Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
The atomic bomb was developed by scientists working under the Manhattan Project. The project was granted funding on December 6, 1941, with American leaders aiming for a new invention that would serve as a wartime weapon. The decision to drop an atomic bomb on Japan had been made by 1943, and a shortlist of candidate target cities was in place in 1945. At the time, it was argued that an atomic bombing would bring about a more rapid end to the war. Hiroshima, the first target, was selected to show the power of America's new weapon. The second bombing, of Nagasaki, was intended to demonstrate that the USA had a large arsenal. At 11:02 A.M. local time on August 9, 1945, the atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man as its code name by Robert Serber in the United States (after Sydney Greenstreet's character in "The Maltese Falcon") was dropped on Nagasaki, forever changing the city's landscape. A mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of 45,000 feet above the city.
The Great Artiste
Flown by 393d commander, Major Charles W. Sweeney, it was assigned to the Hiroshima mission on 6 August 1945, as the blast measurement instrumentation aircraft. On the mission to bomb Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, it was to have been the aircraft carrying the bomb, but the mission schedule had been moved forward two days because of weather considerations, and the instrumentation had not yet been removed from the aircraft. To avoid delaying the mission, Sweeney traded airplanes with the crew of "Bockscar" to carry the Fat Man atomic bomb to Nagasaki. Captain Frederick C. Bock and his C-13 crew flew "The Great Artiste" to Nagasaki on its instrument support mission, and landed with it on Okinawa at the conclusion of the mission. It was the only aircraft to directly participate in both missions. "Enola Gay", flown by Captain George Marquardt's Crew B-10, was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura, the primary target on the Nagasaki flight. "Enola Gay" reported clear skies over Kokura.