Bockscar, sometimes called Bock's Car or Bocks Car, is the name of the United States Army Air Forces B-29 bomber that dropped the "Fat Man" nuclear weapon over Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, the second atomic weapon used against Japan.
The name painted on the aircraft after the mission is a pun on "boxcar" after the name of its aircraft commander, Captain Frederick C. Bock.[1]
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Bockscar was flown on that day by the crew of another B-29, The Great Artiste, and was commanded by Major Charles W. Sweeney, commander of the 509th Composite Group's[2] only bomber squadron, the 393d. The plane was copiloted by Captain Charles Donald Albury.[3] The Great Artiste, which was the assigned aircraft of the crew with whom Sweeney most often flew, was slotted in preliminary planning to drop the second bomb, but it had been fitted with observation instruments for the Hiroshima mission.[4] Instead, The Great Artiste was designated as an observation, instrumentation, and support plane for the second atomic bomb mission. Another observation and support B-29, The Big Stink, commanded by Major James I. Hopkins, Jr. was added to the mission.
Bockscar had been flown by Sweeney and crew C-15 in three test drop rehearsals of inert "Fat Man" assemblies in the eight days leading up to the second mission, including the final rehearsal the day before.[5] Rather than move the instrumentation from The Great Artiste to Bockscar, a complex and time-consuming process, the crews of The Great Artiste and Bockscar switched planes. The result was that the bomb was dropped by Bockscar, flown by the crew C-15 of The Great Artiste.[4]
There was confusion over the name of the plane because an initial eyewitness account by reporter William L. Laurence of the New York Times said that the second bomb had been dropped from The Great Artiste.[6] Laurence, who accompanied the mission as part of Bock's crew, had interviewed Sweeney and his crew in depth and was aware that they referred to their airplane as The Great Artiste. Except for Enola Gay, none of the 393rd's B-29s had yet had names painted on the noses, and unaware of the switch in aircraft, Laurence assumed victor 77 was The Great Artiste.[7]
On 9 August 1945, Major Sweeney was in command of Bockscar on the second atomic bomb mission, from the island of Tinian, carrying the atomic bomb Fat Man. During the mission briefing, the two support aircraft, The Great Artiste and The Big Stink, were ordered to rendezvous with Bockscar at 30,000 feet over Yakushima Island. Before takeoff, Col. Tibbets warned Sweeney to take no more than fifteen minutes at the rendezvous before proceeding directly to the primary target.[8] On the morning of the mission, the ground crew notified Sweeney that a faulty fuel transfer pump made it impossible to utilize some 625 gallons of fuel in the tail, but Sweeney, as aircraft commander, elected to proceed with the mission.[9][10] Bockscar reached its rendezvous point and after circling for an extended period, found The Great Artiste, but not The Big Stink.[11] Climbing to 30,000 feet, both aircraft slowly circled Yakushima Island. Though Sweeney had been ordered not to wait at the rendezvous for his observer aircraft longer than fifteen minutes before proceeding to the primary target, Sweeney continued to wait for The Big Stink, perhaps at the urging of Commander Frederick Ashworth, the plane's weaponeer.[12] After exceeding the original rendezvous time limit by a half-hour, Bockscar, accompanied by the The Great Artiste, proceeded to the primary target, Kokura.[13] No less than three bomb runs were made, but the delay at the rendezvous had resulted in 7/10ths cloud cover over the primary target, and the bombardier was unable to drop.[14] By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close, and Japanese fighter planes could be seen climbing to intercept Bockscar.[15]
Poor bombing visibility and an increasingly critical fuel shortage eventually forced Bockscar to divert from Kokura and attack the secondary target, Nagasaki.[16] As they approached Nagasaki, the heart of the city's downtown was covered by dense cloud, and Sweeney and the plane's weaponeer, Commander Ashworth, initially decided to bomb Nagasaki using radar.[17] However, a small opening in the clouds allowed Bockscar's bombardier, Capt. Beahan, to verify the target as Nagasaki. As the crew had been ordered to drop the bomb visually if possible, Sweeney decided to proceed with a visual bomb run.[18] Bockscar then dropped Fat Man, with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. It exploded 43 seconds later at 503 meters (1,650 ft) above the ground, at least 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) northwest of the planned aim point.[19][20] The failure to drop Fat Man at the precise bomb aim point caused the atomic blast to be confined to the Urakami Valley. As a consequence, a major portion of the city was protected by the intervening hills, and only 60% of Nagasaki was destroyed, with approximately 70,000 people killed in the initial explosion. Japan surrendered six days later.
