Enola Gay and Bock's Car

At Building D, a facility a third the size of the Pentagon, both the "Enola Gay" and "Bock's Car" were built. Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and "Bock's Car" dropped another one on Nagasaki. As we saw in the last posting, the decision to bomb both cities was made all at once.

The Enola Gay was shipped around quite a bit over the past several years. As some sign of our equivocation about it, exhibitions of the restored airplane were sometimes targets of anti-war protests. As I understand it, it is now on exhibit at an extension of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport in suburban Washington, DC.

One of my students flew in a restored B-29. He described it as cold, noisy and uncomfortable. Of late, a trend in recognizing the contributions of our military by memorial has been to depict them in such states. Look at the Korean memorial, for example. The attempt at realistic depiction of footsoldiers in fairly miserable circumstances is effective, especially if you visit there at night.

How should we exhibit the Enola Gay?

A small crew of men flew this noisy, cold and uncomfortable bomber at only a little over 300 mph for many, many hours. They flew it over hostile territory and almost certainly braved anti aircraft fire. They carried what at least Col. Tibbets, the commander, knew was the most deadly weapon ever devised. The bomb was set to detonate atmospherically, meaning that it was not to explode on contact with the ground. It was set to go off several hundred feet up, so that the blast would spread over as much area as possible, versus a narrow blast force emanating upward from a hole in the ground. If the plane had been hit, could the bomb have detonated right then and there? Or if the plane was hit and lost altitude, would the bomb detonate at its prescribed altitude, plane and all?

Tibbets and his crew were brave, honorable men. They deserve our respect for ending a terrible, bloody conflict that would have (as Marshall and Truman recited) cost many more lives on all sides of the conflict.

The purpose of declared war is to win, and to do so as quickly and expeditiously as possible. "Humane war" is awfully hard to manage.

But Tibbets himself offers the most telling insight into the mission he flew. They opened the bomb bay doors, Little Boy was released, and everything worked just like it was supposed to.

No Slim Pickens riding a piece of set dressing in front of a rear-projected reversed sequence of a missle launch.

Tibbets says, "Four and a half square miles of Hiroshima simply disappeared."

At that moment, we because the pre-eminent world power. Our possession of a weapon of such destructive potential made us the envy of all nations. The next phase of world history became "the cold war," largely cold because the prospect of a hot war with the United States was too awful to imagine.

15,000 midwesterners (soon to be laid off) and Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer and Col. Tibbets and his crew and tons of other Americans made this happen.

Honestly, the only sane choice we have is to be proud of all of them. None of them was motivated by malice or spite. None of them, at least on the record, was racist. They defined the purpose of their life by their acts and sacrifices, done in the name of ending a war.

I'm proud of what they did, largely out of regard for their motives and their sacrifices. We should not protest the Enola Gay - it is a part of our history, and it epitomizes any act of war which has ever earned the description "noble."

I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Enola Gay and Offutt Air Force Base

Offutt AFB is where President Bush was transported on the morning of 9/11/2001. I imagine that this former SAC headquarters (SAC moved out in the early 90s) was chosen because of its unimpeachable security.

It's funny from a civilian standpoint - security here is nowhere near as tight as it is on other military bases where I've worked as a "contractor" (as the military calls us folk). At Fort Myer, just behind Arlington National Cemetary, for example, my car was unloaded, mirrors used under the vehicle to inspect it, and I was wanded. The security was at least as tight as any civilian now undergoes to board a plane. At Offutt, I was asked to show an easily-forged 8 1/2 x 11 xeroxed base pass and, sometimes, was asked for my driver's license, and then waved through. I guess they're not worried about car bombers in Nebraska, perhaps because strategic war services are not as big a presence at Offutt as before.

In its heyday, Offutt was used as a model for Burpelson Air Force Base in "Dr. Strangelove." B52s were mustered there, as well as tankers and, to a limited extent, fighters. And, up until fifteen years ago, SAC was headquartered there.

But history may remember it best for the Enola Gay, built and loaded there.

