Category: This great Nation & Its People
The USS Saratoga (CV-3) was one of just three United States Navy aircraft carriers — along with USS Ranger (CV-4) and USS Enterprise (CV-6) — to survive the entirety of the Second World War.
Although outdated by 1943, as the newer and more capable Essex-class entered service, CV-3 was one of the American flattops that fought for time in the early stages of the conflict, and continued to find a role until victory was finally achieved.
After the war ended, USS Saratoga was among the warships that helped return United States military personnel from distant posts in the Pacific, and met her end as a target for nuclear weapon tests during Operation Crossroads.
An Important Name
USS Saratoga is fittingly remembered for her role during the Second World War, yet she has historic ties to the founding of the nation. In addition, she was ordered as the United States sought to avoid entry into the First World War, and was originally authorized as a Lexington-class battlecruiser.
The famed American flattop was also the fifth of six U.S. Navy warships named for the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Saratoga, which actually consisted of two battles fought in September and October 1777. The second was a decisive American victory, which persuaded France to enter the conflict as an American ally.
The World War II carrier was preceded by an 18-gun sloop-of-war lost in a gale during the Revolution and was itself followed by a 26-gun corvette that saw service during the War of 1812 on Lake Champlain. The third USS Saratoga was a 22-gun sloop-of-war that served with the U.S. Navy for more than 40 years. The fourth USS Saratoga (ACR-2) was the former armored cruiser USS New York, which also ended her service with the name USS Rochester.
The most recent and final to date USS Saratoga (CV-60) was a Forrestal-class supercarrier that saw service during the Cold War.
From Battlecruiser to Carrier
As noted, the Lexington-class was originally to have consisted of six battlecruisers. Construction of what was to become CV-3 was put on hold during the First World War because there was a greater need for anti-submarine vessels to counter Germany’s U-boat campaign, which led to America’s entry into the conflict. That was almost certainly for the best, as it allowed the design to be improved, including increased armor protection based on experience gained by the UK’s Royal Navy during the conflict. That likely contributed to her survival during the Second World War.
When she was finally laid down at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Camden, New Jersey, in 1920, the warship received the hull number CC-3. USS Saratoga was on track to be the second of the six Lexington-class battlecruisers.
However, the Washington Naval Conference resulted in the construction of USS Saratoga being suspended when she was around 28 percent completed. Work was also halted on USS Lexington, and rather than scrap the vessel, it was converted into a carrier. CC-3 was subsequently given the hull number CV-3 on July 1, 1922.
Following the conversion, the USS Lexington (CV-2) and CV-3 were the largest aircraft carriers in the world, with flight decks 901 feet long and 100 feet wide. Each was fitted with lowerable crash barriers, a simple yet innovative feature that enabled the two American flattops to quadruple the landing rate of aircraft. That allowed USS Lexington and USS Saratoga to operate with 86 planes, double the number of the Royal Navy’s HMS Courageous.
Powered by diesel-fueled turbines with electric motors, the U.S. carriers could reach speeds of 34 knots. As naval aviation was still considered experimental in nature, the warships, which displaced 36,000 tons, were armed with four twin 8-inch (203mm) guns.
Readying for War
CV-3 was commissioned on November 16, 1927, nearly a month ahead of USS Lexington, giving USS Saratoga the distinction of being the first “fast carrier” to enter service. She sailed from Philadelphia in early January 1928 for a shakedown cruise, and it was on January 11 that Marc Andrew “Pete” Mitscher, the ship’s air officer, made the first landing on the flight deck. Mitscher, a pioneer in naval aviation, would go on to become an admiral in the United States Navy, leading a Fast Carrier Task Force in the Pacific War.
On January 27, 1928, USS Saratoga carried out a unique experiment with the rigid airship USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), which moored to the flattop’s stern to take on fuel and stores.
Two years later, CV-3 took part in Fleet Problem IX, her first fleet exercise. The drills included a simulated attack on the Panama Canal, during which USS Saratoga launched a strike that could have destroyed the locks. However, as the carrier had been spotted by defending vessels, she was also “sunk” by aircraft from USS Lexington. Those drills served as an augury to the future conflict in which both carriers would fight, and sadly, the Lexington wouldn’t survive.
