Air Operations, Central Pacific

Fleet Carrier Air Group 10 (USS Intrepid) attacks Wake Island.

Air Operations, CBI

• 10 14th Air Force P-51s attack locomotives.
• Assorted FEAF aircraft attack targets of opportunity in the Shanghai area.
• 15 Task Unit 95.3.1 FMs, 6 F4Us, and 2 F6Fs attack port facilities, shipping, and an airfield at Tinghai.

Air Operations, Japan

• The 509th Composite Bomb Group B-29 Enola Gay, piloted by Col Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., the group commander, drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 0815 hours. An estimated 71,000 people are killed in the blast, and more than 80 percent of the city’s buildings are destroyed.
• More than 150 319th Medium Bomb Group A-26s and FEAF P-47s fly through bad weather to attack their primary target, the city of Miyakonojo.
• More than 170 FEAF B-24s, B-25s, and P-47s attack their secondary target, the city of Kagoshima.
• More than 60 FEAF B-25s and P-51s attack shipping and targets of opportunity around the Tsushima Strait and the northern Ryukyus.
• FEAF P-51s sweep the seas between Kyushu and Korea and attack targets of opportunity on Saishu Island.
• FEAF P-47s attack Anjo, Tanega Island.
• Assorted aircraft attack targets of opportunity on the Inland Sea, western Shikoku, southern Honshu, the northern Ryukyus, and the southern Korea coast.
• nearly 100 VII Fighter Command fighter-bombers based on Iwo Jima attack airfields and 6 other military installations in the Tokyo area.

Air Operations, Korea

348th Fighter Group P-51s down 4 A6M Zeros over the Cheju airfield at 0935 hours.

Air Operations, Philippines

XIII Bomber Command B-24s attack pockets of resistance on Negros.

Air Operations, Pacific

Operation CENTERBOARD. At about 9:30a.m. a B-29 named Enola Gay, named after the pilot's mother, of the 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group, 20th Air Force, and commanded by the American Col Paul Tibbets, takes off from Tinian in the Marianas at 2:10a.m., and drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a 20-kiloton bomb named 'Little Boy' from an altitude of 31,000 feet. It explodes after 18 seconds 1850 feet above the city. More than 4.5 square miles of built-up area is obliterated. The tail-gunner on the aircraft, who sees the explosion, exclaims: 'My God! What have we done!'

92,233 people are killed and 37,425 injured, many of whom die later from the effects of radiation. The bomb is an uranium fission weapon and the yield is in the region of 20,000 tons of TNT. It is not the most devastating bombing attack of the war

the March fire raids on Tokyo have had a larger effect

but the economy of effort involved in sending only one plane on a mission to destroy a city shows only too well the complete change in military and political thinking which has been begun.

Pacific

The US submarine Bullhead (SS-332) is presumed to have been sunk in the Java Sea.

United States, Home Front

Maj Richard I. Bong, top American fighter 'ace' of World War II with 40 victories, is killed testing a jet fighter. He was 24.

Images from August 6, 1945

On the morning of August 6, 1945, at 8:16 and two seconds, the dream of the superweapon became reality. The first atom bomb exploded without warning over Hiroshima with the force of 12,500 tons of trotyl

First Atom Bomb Explodes

After Japanese leaders flatly rejected the Potsdam Declaration, President Truman authorized use of the atomic bomb anytime after August 3, 1945. On the clear morning of August 6, the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Leveling over 60 percent of the city, 70,000 residents died instantaneously in a searing flash of heat

First Atom Bomb Explodes Leveling 60% of the City

This view of Hiroshima shows the destruction wrought by the atom bomb

Hiroshima Damage

Aftermath of the atomic bomb strike on Hiroshima, Japan, August 1945

Aftermath of the atomic bomb