Boxcar Crew, Nagasaki Mission, 1945

Boxcar Crew, Nagasaki Mission, 1945

Editorial use only . Bockscar is the name of the United States Army Air Forces B-29 bomber that dropped the Fat Man nuclear weapon over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the second atomic weapon used against Japan. It was assigned to the 393d Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group. Bockscar had been flown by Sweeney and crew C-15 in three test drop rehearsals of inert Fat Man assemblies in the days leading up to the second mission. The Great Artiste, which was the assigned aircraft of the crew with whom Sweeney most often flew, had been designated in preliminary planning to drop the second bomb, but it had been fitted with observation instruments for the Hiroshima mission. Moving the instrumentation from The Great Artiste to Bockscar would be complex, and when the second atomic bomb mission was moved from August 11 to August 9, the crews of The Great Artiste and Bockscar exchanged aircraft. The result was that the bomb was carried by Bockscar but flown by the crew C-15 of The

Album / Science Source / Los Alamos National Laboratory

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3900 x 2897 px | 32.3 MB

33.0 x 24.5 cm | 13.0 x 9.7 in (300 dpi)