Over the next decade, the United States Navy continued to develop its carrier tactics. During the subsequent Fleet Problem X in the Caribbean in 1930, CV-3 was again sunk, along with USS Langley (CV-1), in a surprise attack carried out by CV-2. USS Saratoga managed to gain the upper hand in the following Fleet Problem XI, where CV-3 came out on top.
Fleet Problem XIX in 1938 may have been the most significant of the exercises, as CV-3’s new squadron of Douglas TBD Devastators, the first torpedo bombers to serve on a flattop, was used in a “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor, catching the base largely off-guard!
At that point, Japanese and American tactics were mainly the same: to provide an air umbrella for a strike force of battleships. That exercise clearly demonstrated a more effective use of aircraft carriers, where air power could strike far deeper and harder into enemy territory than any warship.
Japan soon began building two 30,000-ton carriers, along with aircraft ideally suited for such operations. Then, three years after the Fleet Problem XIX, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) attacked Pearl Harbor for real. At that point, the IJN operated 10 carriers to the United States Navy’s eight, of which only three were in the Pacific.
USS Saratoga in December 1941
CV-3 wasn’t at sea when the IJN attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, as the carrier had only recently completed a modernization at Bremerton Navy Yard, Washington, which saw the widening of the flight deck at the bow, and additional aircraft guns installed.
Work was only completed in late November 1941, and on December 7, the USS Saratoga arrived in San Diego to embark her air group. Just a day later, the warship was dispatched to carry United States Marine aircraft to reinforce the garrison at Wake Island.
She arrived at Pearl Harbor on December 15, quickly refueled, and then rendezvoused with the cargo ship USS Tangier (AV-8), which carried relief troops and supplies. USS Lexington (CV-2) and USS Enterprise (CV-6) provide distant cover, but when reports came that Wake Island was under attack, the relief force was recalled. Wake Island, the “Alamo of the Pacific,” fell to Japanese forces on December 23. Military historians have debated whether the right call was made to pull back the American carriers, but the U.S. was still fighting for time at that point.
USS Saratoga carried out operations near the Hawaiian Islands as the year ended.
Just days into 1942, south of Oahu, CV-3 was hit by a deep-running torpedo fired by the IJN submarine I-16. It could have been a disaster for the United States Navy to lose a carrier, but the added armor likely helped save the ship. Six crew members were killed and three firerooms were flooded, yet the aircraft carrier limped back to Pearl Harbor under her own power. Temporary repairs were made, and the ship then headed back to Bremerton Navy Yard for permanent repairs and upgrades to her anti-aircraft batteries.
Returned to Service
USS Saratoga was sidelined until May, undergoing repairs. After then traveling again to San Diego, CV-3 conducted intensive training with her air group before heading back into action. Although the United States Navy expected a major assault on Midway in early June 1942, the carrier first needed to load aircraft, stores, and rendezvous with escorts.
She only arrived at Pearl Harbor on June 6, missing the showdown at the Battle of Midway.
Joined by USS Enterprise and USS Hornet (CV-8), the carrier was deployed to the Aleutian Islands, where the Japanese had landed its forces. However, the operation was canceled due to the slow speed of the fleet, and just a month later, CV-3 was steaming again to the South Pacific.
USS Saratoga served as the flagship for Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher during the landings on Guadalcanal, and the flattop had completed training flights at the Fiji Islands just weeks earlier. For two days, aircraft from the carrier provided cover, and afterwards, CV-3 continued to operate east of the Solomons to protect the sea lanes.
Finally, on August 24, contact was made, and USS Saratoga saw her first major combat operations, launching her aircraft at the IJN’s light carrier Ryūjō. Commander H. D. “Don” Felt led the Air Group 3 (AG-3), equipped with the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber, in the attack. A 1,000-pound armor-piercing bomb dropped by Felt’s aircraft struck the flight deck of the IJN’s light carrier, setting it afire.
Three more bombs found their target, and five torpedo-armed Avengers also targeted the Ryūjō at the starboard bow, with one torpedo striking the carrier. Ryūjō listed to the starboard, dead in the water. By that evening, she was at the bottom of the Pacific. Aviators from USS Saratoga had scored their first significant victory of the war.
