both sides... sigh...
Old NFO: Yep, the revisionists tend to understate the facts of the time while trying to make themselves seem relevant with theories that just don't match the uncontested facts and the recorded recollections of the people who were there at the time on all sides.
A tough, horrible decision, but…the right one! I pray we never need to do it again.
juvat
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