How do we feel about creating and using this amazingly destructive power?

Well, here's what Harry Truman said about it on one occasion...

Below is a letter written by Harry Truman on January 12, 1953 to Prof. James L. Cate which seems to clearly present his understanding of the necessity of using the atomic bombs to end World War II.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
January 12, 1953

My Dear Professor Cate;

Your letter of December 6, 1952 has just been delivered to me. When the message came to Potsdam that a successful atomic explosion had taken place in New Mexico, there was much excitement and conversation about the effect on the war then in progress with Japan. The next day I told the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Generalissimo Stalin that the explosion had been a success. The British Prime Minister understood and appreciated what I'd told him. Premier Stalin smiled and thanked me for reporting the explosion to him, but I'm sure he did not understand its significance. I called a meeting of the Secretary of State, Mr. Byrnes, the Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, Admiral Leahy, General Marshall, General Eisenhower, Admiral King and some others, to discuss what should be done with this awful weapon.

I asked General Marshall what it would cost in lives to land on the Tokyo plain and other places in Japan. It was his opinion that such an invasion would cost at a minimum one quarter of a million casualties, and might cost as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy. The other military and naval men present agreed. I asked Secretary Stimson which sites in Japan were devoted to war production. He promptly named Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others. We sent an ultimatum to Japan. It was rejected.

I ordered atomic bombs dropped on the two cities named on the way back from Potsdam, when we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In your letter, you raise the fact that the directive to General Spaatz to prepare for delivering the bomb is dated July twenty-fifth. It was, of course, necessary to set the military wheels in motion, as these orders did, but the final decision was in my hands, and was not made until we were returning from Potsdam. Dropping the bombs ended the war, saved lives, and gave the free nations a chance to face the facts. When it looked as if Japan would quit, Russia hurried into the fray less than a week before the surrender, so as to be in at the settlement. No military contribution was made by the Russians toward victory over Japan. Prisoners were surrendered and Manchuria occupied by the Soviets, as was Korea, North of the 38th parallel.

Sincerely,
(The letter was signed by Harry Truman.)

Harry was quite clear: in the utilitarian ethical analysis, deaths on the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so much fewer than a land invasion, his decision could not be more clear...

Enola Gay and Building D

I return this weekend for my last class at Building "D" on Offutt Air Force Base, south of Omaha, Nebraska.

This class is conducted in the same building where a bomber called the "Enola Gay" was built and outfitted with the first nuclear weapon used against humans in combat. The huge former aircraft assembly plant now houses the US Air Force Weather command, classrooms, and many, many vehicles. No planes, though. It is an amazing place, and I feel privileged to teach graduate school in this place.

The history of what happened inside Building D during WW II is an important bit of Americana that is worth repeating here. The information that follows was gleaned from Offutt Air Force Base Pamphlet (OAFBP) 210-1 titled “History of Building D,” published in 1981 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of this edifice.

More than a year before Pearl Harbor, General of the Army Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold made an urgent recommendation that two new bomber factories be constructed, plus an additional one for fighters. The war in Europe had heated up and our rapidly evolving national policy now dictated that we begin serious production of high quality combat aircraft. Although not yet at war, we had already committed ourselves to provide war materials to our allies.

Omaha and Tulsa were chosen as sites for the bomber plants because of their locations deep inside our borders and thus judged safe, in the event that US cities would one day be subjected to the devastation that had so recently visited London. A contract was signed on 14 February 1941 awarding to the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore the right to operate the Omaha plant. Ground-breaking ceremonies took place on the 3rd of March. We would not go to war for nine more months.

The speed with which the entire project proceeded was unprecedented in the annals of history and reflected the industrial might that at the time existed in our nation alone. A might that would inevitably relentlessly destroy the Axis Powers. Another testimony to our ability to mass produce the equipment of war in record amounts came from German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel who commented after the North African Campaign that, “The Americans were fantastically equipped.”

