The authoritative guide to ensuring science and technology make life on Earth better, not worse.
Dan Drollette | July 24, 2015
The Hiroshima atomic bomb mission was a milk run. But on the Nagasaki mission, everything seemed to go wrong, possibly because the entire schedule was rushed: The fuel pump failed, crew members had to switch planes, their delivery package was wired incorrectly, the various planes involved in the mission missed their pre-bombing rendezvous point, the pilots couldn’t see their primary target because of clouds, and the plane that carried the bomb ran out of gas on the way home and had to crash-land.
But the worst part was when the Fat Man atomic bomb started to arm itself mid-flight...
(All images courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory)