Nuclear Attack

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by Bellumsaur

Gallery

Prepare for nuclear attack
Dropped from Enola, a city erased, threat of the future displayed
A power unheard of, a power unseen
Flash out of nowhere, the sky is burning

At 8:16 AM, Tokyo control realized something was wrong
Reports of explosions, destruction and pain
Air raid from hell, city gone in a blaze

August in black, B-29's turning back

Prepare for nuclear attack
Warned but did not heed
Prepare for nuclear attack
Extermination
Strike back
Chose not to believe
Another nuclear attack

It is the summer of 1945 and while the ComIntern was now utterly defeated, the fight against Japan was still proving to be an incredibly difficult affair. The Japanese and their assorted allies had dug deep into the territory they controlled after two years of continuous conquest and the battle to retake it was exhausting the limited resources the Allied nations had available. Even after the conclusion of conflict in Europe and North America freed up resources and sarpower, much headache was still to be had, thanks in no small part to the multi-language nature of the allied states (as well as their differing agendas on how to conduct the war and what to do with Japan should they be victorious). Despite there being little hope of victory anywhere in sight, the US government believed that they still had an Ace up their sleeve; the secretive Manhattan Project, having been underway for five years, had finally brought fruition with there being enough Uranium to manufacture an atomic bomb. While the Germans had beaten the Americans in their Uranverein, their failure to nuke the city of Chelyabinsk on April 15 was a major setback and had revealed the project to the wider world; the American government was confident they wouldn't make a similar mistake and so, it was on July 16 that a Plutonium bomb was successfully detonated in the barren wastes of northern Jefferson State. Two other bombs were successfully supplied to Böing B-29 bombers stationed at Xinjin Airport near Chengtu in Sichuan Province from the 393rd Bombardment Squadron, Heavy of the 509th Composite Group, whose crews had been specifically trained for their mission and placed under great secrecy.

On the morning of August 6, the B-29 'Enola Gay', piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets and Captain Robert A. Lewis, took off from Xinjin and made the long trek towards Japan, with the intended target of Hiroshima; the city had been chosen because it was important military and industrial site, being home of the Japanese 5th Division, an important site for the Western Army, as well as a vital logistics and communication center for the Japanese forces. Enola Gay, carrying the uranium bomb named Little Boy, was accompanied by two other bombers, them being The Great Artiste and a then-unnamed aircraft (which would latter be renamed to Necessary Evil), the former carrying instrumentation and the latter bearing photography equipment for documenting the bombing. That morning, the weather over Hiroshima was declared clear and Tibbets began his bombing run at 08:09, Captain William S. Parsons, the weaponeer and mission commander, having armed the bomb while in flight. The weapon release went as planned, at 08:15, and the plane managed to get ten miles away before they felt the shockwave from the detonation; the bomb had missed its original target, Aioi Bridge, and instead detonated over Shima Surgical. An estimated 70,000-80,000 people were killed in the explosion and subsequent firestorm, around 30% of Hiroshima's population at the time, with another 70,000 wounded while 20,000 military personnel perished. Twelve American airsars held as prisoners at Chugoku Military Police Headquarters died, most from the explosion but two were reportedly killed afterwards by their captors and another two were left at the bridge to be stoned to death by angry townspeople.

The Tokyo control operator of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation was surprised by how the Hiroshima station had suddenly gone off the air and tried repeatedly to re-establish contact. The Tokyo railway station realized that the main telegraph line had stopped working just north of Hiroshima and scattered reports from stops north of the city claimed that the city had suffered a terrible explosion. The General Staff, receiving these reports and both concerned and confused by their own loss of contact with Hiroshima led to a young staff officer to be flown over to survey and report what had befallen the city. When he arrived in the area, the officer noted the huge firestorm that had consumed the city, reported his findings back to Tokyo, and then took part in relief efforts upon landing at an airport to the southeast.

The following day, August 7, President Thomas Dewey gave a public speech to the nation regarding the bombing of Hiroshima, declaring that it was the demonstration of a new type of bomb, one which the Germans had accidentally revealed to the world with the destruction of the village of Tarkhanovo four months earlier. He also stated that "we may be grateful to Providence that the ComIntern's atomic programs had failed" and that, "with no end in sight for the war", there shall be further uses of this new weapon in order to destroy Japan's capabilities and save thousands of Allied lives. On the 9th, with weather considered clear enough, a second flight was launched with the B-29 'Bockscar' taking off from Xinjin and dropping a Plutonium bomb, Fat Sar, over Nagasaki on the south end of Kyushu island; due to the mountainous local terrain, the detonation resulted in less extensive damage than in Hiroshima. Still, some 30,000-40,000 people were killed after the bomb detonated at 11:02 local time, with an additional 30,000 eventually succumbing to leukemia and other factors related to the bombing.

The bombings shocked Japan, by the mere prospect of an entire city being wiped out by the detonation of a single bomb; yet it hardened their resolve to maintain the war effort, keeping up the fight against the barbarous Gaijin who would lay waste to much of their beloved homeland. The bombings indeed seemed to have had the opposite effect of their intentions, as they proved incredibly divisive in many Allied countries, even the American public found their resolve wavering. Despite their eagerness to avenge Pearl Harbor, they had been horrified by seeing news footage of the devastation the war wreaked on Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Mexico City, Strassburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Konigsberg, Novosibirsk, Aachen, Caerfydd, Roazhon, Rotterdam, and Antwerp and saw little point in continuing the war against Japan when there seemed to be no end in sight to the fighting in the Pacific. President Dewey himself was reluctant at the prospect of continuing the fighting, having a change of heart after the bombing of Nagasaki and seeing how divided the American public had become on the drawn-out slugfest against Japan. This, combined with the general exhaustion many of the Allied Nations were feeling, still reeling from the devastation of fighting a global conflict against Communard France and Soviet Russia, was what led to the signing of the Treaty of Honolulu in the Fall of that year, finally bringing an end to six years of continuous warfare.

The two cities were rebuilt over the following decade, with the ruined concrete industrial exhibition building at Hiroshima designated as a War Memorial by the militarist regime with the memory of the atomic bombings ingrained in the minds of a new generation of generals and admirals, who were eager to renew hostilities with the Western Powers. Among them being one Kobyashi Teruya, an Army intelligence officer who was originally from Hiroshima and was stationed in Burma when he received word of the city's destruction; his father and several siblings were killed in the explosion and ensuing firestorm, while his mother succumbed several years afterwards and the rest of his siblings who had been in the city remained in ill health. As Prime Minister in the late winter of 1966, he saw the seizure of the Californian spy ship Zion as the opportunity Japan needed to start a new war against the Western Powers, a war that would ultimately prove to be the Empire's final downfall as an independent power.

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Uploading artwork originally made back in 2019, as a way of timing with both the recent release of the Nolan film Oppenheimer and the coming anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in August. Inspired by the Sabaton song, I had wanted to draw something like this in 2018 and I believe 2017 as well but never got around to it, either due to other ideas taking priority or simply lack of creative energy. Well, finally I have gotten around to the idea, depicting Enola Gay flying away from the mushroom cloud enveloping Hiroshima as the crew take in the sheer horror of the weapon they had unleashed. Thankfully, this was fairly quick to draw as the most trouble I had was getting the cockpit canopy right and most else was pretty dead simple stuff.

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