Crew of enola gay quotes
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Tibbetts immediately put Enola Gay into a hard 60 degree bank to the right, and Sweeney made the same turn to the left. Tibbetts dropped the bomb while Chuck Sweeney in Great Artiste dropped his instrument packages.
#CREW OF ENOLA GAY QUOTES PLUS#
So they were "escaping" from a new position caused by the radius of their own turn plus the known geographical point of the explosion and this turned out to be a turn of approximately 155 degrees."Īt 17 seconds past 9:15 am at 30,000 feet, Col. In Earl Johnson's words, "He had a radius of turn which put him at a 'new angle' to the explosion point which they knew. At that orientation the aircraft would have had its tail directly towards the blast, and would have been accelerating directly away. The pilot only had to turn to 155 degrees, and then straighten out and accelerate. But, a 180 degree turn would have brought it too far around and partly towards the bomb target! Once the bomb was released, the aircraft needed lots of real estate to turn around. Since the aircraft flew at 6 miles over the target, the crew had to get as far away as possible. The Manhattan Project engineers calculated that the shock wave would destroy the B-29 as far as 8 miles from the target. This meant that the aircraft was able to straighten out from a turn earlier, accelerate sooner, and still head straight away from the nuclear explosion.Īs the chart on your left shows, the turning radius of the B-29 aircraft was the key to finding the best direction away from the bomb blast. The bomb target was directly behind the aircraft when the aircraft had turned only 155 degrees. Thus, by the time the aircraft had straighted out at 180 degrees, it would not have had its tail to the bomb the bomb would have been aft and to the side! Even a tight turn can have a radius of a few miles.Īlthough it would normally make sense to turn 180 degrees, the wide turning radius changed the geometry of the scene. Second, the B-29 is a big aircraft, and it needs a lot of space to make a turn. The aircraft had to turn away from the bomb in order to get as far away from it as possible. This also meant that if the aircraft kept flying in the same direction it would be very close to the bomb blast. This meant that it would land several miles ahead of the drop point. The answer comes from geometry and a basic knowledge of flight, with a focus on the turning radius of a B-29 aircraft.įirst, the dropped bomb had forward velocity.