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Following a successful test there should be arranged:

a) A rehearsal demonstration before a body including internationally recognized scientists from all Allied countries and, in addition, neutral countries, supplemented by representatives of the major faiths;

b) That a report on the nature and the portent of the atomic weapon be prepared by the scientists and other representative figures;

c) That thereafter a warning be issued by the United States and its allies in the Project to our major enemies in the war, Germany and Japan, that atomic bombing would be applied to a selected area within a designated time limit for the evacuation of human and animal life;

d) In the wake of such realization of the efficacy of atomic bombing an ultimatum demand for immediate surrender by the enemies be issued, in the certainty that failure to comply would subject their countries and people to atomic annihilation.

Sachs spent over an hour alone with the president. No record was made of their conversation.

A few months later, when Roosevelt was dead, Sachs would claim that the president had accepted his proposals. His implication was clear: those in favor of using the bomb had later persuaded the president to change his mind. It is more likely that Roosevelt, a skilled exponent of the tactic, had led Sachs to believe he had heard what he wanted to hear.

Groves thought Sachs’s suggestion that Hitler and the Japanese militarists could be swayed by a memo about an explosion in some distant place naive in the extreme. Further, the financier’s proposal totally removed the surprise element that Groves believed essential. The project chief had always maintained that, forewarned, the enemy would mount an effective counterattack, destroying the plane carrying the atomic bomb either in aerial combat or by ground fire.

However, on December 7, scientists working on the Manhattan Project were satisfied that the Japanese were not far enough advanced in theoretical physics or technology to manufacture an atomic bomb. Therefore, some argued, it would be “unthinkable” to use the weapon against Japan.

The battle lines had been drawn. Even now, the more radical among the scientists were planning fresh strategies to halt the project.

16

On December 17, the five squadrons at Wendover became formally unified under Tibbets as the 509th Composite Group, attached to the 315th Bombardment Wing of the Second Air Force. The group’s strength was 225 officers and 1,542 enlisted men.

Ferebee and van Kirk joined the 509th’s headquarters staff as group bombardier and group navigator. They rarely flew now, spending their time preparing and analyzing training programs. When they did fly, they usually went with Lewis, taking the place of his regular bombardier and navigator.

Lewis’s crew continued to return one of the best flying records. Their main competition came from Eatherly’s crew and crew No. 15, commanded by the effervescent Major Charles Sweeney.

Beser liked to fly with Sweeney “because of the way he kidded everyone along.” He was forming lasting judgments on many of the fliers, for “the day was coming when I’d have to trust my life to them.”

The radar officer had warmed toward Tibbets; he saw, correctly, a shy man behind the aloof commander. He had become aware that Tibbets had a marriage problem, and decided that Tibbets was “only truly happy in the air, but there he was magnificent.”

Beser thought Lewis, on the ground, sometimes acted “like Peck’s bad boy; in the air he occasionally got overexcited.”

Van Kirk and Ferebee were tagged by Beser as “professionals who never have any problems.”

This December morning, at thirty thousand feet over the Salton Sea bombing range, Tibbets and Ferebee were trying to solve a problem that had worried them for a week.

The bombardier had failed to drop dummy practice bombs consistently into the aiming circle, now reduced to three hundred feet. There seemed no reason why some bombs fell into the circle while others landed outside it.

Tibbets was concerned, and he reminded Ferebee why precision was so important. “Tom, when the time comes, we have to be as near on target as we can get. Radar is out because it’s still too uncertain. So it’s got to be visual. You’ve got to be able to see the target and then hit it on the nose. And that means we’ve got to drop within that circle every time.”

Tibbets had come on the practice flight to see why the aim was erratic. The weather was perfect: clear skies, easily computed wind drift. With Lewis holding the B-29 steady on the run up to the aiming point, Tibbets watched Ferebee crouching over the Norden bombsight.

The sight had been totally stripped and reassembled, a mechanically perfect instrument.

Ferebee called out that he had the AP in his cross hairs. He lifted himself a few inches off his seat to bring his face closer over the viewfinder. Below, through the optical sight, he could see the bombing circle clearly. Satisfied, he eased himself back on his seat, his head still glued to the viewfinder.

“Bomb away.”

Lewis put the aircraft into the mandatory 155-degree turn. By the time ground control reported on the drop, the B-29 was nearly eight miles away.

The bomb had fallen outside the circle.

Tibbets ordered Lewis to fly back toward the AP. He told Ferebee to repeat his actions. He watched intently as the bombardier began to line up the circle in his sights. At the last moment, he rose off his buttocks again.

Tibbets shouted, “That’s it!”

He had solved the problem. At the crucial moment, Ferebee, like any other bombardier, lifted himself off his seat to bring his eyes to the sight. The movement was no more than an inch or two. But it was enough. Each time he lowered his eyes to the sight, his head was at a slightly different angle against the viewfinder. If he had been bombing from a few thousand feet, this small movement would have had little effect. But from thirty thousand feet, nearly six miles up, with his head at a slightly different angle each time, it meant the error could ultimately work out to be several hundred feet by the time the bomb hit the ground.

Within hours, Tibbets had ground crews construct and fit a padded headrest to the bombsight. Using it, Ferebee’s head was forced into exactly the same position each time. From then on, he bombed with consistent accuracy.

17

In the cold dawn light, mess officer Charles Perry surveyed his resources: rows of plump farm turkeys and cured hams, mounds of vegetables, trays of mince pies, and, dominating the kitchen tables, scores of huge Christmas puddings. Silverplate had ensured that this first Christmas of the fledgling 509th would be a memorable one.

The elements had also contributed to the festive mood. Overnight, heavy snow had fallen, covering the ground inches high. At the main gate, shivering MPs fashioned a couple of snowmen, complete with hats and tree branches for carbines.

Beyond the gate, in their home, the Tibbets family were unwrapping their Christmas presents. Tibbets had given Lucie a gift he had purchased at the last moment in the base commissary. He was always at a loss about what to buy his vivacious wife; it was one of the many small reasons that their marriage was foundering. Lucie felt that her husband was unromantic; a warmhearted Southern belle from Georgia, she found the practical and pragmatic Tibbets often cool and distant. She knew there was no other woman in his life, but she could not understand why he seemed to place his work ahead of herself and the children. Once she had complained to Beser, who often used to baby-sit for the Tibbetses, that “Paul never seems to have time to sit down and talk or play with the children. And when he does talk, it’s only about work.”