Haunting Unedited Footage of the Bombing of Nagasaki (1945)

Mak­ing the rounds on the web today is a silent film show­ing “the final prepa­ra­tion and load­ing of the ‘Fat Man’ bomb into ‘Bockscar,’ ” the plane that would drop a dev­as­tat­ing bomb on Nagasa­ki on August 9, 1945. The footage from the Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry is raw, except for the help­ful anno­ta­tions added by Alex Weller­stein, who runs Nuclear Secre­cy: The Restrict­ed Data Blog. Even­tu­al­ly, toward the 8 minute mark, the video shows “the Nagasa­ki explo­sion from the win­dow of an obser­va­tion plane.”  What you don’t see is the calami­tous out­come. To get a feel for the destruc­tion, you can see our pre­vi­ous post, Rare Col­or Footage of the Hiroshi­ma After­math. (Obvi­ous­ly Hiroshi­ma is the oth­er Japan­ese city that expe­ri­enced the ruinous effects of the nuclear bomb.) Also we have 360 Degree Images of Hiroshi­ma After the Bomb­ing. 

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Bomb­ing Remem­bered with Google Earth

67 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es