Hiroshima had already been woken by several air-raid sirens that morning, which had proved to be false alarms.įoto: Col. Tibbets had been named the plane after his mother. Tibbets Jr., who led a crew of 12 men on a mission that would change the history of the world. It was carrying a 9,700-pound top-secret bomb named Little Boy.
“I thought, yes, we’re going to kill a lot of people, but by God we’re going to save a lot of lives,” he said in 2002. It is thought to have killed 80,000 people immediately, with tens of thousands more dying later of radiation sickness and injuries.
