When officials from the Manhattan Project and the United States Army Air Forces were
looking for a base for a planned atomic bomb attack on Japan, they decided to look amongst
the Mariana Island group.
Eventually, they settled on Tinian, an island in the Pacific coincidently shaped just like
Manhattan.
Tinian, once under the control of Spain and Japan, was the place where the atomic bombs
were assembled and from where the B-29 Superfortress bombers departed towards Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The island was positioned strategically close to mainland Japan, as the round trip was only
3,000 miles long.
Thanks to the diligent work of the Navy’s Seabees Construction Battalions, it also had
multiple runways.
It became the base of the 509th Composite Group, responsible for delivering the atomic
bombs Little Boy and Fat Man.
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But before Tinian could be used as an atomic staging area, the parts to assemble the devices
had to get there first.
The task was left to the USS Indianapolis, a heavy-cruiser sent on a top-secret mission
to deliver the enriched uranium and other parts that would belong to Little Boy.
It would be a mission fraught with peril, as Japanese submarines still stalked the surrounding
seas...
The Miracle Island
Tinian, located 1,500 miles from mainland Japan, is one of the three main islands belonging
to the Mariana Islands.
Its history has been one of conflict since its first sighting by famous explorer Ferdinand
Magellan in 1521.
Spain, the United States, and Germany controlled the territory during different centuries until
it was captured by Japan in 1918 as part of the South Seas Mandate.
In the following decades, Japan introduced sugar plantations, a dried tuna processing
plant, and other infrastructure development.
The island was inhabited by 20,000 Japanese and Korean natives, as well as by a few remaining
ethnic Chamorros.
During World War II, Tinian attracted little attention until the United States realized
it would prove strategically beneficial as a base for its Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers.
And so the U.S Navy came up with Operation Granite II, which plotted the Allied invasion
and occupation of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.
The island was defended by the 50th Infantry Regiment of the Japanese Army when, on July
16, 1944, the Allies began their operation.
The Battle of Tinian, as it came to be known, lasted until August 10.
Over 4,000 Japanese inhabitants and 328 Marines were lost in the combat.
According to interviews by author Bruce Petty, the people left on the island [QUOTE]: “Didn’t
have to farm or do work of any kind for the first two years because the military left
entire warehouses full of everything imaginable from food, brand new uniforms, and even ice
cream makers.
Anybody who wanted a vehicle could just go pick one up and drive it until it fell apart,
then go get another one.”
Immediately after the island’s capture, the United States turned the location into
one of the largest air bases of the war.
The construction was placed in the hands of the SeaBees, a group of Navy volunteers responsible
for paving roads and erecting buildings.
The shape of the island reminded military planners of another one, located in America.
The SeaBees constructed a base built that resemble the street patterns of Manhattan,
New York, and shared the same street names.
The island even had a Central Park, which was a square that harbored the hospitals.
In only two months, the SeaBees also created six runways.
The North Field of Tinian had three small airstrips built by the Japanese, which were
useless for bomber operations.
To accommodate the 313th Bombardment Wing, with its Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers,
the North Field was given four new runways.
Philip Morrison, one of the assemblers of the atomic bomb, said of the island [QUOTE]:
“Tinian is a miracle.
Here, 6,000 miles from San Francisco, the United States armed forces have built the
largest airport in the world.”
The Two Manhattans
Thanks to its strategic location, Tinian became one of the primary operational bases from
which the U.S bombers took off to attack mainland Japan, the Philippines, and Okinawa.
The roundtrip to Japan was around 3,000 miles and required the airplanes to take off with
extra fuel.
In December 1944, the United States Army Air Forces chose the Mariana Islands as a base
for the planned atomic attack on Japan.
Commander Frederick Ashworth took a tour of Tinian and was intrigued by the airfields
and its convenient distance from Japan.
In February of 1945, Tinian was selected as the official base for the operation.
Around 100 people were sent to the island, including physicist Norman Ramsey, a scientific
and technical deputy who was still wrapping up the details on how the bomb would work.
In preparation for the nuclear strike, the United States Army Air Forces created the
509th Composite Group, whose squadrons operated with Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers and
transport aircraft.
The composite was activated on December 17, 1944, at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah.
In April of 1945, the composite started practicing for the attack with a series of test drops
using concrete dummy bombs over Utah.
The trip to the island, in June of 1945, was then completed with extreme security measures.
No one outside the 509th was allowed to inspect the aircraft or materials sent to Tinian.
Some stories claim that, on two occasions, personnel of the composite actually drew their
guns against commander generals who tried to inspect a B-29 and a plutonium core being
shipped to the island.