Then just a week later, another Japanese torpedo, fired by the IJN submarine I-26, struck CV-3. Although no one was killed, a dozen sailors were wounded, and an engine room was flooded. She was temporarily dead in the water, but the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser USS Minneapolis (CA-36) was able to tow the carrier back to Tongatabu for temporary repairs. USS Saratoga arrived at Pearl Harbor on September 21.
Repairs were completed by early November 1942, and she was deployed back to the Eastern Solomons. She spent a year providing air cover for some minor Allied operations, and it wasn’t until a year later, in November 1943, that she took part in any significant combat, when the carrier helped neutralize the Japanese airfields on Buka.
On November 5, 1943, aircraft from USS Saratoga and the Independence-class light aircraft carrier USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23) conducted a raid on the occupied port of Rabaul to destroy the IJN fleet. The port was one of the most heavily defended Japanese bases in the Pacific, with anti-aircraft guns ringing the harbor, as well as six airfields from which fighter aircraft could launch.
The Japanese assumed the defensive shield couldn’t be penetrated, but they were wrong.
CV-3’s aircraft were able to break through the heavily defended port and damage multiple Japanese heavy cruisers, including the Atago, Chikuma, Maya, Mogami, and Takao, as well as the light cruiser Agano. The Avengers succeeded in torpedoing the light cruiser Noshiro and the destroyer Fujinami. The carrier-based assault was followed by 27 Consolidated B-24 Liberators, but the American bombers — which sought to target Japanese aircraft on the ground — found no targets of opportunity and hit the shore installations instead.
The strike, although costly with every carrier-based plane taking some damage, crippled operations at Rabaul and stopped a major Japanese naval offensive. Having spent a year at sea, USS Saratoga was overdue for repairs and returned to the United States.
From the Marshall Islands to Iwo Jima
In January 1944, USS Saratoga once again returned to Pearl Harbor, joined by USS Langley (CVL-27) and USS Princeton, as the warships were deployed to support the U.S. Navy’s Gilbert and Marshall Islands Campaign. Aircraft from CV-3 took part in attacks on Japanese-held Wotje and Taroa, then on the Engebi and Eniwetok atolls, and provided air cover for American ground forces during the landings.
Following the campaign, in March 1944, USS Saratoga was dispatched to the Indian Ocean, where she trained with the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious, and then took part in Operation Cockpit, the raids on Japanese-occupied Java and Sumatra. The operation was notable as the Allied force included the Free French battleship Richelieu, the Dutch cruiser HNLMS Tromp, the New Zealand cruiser HMNZS Gambia, and four Australian destroyers.
The air wing of the British flattop included Vought F4U Corsairs and Fairey Barracuda torpedo/dive bombers, while the air group of CV-3 consisted of Grumman F6F Hellcats, Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, and Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers. The engagement was largely inconclusive, but it provided the Royal Navy with much-needed insight into carrier operations. Following the brief battle in the Indian Ocean, USS Saratoga was recalled to the United States for another refit. However, on the return journey, most of the Allied force also took part in Operation Transom, against the occupied city of Surabaya on Java, another raid that has been deemed inconclusive.
USS Saratoga completed her refit and spent the remainder of 1944 carrying out training for night fighter squadrons. Then, in January 1945, she was ordered to rejoin the fleet at Iwo Jima. As the carrier arrived in the area of operations, she came under a Japanese kamikaze attack.
Three bombs and two kamikaze aircraft struck the aging flattop. She was struck again as night fell. The carrier’s forward flight deck was destroyed, there were holes on her starboard side, and a large fire broke out on the hangar deck. The attack killed 123 men and also destroyed 36 planes.
Miraculously, USS Saratoga survived.
She didn’t meet the same fate as USS Lexington, which had been lost following the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942. By evening, the fires on USS Saratoga were under control, and she was even able to recover aircraft. She was again forced to return to Bremerton for repairs. CV-3 then spent the final months of the war as a training platform at Pearl Harbor.
When the war ended with Japan’s surrender, USS Saratoga was among the many warships assigned to “Magic Carpet” duty. She helped bring home more than 29,000 Pacific War veterans, more than any other vessel. For her actions in the Second World War, she received four campaign decorations, eight battle stars, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
Impressively, USS Saratoga recorded a lifetime total of 98,549 landings during her 17 years in service.
