How weather changed the drop point of the A-Bombs!

Hello my name is Stephen Zeigler and I am a 6^th grade social studies teacher at Barboursville Middle School.  I was very interested in taking this class because I wanted to take a deeper look at how history has been affected because of the weather. I am going to try to stick to American History, as that is my current content focus. Through research I will attempt to share many of my findings in these blog post.

The first event that has been affected by weather I would like to discuss is the Manhattan Project. As you know the Manhattan Project was when America dropped the atomic bombs on Japan., which opened up a gateway for a new, and very scary type of warfare. American generals were eager to drop these weapons of mass destruction to test the effects that they would have in a time of war. The US generals new that timing was a key issue on dropping these weapons. They knew if their strategy worked it would knock Japan out of the war.

Many of us know that the two sites for the bombs were dropped at were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 6^th, the atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima and the Americans knew they only had a small window to drop the second bomb. Nagasaki was not originally a drop site for the second bomb. Kokura was site two with Kyoto and Nilgata being the back up drop sites. Complications dropped Kyoto and Nilgata as sites leaving Kokura. Nagasaki was added as a last resort.

Nagasaki was a major shipbuilding and military port, which made the site desirable to drop the bomb. However, Nagasaki had been bombed 5 times in the previous 12 months so measuring the damage of the atomic bomb would become nearly impossible. The original date of the second atomic bomb drop was August 11. But after studying the weather the Americans knew they had to drop the second bomb sooner and the mission was moved to August 9, 1945.

The Americans sent two weather planes ahead of the B-29 fighter jet in the early hours of August 9, 1945. Those planes gave favorable reports from dropping the bomb at Kokura. The orders for the planes were only to drop if they had a visual of the sites. When the B-29 bomber arrived over Kokura the cloud cover was very thick and the pilot could not get a visual of the site. Those clouds, along with haze and smoke saved the city of Kokura that day and sealed the fate of Nagasaki. The plane made three passes trying to get a visual of the site, but never could locate one.

The plane was running out of fuel and so it took off for Nagasaki. It was a much more difficult target because the terrain of Nagasaki was mountainous. The conditions at Nagasaki were actually the same at Kokura with heavy cloud cover. Due to the short fuel supply the B-29 bomber used radar to locate a drop point. Right before launch a small spot in the clouds opened up and the Americans took advantage of the opening, as the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Upon researching this topic I was never aware that Nagasaki was not an original spot to drop on the atomic bombs.  Although, I’m fairly uneducated about air travel and the affects that weather plays into it,  I know that the technology in 1945 isn’t nearly where it is today. It’s amazing to think of how many lives were spared and yet ravaged on August 9, 1945, because of a heavily clouded morning. In the day-to-day processes of life weather plays a variety of  simple affects in our lives. It dictates the clothes we wear, whether the a/c or heater is on, etc. But, this makes me ponder has the weather has ever saved my life?