The enormous blast instantly destroyed most of the city and claimed some 140,000 lives, according to the BBC. The bomb exploded about 1,900 feet (580 meters) over the unsuspecting city. Inside the Enola Gay's bomb bay was 'Little Boy.'Īt 8:15 a.m., the Enola Gay's bay doors opened and 'Little Boy' was dropped over Hiroshima. 6, a B-29 airplane named Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, according to Time magazine) took off from Tinian, an island roughly six hours from Hiroshima by air. Situated on a coastal plain, the city was an important manufacturing and military center - at least 40,000 military personnel were stationed in Hiroshima during the summer of 1945.įor these and other reasons, the city was selected as the first target of an atomic bomb attack. In 1945, Hiroshima, Japan, was a city of about 255,000 people that was largely untouched by the war, according to a paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The damage caused by the Hiroshima bombing (Image credit: Getty/ Bettmann / Contributor)