Operations Crossroads
USS Saratoga wasn’t just one of the three United States Navy carriers in service before the war to survive until victory was achieved; she was also the oldest. It was already evident there would be no place for the flattop in the post-war world.
Sadly, no consideration was given to preserving the vessel as a floating museum. Instead, the decision was made to employ the carrier in the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests on naval vessels at Bikini Atoll. USS Saratoga proved as tough and determined against an atomic bomb as she did against the torpedoes and kamikazes.
She survived the initial bomb, Test Able, which was an air burst over the site. However, she was fatally damaged during the subsequent Test Baker, an underwater detonation carried out on July 25, 1946. USS Saratoga sank approximately eight hours after the underwater blast. She was struck from the U.S. Navy list on August 15, 1946, marking the official end of her service.
I was six feet tall and 163 lbs. without a gram of extraneous body fat. Though I didn’t enjoy it, I did a weekly 10k run with my mates in boots with a rucksack and M16. I was in the best physical condition of my life and believed myself to be both bulletproof and immortal. Then I met the Pig.
A proper 15-mile forced march was about the hardest thing I have ever done. On this particularly fateful day, I don’t recall whose dog I had inadvertently kicked to deserve what happened to me. This was, however, the day I got tagged to lug the Pig.
The “Pig” was the M60 belt-fed General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG). Back in my day, we used M60’s as SAWs (Squad Automatic Weapons). Nowadays, our 5.56mm SAWs are relatively lightweight, portable and mean. By contrast, the Pig weighed 23 lbs. empty and fired a 7.62x51mm round the size of my little finger. The Pig would cut through walls, chew through ceilings, ventilate cars and reach out to truly serious ranges. It was, however, indeed still a pig. At the end of that horrible road march, I thought I’d died.
Origin Story
The M60 GPMG wanted so badly to be awesome. Rising from the ashes of World War II, the M60 reflected the U.S. Army’s effort at developing a truly state-of-the-art light machine gun. We fought the Second World War with the Browning M1919A4. This beast ran like the Energizer bunny, but it weighed 31 lbs. and was a veritable mass of sharp corners. The M1919A4 was also designed to be fired off of a separate M2 tripod, an awkward piece of kit that itself weighed another 16 pounds. The subsequent M1919A6 tried to morph the gun into something more portable, but it was yet a pound heavier. We could do better.
The M60 began life as the experimental T44. In what has got to be the coolest job in the history of jobs, American firearms engineers took the belt-fed mechanism from a captured German MG42 and grafted it onto the action of an FG42 paratroop rifle. The resulting frankengun served as the basis for the M60 action.
The M60 orbited around a stamped steel receiver for both economy and weight management. The Germans had shown the world with their MG42 that you could indeed stamp out a GPMG that was rugged enough to thrive on the modern battlefield. Though M60 receivers were ultimately found to stretch a bit, this part of the design performed fairly well.
The M60 featured a gas piston-driven action that fed ammunition in M13 disintegrating links solely from the left. The gun fired from the open bolt and was exceptionally simple to operate. Lock the bolt to the rear, put the gun on safe, open the top cover, and place the ammunition belt in the feedway link side up or “brass to the grass.” Close the top cover, point the gun at something you dislike, flick the safety off, and squeeze. Repeat as necessary. As seems always to be the case, however, the devil was in the details.
The M60 was an air-cooled design intended for sustained fire applications. Running lots of belt-fed rounds through a machinegun creates astronomical amounts of extraneous heat. Getting rid of all that thermal energy is the Achilles heel of any sustained fire weapon system. The generally accepted solution on a gun like the M60 is a quick change barrel system.
You can cut spirals or flutes into a barrel to increase its surface area and subsequently its capacity to dissipate heat. However, if you want this thing to shoot for a while you need mass. Making your barrels heavy is one of the reasons the Pig and I got along so poorly that torrid afternoon at Fort Benning. Certain aspects of the M60’s design were just fatally flawed.
The bipod on the M60 was located at the far end of the gun. This location optimized stability and control. However, in the case of the Pig, this meant that every spare barrel had its own dedicated bipod. For the sorts of guys who might break the handles off of their toothbrushes to help conserve weight on a long patrol, any extraneous mass was the unforgiveable sin.
