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separate rings containing 42 percent
of the fissionable material, uranium,
into the nose of the bomb.
It
required a series of 5 separate
radio frequencies to begin to arm
Little Boy.
So Deke Parsons sweated. He la–
bored for about an hour and a half.
Then be inserted a six-inch diame–
ter cylindrical tube containing the
other 58 percent of the uranium in
the tail of the bomb. When the
bomb dropped to 2,000 feet above
Hiroshima, there would be an ex–
plosive charge that would propel
this cylinder into a wedge formation
of the rings of uranium. A tiny .in–
strument called an initiator would
then release polonium (a radioactive
metallic element) suddenly, causing
a neutron bombardment. The initia–
tor was called
Little Abner.
At the time
Little Abner
released
the polonium, the combined sec–
tions of uranium would become
"critica!."
The bombing run was taken over
by the bombardier.
It
was a short
bombing run, one of the best they
had ever made, executed with pre–
cision, just like the hundreds of
practice runs.
"Well, bomb away," he· said.
After the bomb had plummeted 5
seconds, the B-29 dived to make a
steep 155° tum. The final arming
mechanism was triggered by a radio
signa! from the
Enola Gay.
From
then on, the bomb was on its own. A
device in the bomb's nose bounced
a radar signa! off the surface of the
land, releasing the explosive charge
which drove the cylindrical wedge
of uraniurn into the uranium rings.
The device called
Little Abner
ex–
cited the uranium mass by a neu–
tron bombardment. It became
critica!.
Suddenly, there was a blinding
flash brighter than many suns. In
one instant of time, over the middle
of downtown Hiroshima, one bun–
dred million degrees centigrade was
released in a searing fl ash. lnstantly,
within a half-mile of ground zero,
people, horses, carts, houses, and
the tiles of buildings evaporated.
14
People sirnply disintegrated. Sorne
who were walking on a bridge or on
the pavement were left indelibly im–
mortalized by their shadows, etched
right into solid stone.
People by the tens of thousands
who survived don't recall ever hav–
ing heard an explosion. They just
remember seeing a blinding flash
high in the sky. They had been
watching the heavens when that
flash went off. And they were found
wandering around with the skin
seared off their bodies, their clothes
bumt from their ftesh, and their eye
sockets empty, with just the liquid
dribbling over their cheeks.
Mrs. Takako Kobayashi will
never forget the pink horse. She was
walking out of the city when she saw
people coming toward the city, be–
cause they wondered what had hap–
pened. The rumor was that the
Americans had spread gasoline over
the city aod igni ted it. Nobody
really knew what had happened,
but she will never forget the pink
horse. The horse stood with its head
down and rolled its eyes, and she
realized, as it tried to move and then
fell, why it was pink. It had no hide.
In that insta nt , 100,000 human
beings died, 13,937 people were de–
clared missing, and another 37,425
died later, horribly disfigured.
An equivalen! of more than
20,000 tons of TNT had been un–
leasbed in that one instant. The meo
in the retreating
Enola Gay
saw a
series of little winking tires in the
midst of what looked like a fiowing
mass of molasses. They saw, liter–
ally, the dramatic shock wave that
sped out from the blast and shook
the airplane like a giant hand,
nearly throwing them from the sky.
In seconds, there was a huge mush–
rooming cloud that soared above
their fiight leve! of 33,000 feet.
Captain Lewis, the copilot, looked
at that cloud going clear above their
altitude and exclaimed: "My God!
What have we done?"
We had entered the Atomic Era.
From that time to this, mankind has
never been quite the same.
lnto the Nuclear Age
Now America had proved that it
could wage total war against total
populations, including civilian pop–
ulations, for total stakes. Now the
world knew that what the Bible
speaks of as "Armageddon" was a
very grave potentiality.
Today, as we go about our dai ly
ways of living, Russian nuclear sub–
marines prowl the oceans with inter–
mediate range ballistic missiles
capable of being launched from be–
neath the sea. Tbose big missiles are
programmed to land on New Or–
leans, Houston, Dalias, Detroit, Chi–
cago, New York City and Los
Angeles.
American nuclear submarines are
armed with MIRV warheads which
could knock out all the major cities
or military bases i n the Soviet
Union. This is the real world we live
in, not a comic book world.
The Atomic Age
is
here to stay.
But now we realize that the atomic
bomb of World War 11 was only a
match compared to a hydrogen
bomb. A hydrogen bomb can be
thousands of times more powerful
than that first atomic bomb.
One American or Russian missi le
has the capacity to carry more de–
structive explosive force than was
expended by all participants in al!
the wars of th e whole world
throughout history.
We have the capacity to build
space platforms. We have earth sat–
ellites. We have seen men's foot–
prints on the moon. And we also
have the capacity to deliver multi–
megaton nuclear bombs hal f a
world away, in just barely over half
an hour. That's the world we live in.
The Time of the End?
People have always thought they
were living in the time of the end. I
remember an old fellow in Los An–
geles who thought he was Noah. He
thought he was gathering people for
the Ark.
Tertullian, one of the so-called
church fathers who lived around
A.D. 200, said the only thing keep-
PLAIN TRUTH December 1973