By March 1941 Martin had a letter of intent from the government to build 1,200 B-26 Marauders in Omaha. Preparation for construction of Building D redefined the phrase “whole-hearted cooperation.” With almost lightning speed, simultaneous preparations came together. The first batch of concrete was poured on 7 April 1941, and on the 18th of June, structural steel was being put in place. At the same time, Burlington Railroad was busy modifying a pool of its freight cars to haul the B-26’s large wings from assembly plants 750 miles away.

With Hitler threatening to invade Britain, construction continued seven days a week with three shifts of workers.

Available workers in Omaha were mainly farm workers, housewives, and meat packinghouse workers. An initial work force of approximately 8,500 had to be trained and ready for work before the plant was ready for production. By October 1941 Building D was 98 percent completed.

Limited production of some subassembly parts (small clamps for the Plexiglas nose where the bombardier would sit) began on New Years Day 1942 – less than ten months after Martin received the government’s letter of intent. However, necessary aircraft production tools were slow in arriving. By opening day only 50 percent of the required machine tools had been installed.

Full production began on 8 June 1942, fifteen months after the ground-breaking. The 6th plane off the production line on August 31 was the first B-26 accepted by the Army Air Corp. By mid-December 1942 the plant was meeting its production schedule. By 8 May 1943 Martin of Omaha had completed half of its production goal and by January 1945, the Martin-Nebraska Company had received three coveted Army-Navy “E” Production Awards for twenty-four consecutive months of on-schedule production. The “E” stood for excellence.

In mid-July 1943 it was announced that the Omaha plant had been chosen by the Army to build a brand new bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. This selection was based on Omaha’s enviable production record. Ground was broken the following month for construction of an additional 135,000 square feet to be added to the existing 1,200,000 square feet (twenty-five full-size football fields). The B-29 was a much larger air-frame.

The B-29 was one of our nation’s best kept military secrets whose sole purpose was to bomb the Japanese Empire.

While the plant tooled up for its next assignment, production of B-26s continued. By November 1943 the plant had completed the initial 1,200 Marauders, but additional orders kept this production line going for a while more. Production tapered off and on 4 April 1944 the last Omaha-built B-26 rolled off the line: the 1,585th B-29 Superfortress production began just two days later and the first B-29 was completed on May 24th, one month ahead of schedule. An astounding accomplishment.

By 15 June 1945, Martin-Nebraska had produced 402 Superfortresses and was soon awarded its fourth Army-Navy “E.” When production finally ceased on 18 September 1945 the plant had produced 531 B-29s. The full complement of war workers in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, about 12,000 to 15,000, were laid off within one month after Japan’s surrender.

“Enola Gay,” the B-29 that dropped the first A-bomb on Hiroshima, was built in Omaha. In the spring of 1945 Colonel P. W. Tibbetts, Jr., aircraft commander of the “Enola Gay” visited the Omaha Martin plant and brought along a mock-up of the “secret weapon.” Omaha assembled over twenty specially designed B-29s.

Quoting from the OAFBP 210-1, “Among the plant’s many records, one towers above the rest: the thirty-three consecutive months of on-schedule production. No other aircraft assembly plant in the nation even came close to the Martin-Nebraska record.”

During the Cold war that followed, Offutt AFB became the permanent home of the Strategic Air Command, AFGWC’s original sponsor. In mid-1959 Building D was remodeled and became a guided missile assembly plant for SAC’s new inventory of intercontinental missiles. This era ended in December 1965. Since then, Building D has housed many Air Force organizations.

The center of it’s spacious floor space was eventually housed the base motor pool. To this day, Building D still serves our country well. OAFBP 210-1 says of Building D, “within its walls the course of history was changed.”

I work here now, where we built and equipped a plane which killed more people in one stroke than ever before in human history. So, the next postings ask or try to answer a question: how should we feel about the Enola Gay?

Reflections On Middle Age

So much has happened, so many years.

