After making a final check of his instrumentation, Tibbets pushed forward the throttles at 2.45 and Enola Gay began to roll down the runway … At exactly 8.15:17 a.m., the ‘Little Boy’ was released from the bomb bay of the Enola Gay … [A]s the ‘Little Boy’ reached 1900 feet, the proximity fuse fired, sending the U235 bullet down the short barrel of the gun assembly into its U235 target. The super-critical mass was formed, drenched in neutrons by the polonium/beryllium initiator, and an uncontrolled chain reaction went through eighty generations before the expanding uranium core was too large to sustain it … As Tibbets strained to get the Enola Gay away to the south, ‘A bright light filled the plane’ …

President Truman was travelling back from the Potsdam conference aboard the USS Augusta when he was told the news; he told sailors in the mess deck where he was dining, that ‘This was the greatest thing that has ever happened’ …

Otto Frisch was working at the Los Alamos laboratory when somebody opened the door and shouted ‘Hiroshima has been destroyed!’. About a hundred thousand people were thought to have been killed. ‘I still remember the feeling of unease, indeed nausea, when I saw how many of my friends were rushing to the telephone to book tables at the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe, in order to celebrate’ … […]