Practically all of the composite’s 225 officers and 1,542 enlisted men were sent to Tinian.
The group flew 51 combat missions in Japan to drop pumpkin bombs against 14 targets.
These were ballistic simulators closely resembling the Fat Man nuclear bomb, but that contained
conventional explosives.
The pumpkins bombs were designed for the group to practice nuclear strikes over Japan.
USS Indianapolis
The USS Indianapolis had operated as President Franklin Roosevelt’s ship of state, and
as the flagship for the commander of Scouting Force 1 and Admiral Raymond Spruance.
The decorated ship had even participated in the Battle of Tinian.
On March 31, 1945, a Japanese single-engine plane dropped a bomb before trying to crash
into the ship.
The Indianapolis survived the kamikaze attack but had to undergo repairs in San Francisco
after the bomb exploded under it.
In mid-July, the Portland class heavy cruiser was assigned a new secret mission: a high-speed
delivery to Tinian.
The Navy personnel abroad didn’t know that, inside the wooden crate located in the hangar
of the Indianapolis, was enriched uranium and part of the nuclear bomb “Little Boy.”
The warship left for the island on July 16 and arrived 10 days later, setting a speed
record in the process.
After the delivery, it stopped in Guam to receive instructions for its next missions.
Captain Charles B. McVay III, commander of the Indianapolis, was worried.
Half of the crew was new after the attack in Okinawa, and hadn’t undergone the planned
training because of the haste to get to Tinian.
Once they reached Leyte, in the Philippines, the crew was supposed to restart the training.
However, on its way to its destination, the warship crossed the path of Japanese submarine
I-58.
The Indianapolis was traveling at night, unescorted and with poor visibility.
Meanwhile, the submarine had managed to stay undetected and was only about a mile away
off of the ship’s starboard side.
With a clear view of the Indianapolis in its periscope, the submarine fired six torpedoes
in a matter of 18 minutes.
Two managed to hit the target, severely damaging the ship, which started to heavily list.
For the first few minutes, Captain McVay avoided issuing an “abandon ship” order since
it was only listing three degrees and had survived similar damage during the kamikaze
attack at Okinawa.
In the next 12 minutes, though, the warship listed 90 degrees.
It rolled over, its stern rose in the air, and it sank.
Few survivors managed to escape in rafts, and a distress signal never left the Indianapolis.
Eight hundred seamen were left adrift, some without life jackets.
In the following days, they were left to face starvation, hypothermia, shark attacks, and
exposure to the elements.
By chance, other American ships came across survivors two days later.
Only 316 seamen survived the attack, turning it into the Navy’s worst tragedy at sea.
Little Boy and Fat Man
As part of Project Alberta, the assembly of the atomic bombs took place in Tinian.
The Little Boy nuclear bomb was scheduled to be ready by August 1, 1945, while Fat Man
had to be ready soon after.
Four prototype assemblies of Little Boy were dropped during test bombings.
The last one, L-6, was used in rehearsals at Iwo Jima and dropped near Tinian by the
B-29 Enola Gay.
This assembly was chosen to be used for the Hiroshima bomb.
On July 25, General Thomas T. Handy, the acting Chief of Staff of the United States Army,
issued the orders for the attack.
Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki were established as targets, to be attacked as
soon as the weather allied after August 3.
Before the bombing, it was considered to evacuate Tinian in case one of the bombers crashed
on the runway, as it had already happened to four B-29’s in the space of a week.
Instead, it was decided that the bombs would be armed in flight.
At 2:45 am on August 6, 1945, Enola Gay took off from the runway at the North Field of
Tinian.
Crew members experienced a tense takeoff roll inside the bomber, which had to accelerate
longer than usual and use all of the runway due to its heavy load.
The B-29 was accompanied by the instrumentation plane The Great Artiste.
At 8:15, Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
Fat Man was supposed to be ready by August 11, but concerns over poor weather sped up
the process.
On August 9, the B-29 Bockscar took off from Tinian, joined by The Great Artiste and the
observation plane Big Stink.
Although the original target was the city of Yakushima, cloud cover was over 70%.
The group diverted to Nagasaki, and the bomb was dropped two hours behind schedule.
Japan surrendered six days after the bombing of Nagasaki.
After the war, Tinian continued to be controlled by the American military as part of the Trust
Territory of the Pacific Islands.
Up to the early 80s, two of the island’s airstrips were being used by the U.S Marine
Corps.
Nowadays, tourists can visit the historic wartime sites, which played a pivotal role
during the final months of World War II.