Additionally, certain components of the M60 gas system had an annoying tendency to come apart at high round counts. As a result, the gas cylinders on our guns were always held together with safety wire. In practice that was not a particularly onerous problem, but it didn’t inspire confidence.
Swapping barrels on the Pig was indeed fast and intuitive. Lock the bolt back, throw the barrel release lever, snatch out the barrel using the handy but heavy carrying handle, and lock a fresh tube in place. Easy peasy.
Variations
The M60 was intended from the outset to be everything for everybody. Uncle Sam wanted one gun that could serve in a variety of roles. In the final analysis, there were only three versions that saw widespread service back in my day.
The standard ground gun featured a rubber-coated steel handguard and buttstock with a folding shoulder rest. This weapon served in most conventional roles to include vehicle mounts. In Vietnam, particularly early in the war, helicopter door gunners frequently hung a standard M60 from a bungee cord and used it for suppressive fire. Innovative gunners sometimes chopped the barrels short or affixed a spare pistol grip to the forearm with pipe clamps. It was a common practice to wire a C-ration can to the left aspect of the feed tray to enhance feeding.
The M60C was used in fixed mounts aboard helicopter gunships, most typically in dual fixtures on each side of the aircraft. The C-model was hydraulically charged and electrically fired via solenoid. The C-model guns used the same basic chassis as the ground guns. However, their barrels lacked bipods, front sights, and carrying handles.
The M60D was the standardized pintle-mounted aerial version of the weapon. The D-model dispensed with the forearm and included a spade grip with twin ring triggers in lieu of the buttstock assembly. The M60D included a folding ring sight as well. The barrels on our D-models still carried their own bipods so you could use the gun on the ground in a crisis.
Reliability
I did not have a homogeneously positive experience with the M60. Most of the guns I was issued seemed fairly finicky. We trained to fire five to eight-round bursts and remain ever mindful of barrel heat. I recall having to fiddle with the guns more than I should have to keep them running, particularly in an austere environment.
I was once signed for twenty-four D-model M60s to be used as door guns on my tactical aircraft. Despite being spotlessly maintained and perfectly lubricated there never seemed to be more than about six that really ran well. Failures in training tended to diminish confidence in the weapons. Given that the mission was to provide suppressive fire going into and out of hostile landing zones that always seemed a wee bit disturbing.
Practical Tactical
When the Pig ran, it ran well. The sedate 550-rpm rate of fire encouraged ammunition efficiency, and the heavy .30-caliber chambering carried plenty of downrange thump. Running the gun was both fun and exhilarating. Humping it, however, particularly for a skinny guy like me, not so much.
Running a belt-fed machinegun out of a moving helicopter is an incomparable rush. It also embodies a fair amount of unexpected physics. When the aircraft is in forward flight and the guns fired out the sides each screaming bullet becomes its own little flying machine.
The 22” barrel on the M60 is rifled one turn in twelve inches. The bullet leaves the gun’s barrel at around 2,800 fps. That means it has a rotational velocity of 2,800 revolutions per second or about 168,000 rpm. The bullet turns clockwise as viewed from the firer. When fired in forward flight out the right side of the aircraft the airflow across the bullet creates a low pressure area on the top that actually draws the projectile upward. Smarter folks than I call this the Magnus Effect. On the left side of the aircraft this low pressure area is formed underneath the bullet and pulls it down.
The end result is that to hit a target on the right the gunner aims intentionally beneath it and lets the bullets fly up to impact. The opposite is true on the left with the bullets plunging precipitously toward the ground. The practical effect when doing this for real firing tracers is frankly surreal.
Denouement
The M60 will forever be associated with Sylvester Stallone and John Rambo. The 1982 action movie First Blood established its own film genre. A fun fact is that Stallone co-wrote the screenplays for First Blood as well as the next four sequels.
In the first film, Stallone’s put-upon Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran character eventually takes up an M60 and uses it to shoot the bejeebers out of the small town of Hope, Washington. Along the way, Rambo even runs his M60 one-handed, albeit on a sling. Just punch “First Blood M60” into YouTube if you haven’t seen the juicy bits. However, should this be the case I sure wouldn’t admit that to any of your guy friends.
For the most part, the M60 has been supplanted in U.S. military service by the M240-series of belt-fed guns. Upgraded versions like the M60E6 still soldier on in certain select units, however. Despite its warts, the Pig yet remains one of the coolest looking automatic weapons ever contrived.
