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Eighty years ago this week, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, forcing the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the “Little Boy” uranium bomb on Hiroshima, killing up to 166,000 people. Three days later, on August 9, the B-29 Bockscar was diverted from its primary target of Kokura due to bad weather and instead dropped the more powerful “Fat Man” plutonium bomb on the secondary target of Nagasaki, killing up to 80,000 and compelling Japan’s surrender.

By May of 1945 an exhausted and overrun Germany had surrendered. The war in Europe was over. The United States, aided by Great Britain, moved closer and closer to Japan. Massive suicide attacks by the Japanese caused great losses to the Pacific Fleet, but did not deter its drive. Japan, thinking the Soviet Union was a friendly neutral in the war in the Pacific, submitted unofficial peace feelers to the United States through them. The Soviet Union, secretly wanting to join the war against Japan, suppressed the feelers. Ironically, the Japanese military made it impossible to pursue peace directly, as...

into the Bockscar plane on the island of Tinian, August 9th, 1945 Posted February 7th, 2014 by Alex Wellerstein Teaching and other work has bogged me down, as it sometimes does, but I’m working on a pretty fun post for next week. In the meantime, here is something I put together yesterday. This is unedited (in the sense that I didn’t edit it), “raw” footage of the loading of the Fat Man bomb into the Bockscar plane on the island of Tinian, August 9th, 1945. It also features footage of the bombing of Nagasaki itself. I got this from Los...

Theodore Van Kirk is sitting at his desk in a detached bungalow in the gated community outside Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives. The room is cluttered with boxes, trinkets, shelves full of books on wartime history and photographs of planes on the walls...

MILTON - There was a break in the clouds, and Charles W. Sweeney, a young pilot, changed history. His B-29 bomber dangerously low on fuel, Sweeney finally captured a glimpse of the target below and delivered the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II. It was the second and last time an atomic weapon had been used, and the Japanese surrendered a few days after the Aug. 9, 1945, bombing. Sweeney, a retired Air Force general, died Thursday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 84. He was a Milton resident and a graduate...

Filed at 6:59 p.m. ET CHICAGO (AP) -- Fred Olivi, who copiloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, has died. He was 82. Olivi, a native of Chicago, died Thursday at a rehabilitation center in a Chicago suburb, officials at Panozzo Bros. funeral home said Saturday. He suffered a stroke in August. The crew of the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945, the crew of the B-29 bomber nicknamed Bockscar dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days later, ending World War II. ``While thousands...