The seventh and most important aircraft was one named the Enola Gay, in honor of the mother of its pilot. A fifth carried cameras and a sixth bore other instruments to weigh and measure what was about to happen on the ground below.
A fourth, standing by for emergencies, dropped off at the intervening island of Iwo Jima. Three of the planes went thirty minutes ahead, to scout the weather. ON AN AUGUST MORNING IN 1945, very early on a day that turned out to be a warm and sunny one, seven United States Air Force B-29’s left the Pacific island of Tinian and began a six-hour journey northwest to Japan. The men who destroyed Hiroshima describe their later lives and tell how they feel now about DUTY, GUILT, THE NEXT BOMB
