"Anyone who knows the details of the Nagasaki mission, original target
was Kokura, knows that that claim is bulls***."
OK, I'm wrong.
The cathedral was not the aim sight.
I went back and spent about a hour googling and it seems that the
aiming sight falsehood grew from the story of the Catholic chaplain that went
pacifist after WWII. (an example of the chaplain's POV is at
http://chrisbroussard.blogspot.com/)
So that my error won't be repeated by others, here's plenty of
documentary evidence that the cathedral was NOT the aiming sight.
http://www.lycos.com/info/nagasaki--cities.html
At 11:02, a last minute break in the clouds over Nagasaki allowed Bock's Car's bombardier, Capt. Kermit Beahan, to visually sight the target as ordered. The "Fat Man" weapon, containing a core of ~6.4 kg of plutonium-239, was dropped over the city's industrial valley. It exploded 469 meters (1,540 feet) above the ground almost midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two principal targets of the city.
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/earns/olivi.html
The "Fat Man" weapon, containing a core of ~6.4 kg of plutonium-239, was dropped over the city's industrial valley. It exploded 469 meters (1,540 feet) above the ground about halfway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works) in the north, the two principal targets in the city.
Thank you for your links, VOA. Will read with interest.
No probs. It's not surprising though, that a story like that would emerge from the anti-nuke crowd, eh?