Hiroshima 1945 - The British Atomic Attack

[Music] 6th of august 1945 three aircraft are approaching the japanese city of hiroshima one carries the most destructive weapon yet invented by man an atomic bomb time has run out for japan warned repeatedly to surrender the japanese government has refused to accept unconditional surrender and our armies continued to fight all over asia even though the nation itself has been brought to its knees by an allied naval blockade and an american firebombing campaign from the air that has reduced most of its cities to ash and rubble maximum effort fire rates and japan's dreams of world empire went up in a flaming inferno [Music] hiroshima an important army base and headquarters a manufacturing center has been largely spared attack one of a handful of japanese cities still in pristine condition why for a test the testing of an atomic bomb in action the three black painted aircraft approached the point at which the atomic bomb will be released one carries scientific instruments another carries cameras to record the moment for posterity and science and the third the actual bomb all are specially modified avro lancaster bombers they carry no squadron markings or serial numbers but their crews are british but wait a minute the first atomic bomb was dropped by a b-29 super fortress an american plane with an american crew you are of course quite correct but it so nearly wasn't an american operation in fact an extremely secret royal air force unit was founded towards the end of the war to drop the atomic bombs on japan why because the americans couldn't do it initially their famed b-29 couldn't carry the large atomic bombs if politics had an overall military practicality the atomic attacks on hiroshima and nagasaki would have been made by the mysterious black lancasters a unit still shrouded in secrecy 75 years after the attacks here for the first time is the story of those aircraft a myth has grown up in the last seven decades that the atomic bomb was a wholly american program this is quite wrong britain was intimately involved in the development of atomic weapons from the beginning through a secret corporation named tube alloys lacking the industrial capacity and money for the united states as britain fought for its very existence in the early part of the war the british and canadian atomic bomb programmes joined forces with the americans becoming the manhattan project in 1943. the atomic bomb would need to be dropped from a large four-engine bomber but herein lay the problem the hiroshima bomb codenamed little boy was a gun type fission weapon of unusual size and weight little boy weighed 9700 pounds and was 10 feet long by 28 inches in diameter the second type of bomb fat man dropped on nagasaki on the 9th of august 1945 was an oval plutonium implosion weapon again unusually big and heavy weighing ten thousand three hundred pounds with a length of ten feet eight inches and a girth of five feet scientists at the los alamos national laboratory in new mexico quickly realized that the two four engine us heavy bombers then in front line service the boeing b-17 flying fortress and the consolidated b-24 liberator could not carry either weapon the us army air force would be unable to attack germany or japan with atomic weapons no matter how many the manhattan project produced therefore an entirely new aircraft type was needed and fast the boeing b-29 superfortress was already in development designed to cover long distances to strike at targets in japan rather than germany in october 1943 dr norman ramsey of los alamos national laboratory suggested that the only aircraft in the u.s inventory capable of delivering the atomic bomb was the b-29 but there was a problem or rather several problems with the super fortress the b-29s design was all wrong for the atomic bombs it had two bomb bays with the wing spa between them in action bombs being dropped simultaneously from the front and rear bays dropping one very large bomb would require cutting through the main spa and rearranging the bay boeing began work immediately to try to rectify this problem but it would be months before the first b-29 was ready for testing in fact it would be the 20th of february 1944 before the first modified b-29 known as the silver plate b-29 was ready for testing development of the actual atomic bomb was progressing well major delays than the silver plate program could have meant a bomb being ready for action but no plane able to deliver it as a sensible precaution another aircraft already in existence could act as an emergency stop gap and if necessary actually drop the weapon when they were eventually ready the plane selected was not even american but it was british the avro lancaster a plane that carried the largest bomb load of the war and was a tried and tested combat veteran of the bombing campaign over western europe importantly the lancaster happily hauled the five-ton tall boy bomb one of the biggest aerial bombs of world war ii the lancaster's enormous bombay was long and deep enough to accommodate little boy or fat man without the expensive airframe redesign requirements for the b-29 to do the same dr ramsey certainly favored the lancaster for the attack and he travelled to canada in early october 1943 to meet the lancaster's chief designer roy chadwick who was in canada to observe the initial license-build examples of his aircraft coming off the assembly lines at the victory aircraft works in toronto ramsay gave chadwick basic outlines for the little boy and fat man bombs without telling him that they were atomic weapons chadwick told ramsay that the lancaster could manage both bombs with minor modifications the british air ministry informed of the bomb's actual purpose took steps to ensure that the raf had a unit ready to carry the atomic bomb should the americans have decided to use the lancaster option this is the genesis of the black lancasters raf endston a quiet satellite station tucked away in rural oxfordshire england was selected as the base for britain's first a-bomb force in great secrecy six lancasters of unknown units carrying no identification numbers or squadron markings flew into the airfield in 1943. the base was already home to number 21 operational training unit flying wellington bombers but the black lancaster squadron was kept well away from the otu and unless flying its lancasters were kept in closed hangars out of view it was noted that the lancasters had all been modified