Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

On this Day in 1945 (5 Aug 19:15 ET, 6 Aug 8:15 JST), the USAAF B-29 Superfortress 'Enola Gay' dropped "Little Boy" the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Among the 140,000 (estimated) Japanese killed were 12 American PoWs including Navy Airman Normand Brissette. Normand and Army Staff Sgt. Ralph Neal dove into a water-filled cistern but were still burned by the thermal pulse and received lethal radiation doses. Both died on August 19, 1945. Details of their fate were classified until 1973.


Under the Atomic Bomb: American POWs in Hiroshima


August 5, 1950: nearly five years to the day after the US obliterated Hiroshima, Japan—renowned American painter and illustrator Chesley Knight Bonestell’s (1888-1986) vivid visions of an atomic attack on New York City were featured in Collier’s magazine.



For five years now the world has lived with the dreadful knowledge that atomic warfare is possible. Since last September, when the President announced publicly that the Russians too had produced an atomic explosion, this nation has lived face to face with the terrifying realization that an attack with atomic weapons could be made against us.

The perfect horror of Chesley Bonestell's nuked New York


August 5, 1950: a B-29 transporting an unarmed Mark-4 atomic bomb (plutonium capsule onboard) to Guam for potential use in the Korean War crashed and burned attempting an emergency landing 5 minutes after takeoff from Fairfield-Suisun AFB (later renamed to Travis AFB), CA, killing 19 crew/passengers.

A US Air Force Boeing B-29-85-BW Superfortress, 44-87651, of the 99th Bomb Squadron, 9th Bomb Group, 9th Bomb Wing, carrying a Mark 4 nuclear bomb, suffered two runaway propellers and landing gear problems on takeoff at Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base, Fairfield, California.  The crew attempted an emergency landing but crashed, causing a huge explosion that killed 19 aboard the plane and on the ground, including mission commander Brigadier General Robert F. Travis. The airfield was later renamed Travis Air Force Base in his honor.

Numerous nearby mobile homes were severely damaged and many civilians, firefighters, and USAF ground crew were injured.  Of the 49 military personnel, 47 required hospitalization.  A Civil Service assistant fire chief was injured and three civilian dependents were injured (two while attempting to remove effects from trailers and one when a fire extinguisher fell through the roof of quarters). In addition to the 53 major and minor injuries, there were 78 who were injured and treated but not admitted to a hospital, and an estimated 50 who were treated but not recorded.

The Air Force attributed the explosion to ten or twelve conventional 500-pound HE bombs aboard the B-29 and claimed that the nuclear bomb's fuel capsule was aboard a different aircraft, but admitted that the bomb casing contained depleted uranium used as ballast. A public health assessment of the crash site was later ordered.

About twenty minutes after the crash occurred, the high explosives in the bomb casing ignited. The blast, felt and heard over 30 miles away, caused severe damage to the nearby trailer park on base.

Boeing Superfortress 44-87651, Fairfield, California- August 5, 1950

Among those killed in the crash was highly-decorated Brigadier General Robert F. Travis, who was sitting in the cockpit that night in command pilot capacity and serving as a high-level escort for the aircraft’s secret cargo. Fairfield-Suisun AFB was renamed in his honor in 1951.

August 7, 1950, New York Times report on the accident repeats the Air Force’s lie the B-29 was on a training mission and makes no mention it carried an A-bomb with a variable yield of 1-31 kilotons, one of nine that Pres. Truman had ordered deployed to Guam.



NY Times

In July 1950, President Truman ordered Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, to send B-29s to Great Britain, putting the bombers within easy striking distance of the western Soviet Union. “The order grew out of General [Hoyt] Vandenberg’s desire to do something to counter the impression of ineffectiveness conveyed by the meager results of American bombing in Korea,” writes Dingman in a 1988 issue of International Security. He points out that this was not the first occasion of Superfortress statesmanship. In 1948, after the Soviet Union blockaded Berlin, two squadrons of B-29s were deployed to Western Europe. During the Berlin crisis, it was a bluff. The B-29s were not configured to handle nuclear weapons.
How the Korean War Almost Went Nuclear

While the U.S. Strategic Air Command was well prepared to launch an all-out attack against the Soviet Union, it was less clear how it could use atomic weapons in a limited conflict like Korea. On August 1, 1950, the "decision was made to send the 9th Bomb Wing to Guam as an atomic task force immediately." Ten B-29s, loaded with unarmed atomic bombs, set out for the Pacific. On August 5, one of the planes crashed during take off from Fairfield-Suisun Air Force base near San Francisco, killing a dozen people and scattering the mildly radioactive uranium of the bomb's tamper around the airfield. The other planes reached Guam where they went on standby duty.
The Korean War

Here's an English-language edition of the Hiroshima News documentary, ABOVE AND BELOW THE MUSHROOM CLOUD. VIDEO Featuring atomic bomb survivor Koko Kondo and Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay. They met on the TV show THIS IS YOUR LIFE in 1955.


August 5, 1959: Wartime Censor Plan Issued by Pentagon
"The directive would become effective in wartime & covers not only the military, but the entire civilian population as well."




August 5, 1963: in Moscow, Dean Rusk (USA), Andrei Gromyko (USSR), and Alec Douglas-Home (UK) signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, (PTBT) which prohibited signatories from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space.




August 5, 1965: CBS Evening News airs Morley Safer’s report on the burning of Cam Ne, South Vietnam where U.S. Marines conducted a search-and-destroy mission. LBJ was not a happy camper.


MORLEY SAFER: The Burning of Cam Ne

"Today’s operation is the frustration of Vietnam in miniature." That's war and War is hell.

Aug. 5, 1965 | CBS Airs Morley Safer Report From Vietnam




August 5, 1966: Jay Sarno's Caesars Palace Hotel & Casino opened on the Las Vegas Strip with Andy Williams headlining the gala opening that evening. Even Jimmy Hoffa was at the gala opening of Caesars Palace.


How it started: The birth of Caesars Palace

Getty Images has a 3 minute archival video of the opening of Caesars Palace with show girls in Las Vegas, NV on Aug 5, 1966, including Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer helping cut the ribbon before 700+ celebrity guests. "What strange manner of person, this Marty Allen."


U.S. top 40 for August 5, 1967




August 5, 1974: "Smoking gun" tape made public. The end is near.


Nixon: How do you call him in, I mean you just, well, we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things.

Haldeman: That’s what Ehrlichman says.

Nixon: Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will-that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves. Well what the hell, did Mitchell know about this thing to any much of a degree.
- Nixon to Haldeman, June 23, 1972 The Smoking Gun Tape


We're gonna trip back to the summer of 1969...