Happy Anniversary, 'Little Boy' And 'Fat Man'
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The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb nicknamed 'Little Boy' (1945). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today marks one of the United States’ most important – but least celebrated – anniversaries. It is remarkable not only for what happened on this date in 1945 but for what did not happen subsequently.
What did happen was that the “Enola Gay,” an American B-29 bomber from the intentionally obscure 509th Composite Group (a U.S. Army Air Force unit tasked with deploying nuclear weapons), dropped “Little Boy,” a uranium-based atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. That dramatic act hastened the end of World War II, which concluded within a week after the August 9 detonation of “Fat Man,” a plutonium-based bomb, over Nagasaki.
Read the complete story at Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2013/08/06/happy-anniversary-little-boy-and-fat-man/
Editor's Note: We here at AAB agree with the author that the nuking of Japan was a tactical and moral imperative. But there is a lot of revisionist history out there, even a concerted effort to present the U.S. as the evil empire now and then. We think the story as published in Forbes is on track and balanced. We also think this particular anniversary should be noted, soberly by the United States and by nuclear saber rattler China. We highly recommend it for your consideration. China and her proxy Korea have both recently threatened the use of nuclear weapons against neighbors. China issued a veiled, unofficial threat against Australia using a military journal writer, some one with no real policy authority to threaten Australia with nuclear attack if Australia comes to the aid of the United States, should the U.S. come to the aid of the Philippines or Japan as China continues to attempt to steal their outlying island territories. Korea has directly and officially threatened the United States. This anniversary should remind these overreaching thug states that the United States can put nuclear ordinance on target in numbers anywhere any time. We do not bully other nations with these weapons but we won't hesitate to use them effectively in our defense if one of the thug states turns one on us. such thug states as might actually resort to the use of nuclear weapons on the U.S. or our allies won't be "bombed into the stone age", they will be reduced to glow in the dark parking lots. Yes we used them once before in lieu of sacrificing hundreds of thousands of American lives. We will certainly use them again if American or allied lives are taken with them. We at AAB see no shame in that.
