Operations Order No. 35 was an order issued by the

509th Composite Group The 509th Composite Group (509 CG) was a unit of the United States Army Air Forces created during World War II and tasked with the operational deployment of nuclear weapons. It conducted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in ...

on August 5, 1945 for the atomic bombing mission on

Hiroshima, Japan is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Hiroshima Prefecture has a population of 2,811,410 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 8,479 km² (3,274 sq mi). Hiroshima Prefecture borders Okayama Prefecture to the ...

, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The Order was signed by Operations Officer Major James I. Hopkins, Jr. who would later fly ''Big Stink'' in the August 9, 1945 atomic bombing raid on

Nagasaki, Japan is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Nagasaki Prefecture has a population of 1,314,078 (1 June 2020) and has a geographic area of 4,130 km2 (1,594 sq mi). Nagasaki Prefecture borders Saga Prefecture to the northeast. Naga ...

, under the call sign "Dimples 90".

History

Pursuant to the terms of Operations Order No. 35, at 02:45 on August 6, 1945, the '' Enola Gay'', a Boeing B-29 Superfortress

bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an air ...

, departed

North Field, Tinian North Field is a former World War II airfield on Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Abandoned after the war, today North Field is a tourist attraction. Along with several adjacent beaches on which Allied forces landed during the Battle of Tinian, th ...

, for Hiroshima, Japan, with Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. at the controls.

Tinian Tinian ( or ; old Japanese name: 天仁安島, ''Tenian-shima'') is one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Together with uninhabited neighboring Aguiguan, it forms Tinian Municipality, one of the ...

was approximately away from Japan, so it took six hours to reach the target at Hiroshima. The

Little Boy "Little Boy" was the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress ''Enola Gay'' p ...

atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 08:15 local time. Tibbets recalled that a tall

mushroom cloud A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently ener ...

covered the city after the bomb was dropped.

Notes

Comments

^† ''Big Stink'' was a backup aircraft for the Hiroshima bombing; it was used for strike observation and photographic purposes for the

Nagasaki bombing The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

References

* * Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945 documents {{Nuclear-warfare-stub