all having their bomb doors removed but no official records exist of the 18 months of the black lancasters spent at enston officially they were not there but during those 18 months the crews trained constantly the personnel isolated from other raf crewmen on the base the hangars and buildings heavily guarded by raf police in the meantime plans were being made to allow the raf to bomb japan while the b-29 struggled through testing in america the british had committed to providing a large force of lancasters to begin a concerted aerial assault on japan flying from bases in burma one of the obvious problems for any lancaster missions against japan either from burma or from the later atomic missions ford base at tinian in the pacific was lack of range the b-29s round-trip range was 3250 miles with bomb load a lancaster could manage 2530 or about three-quarters of the distance a lancaster couldn't reach hiroshima or nagasaki and return safely to base unlike the new b-29 but if the british were to strategically bomb japan with tiger force as new unit of lancasters to be used for conventional only attacks from burma was to be called they had to solve the fuel problem in january 1944 a looped hose system for air-to-air refueling was trialled by the raf converted lancasters had the hose drum and pumping equipment placed towards the front of the aircraft and the fuel supply of two 640 gallon tanks were placed in the bombay in this manner the tanker could refuel the bombing lancaster conventional or nuclear armed and two prototype air-to-air lancaster tankers conducted successful tests in november 1944. the raf began an immediate program to convert 500 lancasters to either tankers or receiving aircraft meaning that tiger force could strike japan without problems in the meantime work on the modified silver plate b-29 atomic bomber continued the silver plate b-29s had been ordered on the 22nd of august 1944 and by mid-october 1944 the first three were delivered initial tests with mocked up atomic bombs were failures with several aircraft badly damaged because the weapons actually released early when the bomb doors were still closed however it was at this point that national politics intervened when dr ramsey formally recommended a modified lancaster bomber to major general leslie groves the american commander of the manhattan project groves was apparently furious that a british plane was even being considered to deliver an american atomic bomb however groves did admit to general hap arnold commanding u.s air forces in the far east that if the b-29 couldn't be modified successfully they would have to consider the lancaster arnold told groves that he wanted an american plane to deliver an american bomb and they had better make sure that the b-29 was ready so with the successful entry into service of the modified silver plate b-29 the americans had their way and the hiroshima and nagasaki missions would be all-american affairs the scenario i outlined at the start of this video never came to pass not because the raf could not have pulled off the atomic attacks but because national prestige won the day the black lancasters if modified for in-flight refuelling could have reached and bombed hiroshima 75 years ago though the mission would have been more dangerous than that actually made by the b-29 enola gay on the 6th of august 1945 the enola gay released little boy at 30 000 feet and an estimated airspeed of 300 miles per hour the aircraft then turned 155 degrees so as to be flying directly away from ground zero taking 21 seconds and losing about 1700 feet in altitude the bomb fell freely moving forward at around the release speed until detonation at 1100 feet 45 seconds after release the b-29 was by then nine miles diagonal distance from the destination or seven and a half miles ground distance a black lancaster's service ceiling was twenty five thousand five hundred feet four and a half thousand feet lower than the anola gay and would be flying at 200 miles per hour 100 miles per hour slower than the b-29 this would have meant that if the lancaster had dropped little boy the same as the anola gay the lancaster would have been only half as far away when the bomb detonated the lancaster probably would have survived but it would have been a very close run thing the b-29 was the superior aircraft for the hiroshima mission flying higher and faster and requiring no air-to-air refueling but if the silver plate b-29 program had run into serious difficulties or testing had been delayed the backup plan was already thought out and the planes and crews were ready to do what needed to be done and that would have meant the deployment of the black lancasters from tinian on the 6th of august 1945. such the many twists and turns of history part of the black lancaster program did take part in the hiroshima mission due to constant problems with the bomb release mechanism in the silver plate b-29s the british type g and type f releases used on the lancaster b-1 special that dropped the 12 000 pound tall boy bomb were used to drop little boy and fat man british personnel were also involved with the atomic bomb missions more directly from the nagasaki mission of the 9th of august 1945 big stink the b-29 canberra plane carried two britons as scientific observers group captain leonard cheshire a highly experienced lancaster pilot and squadron commander who'd been awarded the victoria cross for his services over germany and professor william penny a mathematician and physicist who was a member of the los alamos scientific stuff penny would go on to head the operation to create britain's first atomic bomb many thanks for watching please subscribe and share and also visit my new audiobook channel war stories with mark felton you can also help to support both of my channels at paypal and patreon details in the description box below you

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 810,413

Rating: 4.9114628 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Felton Productions, Hiroshima, Enola Gay, Atomic Bomb, Nagasaki, B-29, Avro Lancaster, RAF

Id: 5XX9ptCNpik

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Dave-1066]

Frankly, I’m really pleased it wasn’t British forces that carried it out. Horrific event.

[u/sall7000]

Very interesting I didn't know this.. I learn something every day..

[u/Toxicseagull]

Really interesting, thanks for posting. Reminded me a bit of the British crewed U2 surveillance flights during the cold war.