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Friday, September 12, 1947
DETROIT JEWISH CIIRONICLE
acute danger as the doomed tar-
the Marianas until "bomb away," get city drew near.
a weird, mysterious and terrify-
It was a clear summer morn-
ing danger flew with the men in ing, that morning of Aug. 6, in
the atom-bomb plane.
Japan.. The jagged coastline of
Never before had an aircraft Kyushu Island lay clearly out-
cleared the ground, prepared to lined far below. The green isle
attack with this newest of man's was criss-crossed by a pattern of
scientific super-weapons, and no rivers, dotted with brownish-
the platie gray spots that were cities.
atom-bomb planes. Lt. Richard one knew—the men In
didn't
know—what
might
happen
Any moment, out of the slight-
J. Podolsky of Amelia, O., was
along the line, ly hazy sky, the enemy's fighter
if,
somewhere
the group's electrical officer.
something went wrong.
• • •
planes might appear and come
In every man's mind 'hovered
ing in with glins wide open,
ON BOTH MISSIONS
the troubled thought of a pre-
SAID LT. JACOB BOSER of mature explosion. Every take: and any moment up.
the ground
And if
guns might open
Baltimore, the only Jewish officer
Page Four
'newish Fliers Helped Knock Jap Out
of War on Both Atom Bomb Missions
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Aug. 6 was two years since the
Air Force dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In the 20th
Air Force, as in every large and small outfit of the U.S. armed
forces, Jews were to be found up and down the ranks and
through all the commands. In this passage from Volume I of
AMERICAN JEWS IN WORLD WAR II, I. Kaufman, author
of the volume, points up the extent of Jewish participation in
who flew in both the Hiroshima
the epochal atomic assault which delivered the coup de grace
and Nagasaki bombing planes, in
a letter to Chaplain David I. Ce-
to the Japanese).
THEN THE TIME CAME to try for the knockout blow of Japan darbaum.
; with the new and terrifying and even to its makers unknown
"There were numerous Jewish
omic bomb, that duty was given as a matter of course to the GIs in the outfit. They contrib-
t
uted their utmost wherever they
20th Air Force.
It was given to the specially-selected personnel of the 509th were, as did every man in the
composite Group, each man picked for reliability and skill in the 509th."
Lt. Boser had been in charge
particular job assigned to him. inspector and flight test engineer. of the radar maintenance section
around crew men as well as Maj. Guy Geller of Lebanon, of the 393d Bomb Squadron dur-
t hose who went on the two his- Penn., was squadron adjutant. ing its training period. On the
toric flights of Aug. 6 and Aug. Lt. William Schiller of Brookline, Aug. 6 strike he was the radar
9, 1945 were on the atom bomb
counter-measure observer in the
mission. And among both, a due Mass., had the post of armament plane that carried the atom bomb
officer.
proportion of officers and en-
Capt. Bernard H. Budmen of
listed men were Jews.
j WV Speaker
There was Capt. Joseph Slusky Philadelphia, ammunition and
delivery
officer,
personally
super-
of Hartford, Conn., engineering
bilker of the group, technical vised delivery of the two atom
bombs and their loading on the
planes. Lt. Meyer Rothenberg of
Denver, was adjutant of the
Season's Greetings squadron which maintained the
* a
The Stockholm
off is an adventure which car-
ries with it a percentage, though
small, of possible misadventure.
If in this most perilous of take-
offs an accident should intervene
—if any one of a hundred possi-
ble accidents should cause a
crack-up at the start—would this
newest little gadget thought up
by the scientific mind of man go
off, and instantly disintegrate
plane and crew into atomic dust?
• • •
DANGER REMAINS
ALL PRECAUTIO...S had been
taken against a mis-step, either
at the takeoff or later. But the
possibility of sudden atomic
death for the crew remained
even after the plane had safely
taken to the air, and struck out
toward Japan. It became an
three B-29s, which seemed to be
bound on a reconnaissance mis-
sion, nothing worse.
Actually the air raid alarm
was sounded in Hiroshima that
morning, as it was sounded al-
(Continued on Page 11)
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(‘
this was a• mission that ran into
just about no trouble.
Accompanied only by two ob-
servation planes, the atom-bomb
plane was ignored by Japanese
fighter planes, as it drew near its
target city, and left alone by the
anti-aircraft gunners.
After the huge formations of
B-29's to which the Japanese had
been subjected, up to 800 in a
single day's raiding, two or three
lone planes in the sky were, no
doubt, dismissed, if they were
sighted at all, as carriers of noth
I ing more lethal than a camera for
taking pictures , of a previous
day's destruction.
• • •
MYSTERIOUS PERIL
THE ATOM PLANE moved in
over Hiroshima shortly after 9
a.m., as scheduled, and exactly
at 9:15 am., Japan time, as
scheduled, the bomb release was
pressed and "the bomb cleared
and fell toward the planned ob-
jective." Then the plane "headed
from the area."
On the return trip, too, there
was no interference from the
enemy, and no interference at all
except for a few moments of
wild rocking in the turbulent air,
moments of man-made storm set
off when an atom split 1,500 feet
above Hiroshima.
But throughout that history-
making flight from the takeoff in
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We extend to all our Jewish
/flew
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CHerry 4172
110
to Hiroshima. As it worked out,
100 E. Cicotte
from fighter plane or ack-ac k
gun one direct hit landed—
What Lt. Beser and the rest
of the crew did not know was
that the Japanese down below
were not bothering about the
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