Because of the delays in the mission, the B-29 did not have sufficient fuel to reach the emergency landing field at Iwo Jima, so Sweeney flew the aircraft to Okinawa. Critically low on fuel, Bockscar barely made it to the runway on Okinawa. With only enough fuel for one landing attempt, Sweeney brought Bockscar in fast and hard, ordering every available distress flare on board to be fired as he did so.[21] The number two engine died from fuel starvation as Bockscar began its final approach.[22] Touching the runway hard, the heavy B-29 slewed left and towards a row of parked B-24 bombers before the pilots managed to regain control.[23] With both pilots standing on the brakes, Sweeney made a swerving 90-degree turn at the end of the runway to avoid going over the cliff and into the ocean. 2nd Lt. Jacob Beser recalled "the centrifugal force resulting from the turn was almost enough to put us through the side of the airplane." A second engine had died from fuel exhaustion by the time the plane came to a stop.
After Bockscar returned to Tinian, Col. Tibbets recorded that he was faced with the dilemma of considering “if any action should be taken against the airplane commander, Charles Sweeney, for failure to command.”[24][25][26] After meeting on Guam with Col. Tibbets and Major Sweeney, General Curtis LeMay, chief of staff for the Strategic Air Forces, confronted Sweeney, stating "You fucked up, didn't you, Chuck?", to which Sweeney made no reply.[27] LeMay then turned to Tibbets and told him that an investigation into Sweeney's conduct of the mission would serve no useful purpose.[28]
Bockscar, B-29-36-MO 44-27297, victor number 77, was assigned to the 393rd Bomb Squadron of the 509th Composite Group. One of 15 Silverplate B-29s used by the 509th on Tinian, Bockscar was built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Plant at Bellevue, Nebraska at what is now Offutt Air Force Base, as a Block 35 aircraft. It was one of 10 modified as a Silverplate and re-designated "Block 36". Delivered on 19 March 1945, to the USAAF, it was assigned to Capt. Frederick C. Bock and crew C-13 and flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah.[29]
It left Wendover on 11 June 1945 for Tinian and arrived 16 June. It was originally given the victor number 7 but on 1 August was given the triangle N tail markings of the 444th Bomb Group as a security measure and had its victor changed to 77 to avoid misidentification with an actual 444th aircraft.[30]
Bockscar was also used in 13 training and practice missions from Tinian, and three combat missions in which it dropped pumpkin bombs on industrial targets in Japan. Bock's crew bombed Niihama and Musashino, and 1st Lt. Don Albury and crew C-15 bombed Toyama.[31]
It returned to the United States in November 1945 and served with the 509th at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. It was nominally assigned to the Operation Crossroads task force but there are no records indicating that it deployed for the tests. In August 1946 it was assigned to the 4105th Army Air Force Unit at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field, Arizona, for storage.
At Davis-Monthan it was placed on display as the aircraft that bombed Nagasaki, but in the markings of The Great Artiste. In September 1946 title was passed to the Air Force Museum (now the National Museum of the United States Air Force) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The aircraft was flown to the Museum on 26 September 1961,[32] and its original markings were restored before the aircraft was put on display.[33]
Bockscar is now on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio. This display, a primary exhibit in the Museum's Air Power gallery, includes a replica of the "Fat Man" bomb and signage that states that it was "The aircraft that ended WWII". This is in contrast to the display of Enola Gay at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where little mention is made of that aircraft's role in World War II.
In 2005, a short documentary was made about Charles Sweeney's recollections of the Nagasaki mission aboard Bockscar, including details of the mission preparation, titled "Nagasaki: The Commander's Voice." [34]
Crew C-13 (manned The Great Artiste on the Nagasaki mission)
Crew C-15 (normally assigned to The Great Artiste):
Also on board were the following additional mission personnel: