The pilot of the B-29 "Enola Gay" described the Hiroshima bombing in his diary as "the greatest of them all that man has ever seen" // Photo: pinterest.com .
The diary describes the events leading up to the bombing, beginning at dawn on August 6. Robert Lewis captured them in his diary, and co-pilot Paul Tibbetts made minor edits. The author of the diary, two hours before the bomb was dropped, describes it as “alive” and the feeling of realizing that the bomb was “right behind you” as strange.
Has gone up 25 times in 55 years
The owner estimated the diary in $ 950 thousand, according to the Washington Post (USA), the lot is offered for sale by antique dealer Dan Whitmore, acting on behalf of a wealthy owner. The diary is put up for sale for the fifth time. For the first time he was sold at auction in 1971 for $ 37 thousand for 55 years, its value has increased by 2.500%.
“My God! What have we done?”
The diary contains many emotional assessments of what happened that day. “It is impossible to comprehend. How many people have we killed? My God! What have we done? Even if I live 100 years, I will never be able to get those few minutes out of my head for the rest of my life,” Robert Lewis wrote, adding that during the bombing, “everyone on board literally went numb.”
American bombing raids dropped two bombs on Japan. The Little Boy uranium bomb (Little Boy), with a yield of 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT equivalent, was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The strike killed at least 80,000 people on the same day. Three days later, the plutonium bomb Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, killing more than 60,000 people. The number of deaths from the consequences of the bombing exceeds 500 thousand people.
It is believed that the atomic bombings accelerated the surrender of Japan. The authorities of the “Land of the Rising Sun” admitted defeat in World War II on September 2, 1945.
pilot’s diary
