Impressive, unedited footage shows preparation and nuking of Nagasaki

February 20, 2014 Military History, Weapons
David Cenciotti

Raw video shows the final preparation and loading of the bomb, and the subsequent explosion on Nagasaki.

This footage comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was edited by Alex Wellerstein just to add some interesting notes on the bomb and what can be seen in the video.

It’s pretty long but it is the first film to show the final preparation and loading of the “Fat Man” bomb into “Bockscar,” the B-29 Superfortress bomber which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

It also shows the Nagasaki explosion from the window of an observation plane.

But, read the notes, as they are really interesting.

H/T to Bjorn Broten for the heads-up

 

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About David Cenciotti
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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

4 Comments

  1. Impressive that they SAVED a million or so civilians. Also, my uncle in the 101st 506th E Co. Screaming Eagles & his fellow troops/sailors that were planning to move to the Pacific for the Japan invasion…….”A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.” Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House. “largely unaware citizens” I believe most civilians in Japan knew Japan was at war since the early 1930s.

  2. A very well commented video. It is difficult to see it as matter-of-fact, but that’s what is was in 1945. I lived in Japan for two years from 1969 to 1971, and they were not over WWII, but they knew what they did to expect this level of horror. Still, the horror cannot be diminished by this generation of Americans. We must work as a global unit to eliminate these weapons.

  3. You reap what you sow. BTW…I lived a few miles from Pearl Harbor and drove past the USS Arizona Memorial every day to work for 20 years.

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