4. A City’s Lucky Escape
Disaster and an escape from disaster, catastrophe or salvation, are often separated by a thin margin that depends on little more than the vagaries and whims of fate. Few examples are more illustrative of that than the fate of the Japanese city of Kokura on August 9th, 1945. At 3:49 AM that morning, a B-29 piloted by US Air Force Major Charles W. Sweeney, nicknamed the Bockscar, took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific, headed for Kokura.
In Bockscar’s bomb bay was Fat Man, a plutonium atomic bomb, more powerful than the uranium core weapon that had devastated Hiroshima three days earlier. As late-night turned to dawn and then morning, Kokura stirred and came to life, its inhabitants blissfully unaware that death was winging its way towards them. Weather observation planes reported clear skies over Kokura. Bockscar proceeded to a rendezvous point where it was supposed to link up with Big Stink, another B-29 that was tasked with filming the strike. Then fate intervened, and decreed that Kokura was to escape destruction.