Back then, as college students, we wanted to learn everything we could about life. The whole world was our oyster (except, of course, for the months with an “R” in them). The book of life, with its large, obscure and heavily-tooled faux leather cover, was still closed to us. We wanted it to open to a spot somewhere in the middle, but were afraid, to an extent, that the binding was so new and would crack loudly, betraying our naiveté to any secondhand book dealers within earshot. So we left it closed, perhaps to open another day. We wanted to embrace who we were, who we were to become, and who we used to be. We especially wanted to get laid, big time.

But I digress. Life’s fragrant bouquet tickled our noses as we tried to splash our palates with its intoxications without drenching our uvulas, like little punching bags left out in the pouring rain.

We followed the teaching of the Zen philosopher Basha, who had so memorably told us that a flute without a hole is not a flute, and a doughnut without a hole, is a Danish. Our holeless flutes cried out in such a pitiable way for more. Quaff deep, we cried, of the cup of love.

Now, of course, we look back. We had been given so much, and what did we do with it? How had we slaked our hungers for knowledge and experience? Had we not only dipped our wicks, but had we lit our candles and even procreated to pass our legacy on to others?

We would be different. Or so we thought. We would not become mindless drones, flailing away in the bowels of a soulless system which consumed young men for breakfast and belched loudly. We rotated our tires. We did what we were supposed to do, mostly, and followed the rules. But we remained a group, a hive mind, honoring throughout the timeless precepts and teachings of our fraternity. And now, projecting ourselves into the future and taking a long look back, what can the men who gathered so memorably last month say about their experiences? Well, let’s see…

· Some never married. Some married only once. Some married more than once. Some are awaiting first dates.
· Some had children. Some had children who had children. Some had no children. None gave birth personally(1).
· Some had one job for thirty years. Some had fifteen jobs in thirty years. Some are still looking…
· Some studied further after college. Some didn’t study but got degrees anyway.
· Smoking seems to have passed into obscurity, giving the lie to the timeless adage, “Many men smoke, but few men chew.”
· Beer is still food(2).
· None decided to change his gender, despite significant advances in technology.
· Some still had their pledge books, hardly adulterated, to serve as a significant source of embarrassment to others (3).
· Those who had tummy tucks had the decency not to brag about it.
· Golf has now become a dangerous contact sport.
· None of us became an obvious wine snob, to the great relief of everyone else. Great nose, and none of the cloying sweetness one would ordinarily expect from a fine Beaujolais.
· None of us became president of the United States (4).
· Some changed religions, but no one proselytized. Hallelujah!
· None still owned the cars they drove in college, despite self-evident advantages in average depreciation expense (5).
· The secrets of the fraternity are safe with us (6).
Collectively, we appeared at the gathering at Dave and Buster’s as a robust, convivial gathering of fraternal rabble, brought together by the bonds of our precepts, paradoxically at once extrinsic and redundant, with a slowly dawning realization that at some point or another there was a really good chance that the old fart sitting next to you tonight just might have seen you naked in a rectangular building constructed of cinder blocks (which was actually not a correctional facility) where you tried your best to be nonchalant in face of a really indescribably artificial environment likened, perhaps most aptly, to daily existence in an underwater vessel where demonstrable emotionality is a raisin d’etre of the first hors d’oeuvre.

So….what gives?

It ill-behooves one who has supped at life’s table to send it back to the kitchen. On balance, life might have treated all of us much, much worse than it did – wouldn’t you say? While fair to say that our present state does not precisely match how we envisioned our future selves in the 1970s, it must be borne in mind that few of us had the faintest clue to what we would be like in 2005 (7).

Except that most of us really wanted to get laid, and some unknowable number of us actually did.

Life is good.

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(1) Well, at least so far as is known…
(2) Almost the whole contingent of B, S & C were there…just one key absence!
(3) The good that men does lives after them; the mischief is remembered forever.
(4) Although Greg Brown did give a very convincing rendering of William Howard Taft.
(5) Two-tone paint seems to have passed into obscurity.
(6) Hell, if one cannot remember where one’s car keys are, why should the secrets of the fraternity be at risk, h’mmm?
(7) Let’s face it – most of us thought that by now we would have already personally experienced the special visual effects at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And that was, of course, four years ago…