USA Nagasaki bomber ‘miss’ on purpose to save lives?

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Did Nagasaki bomber ‘miss’ on purpose to save lives?

 

On August 9, 1945, Captain Kermit Beahan, bombardier of the B-29 carrying the plutonium bomb “Fat Man,” was tasked with ending one of the cruellest wars in history. Yet the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki did not fall in the city’s heart. Instead, it detonated 2.18 miles north, in the suburb of Urakami, near tennis courts owned by Mitsubishi’s managing director and close to Japan’s largest Roman Catholic cathedral. The surrounding hills absorbed much of the blast, sparing countless lives. A direct hit on central Nagasaki could have claimed 100,000 lives, but six months later, the death toll stood at around 38,000.

 

 

Nagasaki had not been the intended target. The mission’s primary objective was Kokura, an industrial hub whose bombing was expected to cause an estimated 300,000 casualties. President Truman had ordered that the bomb must be dropped only if the target was visible. Weather planes reported clear skies over Kokura, but when Beahan reached his bomb sight, he refused to release the weapon. “Goddam to hell, no drop, no drop! I can’t see the goddam target!” he shouted over the intercom. Three times the B-29 made its run, and three times Beahan declined. With fuel running low and Japanese fighters approaching, the crew turned to the secondary target: Nagasaki.

 

 

Even then, debate erupted on board about abandoning Truman’s visual-only order and dropping by radar. In the end, Commander Frederick Ashworth agreed to a radar drop, but as the plane neared the city, Beahan spotted a break in the clouds over Urakami. “I’ve got it. Believe it or not, I’ve got it. The stadium. There’s a hole in the clouds, I can see a target,” he said, laughing. Moments later, he released Fat Man manually, due to a technical fault, and the bomb exploded far from Nagasaki’s most densely populated areas. “Holy mother of Jesus,” he murmured, followed by a quiet vow: “Never again. Never, ever again.” It was his 27th birthday.

 

 

 

The question has lingered for decades — did Beahan deliberately spare Kokura and intentionally shift the aim at Nagasaki? His son, Kermit Jr., insists his father followed orders: “Whatever Dad did, he did because a senior officer told him.” Yet evidence from weather archives and mission records casts doubt on claims of cloud cover at Kokura. President Truman, disturbed by the devastation in Hiroshima days earlier, may have used back channels to influence the mission, bypassing hardline commanders like General Curtis LeMay, who was angered by what he saw as Nagasaki’s “limited” destruction.

 

 

We may never know whether Beahan’s decision was an act of quiet defiance or the result of unseen orders. But one fact is certain — Kokura was spared, and by dropping short of central Nagasaki, Beahan’s actions, intentional or not, saved hundreds of thousands of lives while still ending the war’s final chapter.

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from Source The Times  2025-08-05