Whether we will be able to survive without brushfires, I doubt. The answer is I can see that as a possibility, because it now appears to me that most historians, and most military analysts, are saying that the dropping of that bomb changed the nature of human conflict forever. Some have said it will never occur again. Ryan: Now, so many people seem to have it, or have the ability to produce that bomb. It brought peace to the world at that time. The thing is it did what it was supposed to do. I have to say we cannot look at the so-called grimmer aspects of it because there is no morality in warfare, so I do not dwell on the moral issue. Because a military man starts out his career with the idea of serving his country and preserving the integrity of that country. And over the years, I have gotten numerous letters from foreign nationals, as well as Americans, who had been ready to make an invasion with the same basic statement: what you did probably saved my life. I think in the intervening years, that I have arrived at the same conclusion because by ending the war, we would save lives. I just couldn’t see how any nation could stand up to the power of the atom as portrayed to me at that particular time.
Paul Tibbets: My conception was at that time, if this thing is successful, we will bring this war to a close. I was just wondering, looking back now, have your perspectives on the event itself, on warfare, changed at all? Ryan: General, it has been more than four decades since that event. The age of atomic warfare began and the nature of human conflict was changed forever. Ryan: Three days later, a second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki. Beneath that was hidden the ruins of the city of Hiroshima. The site that greeted our eyes was quite beyond what we had expected, because we saw this cloud of boiling dust and debris below us with this tremendous mushroom on top. So we turned around to take a look at it. After we felt the explosion hit the airplane, that is the concussion waves, we knew that the bomb had exploded, and everything was a success.
Paul Tibbets: Well, as the bomb left the airplane, we took over manual control, made an extremely steep turn to try and put as much distance between ourselves and the explosion as possible. In an instant, over four square miles of the city and an estimated 90,000 of its inhabitants ceased to exist. A single atomic bomb dropped from the Enola Gay exploded over Hiroshima, Japan. Six hours later, they changed the course of history. Nobody knows exactly how many civilians died in Hiroshima but its impact will be felt forever.Tom Ryan: In the early morning of August 6, 1945, three B-29 bombers departed from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean.
As estimated 100,000 people were killed and 47,000 buildings flattened. One millionth of a second after detonation, Hiroshima ceased to exist as a city. Based on extracts from President Truman's personal diaries whick show the decision-making process reflecting America's real fear that the Japanese would never give up, Japanese eyewitness accounts of the tragedy in Hiroshima, diaries written on board Enola Gay, and the personal testimony of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the man who led the mission so secret not even his crew knew the enormity of what they were doing. This film dramatises the minute by minute events leading up to the world's first ever atomic bombing. It's mission? To drop a bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, a bomb unlike any other that would change the world forever. At exactly 5.32am on August 6th 1945, a B29 Bomber, The Enola Gay, took off from a small island in the South Pacific on a clandestine operation.