On 6 August 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbets piloted the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay
to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Col. Tibbets had his mother’s name painted on the plane on the morning of the mission.
Part of medical training involves away rotations at rural clinics so you can get a feel for the practice of medicine someplace other than the huge teaching hospital. The student spends about a month working with a local family physician just to see what real doctors do day-to-day. Mine was a simply magnificent experience.
I was in a really small town under the tutelage of the nicest guy in the world. My time there was one of the reasons I gravitated toward something professionally similar myself. Meeting people was one of the greatest aspects of my experience in that little community. Small-town America is simply rife with characters.
One older gentleman was just eaten up with skin cancers. He was covered in them. When I inquired regarding his history, he said he had developed cancer in the Army Air Corps during World War II. That sounded like an interesting story. Wow, I had no idea.
The B-29 Superfortress was actually the most expensive weapons project of World War II.
This guy was an engine mechanic assigned to the 509th Composite Bomb Group under Colonel Paul Tibbets in the latter parts of World War II. He was responsible for maintaining the four big Wright R-3350-23 Duplex-Cyclone engines that powered the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That job changed his life.
The recent Christopher Nolan movie, “Oppenheimer” orbited around the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. My new friend said he and his buddies had been invited out to watch the Trinity detonation. They stood in a line in the desert and were told to focus on a certain point off in the distance. By way of protective gear, he was issued a pair of tinted goggles.
He said when the bomb went off, the flash was unimaginably bright. He said they had time to laugh a bit about it before the blast wave hit them. The pressure front threw them all back bodily off their feet, though no one was hurt … at the time. He said in the aftermath of the detonation, the air smelled strongly of ozone, like you had been in the presence of a powerful electrical arc.
Here we see Little Boy, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in the arming trench
on the island of Tinian prior to its being loaded aboard the Enola Gay.
They all picked themselves up, brushed off the dust and dirt, and reveled in the amazing thing they had just seen. He said the first kid in his unit to develop cancer got sick six months later. It would have been sometime in 2000 when I met him. He said he was the only one of those presently left alive.
Staging the bomb into the combat theater was a herculean task. Components of the weapon were delivered to the island of Tinian aboard the cruiser USS Indianapolis. Anyone who has seen the movie “JAWS” knows that story.
They delivered the bomb in complete secrecy. However, the ship was subsequently torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sunk, leaving 890 of the original crew complement of 1,195 floating alone in the water. Over the next four days, a further 574 sailors succumbed to exposure and shark predation. Only 316 survived.
On the airfield at Tinian, the Air Corps had constructed a trench in the parking apron. This was the most sensitive weapons project of the war, so security was unbelievably tight.
The plan had technicians assembling the bomb in the trench before towing the Enola Gay in place above it. The weapon was then winched into the bomb bay. My buddy said there were MPs with submachine guns posted all around the plane with orders to shoot on sight anyone who seemed even remotely threatening.
The 15-kiloton atomic blast that leveled Hiroshima was undeniably horrible.
However, the two atomic bomb attacks ultimately saved countless lives.
Early in the morning on 6 August 1945, my friend needed to go over the Enola Gay’s engines one last time. He made his way out in the darkness, serviced each of the big radials in sequence, and then moved away from the big bomber.
Unbeknownst to the security troops posted around the plane, he had tucked a little Brownie camera into the pocket of his flight jacket. As he walked away from the aircraft, he surreptitiously tucked the camera under his arm and snapped a picture of the plane. No one was the wiser. He told me in all seriousness that the MPs likely would have shot him dead had he been seen taking the photograph.
The image captured the big silver bomber at a crazy angle. He later mislaid the original negative. That picture sat in a frame atop his television in his home in rural Mississippi. It is the only photograph on the planet of the Enola Gay with the bomb on board.
On the morning of 6 August, Colonel Tibbets and his crew delivered Little Boy, the first operational atomic bomb, to its target over Hiroshima, Japan. The 15-kiloton blast ultimately claimed around 75,000 lives.
However, the nuclear attacks saved countless more by negating the need for an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands. And I got to touch just a little bit of all that in a tiny little medical clinic in rural Mississippi.