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

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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


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Comments (8)
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  • Genius says:

    Wow!..great footage.
    thank you for shar­ing
    PS: it’s incred­i­ble he pow­er of destruc­tion of this bomb!

  • KT says:

    His­to­ry should final­ly do some jus­tice and record this act of extreme bru­tal­i­ty as a crime against human­i­ty.

    • Rob Sash says:

      Wrong…this saved thou­sands of Amer­i­can lives that would have oth­er­wise been lost via a ground inva­sion.

  • Jerry says:

    And to think that it’s just a frac­tion of the pow­er of a hydro­gen bomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjnm3V0xYjI

  • Ken says:

    I agree with KT, this was a crime against human­i­ty.

  • Hanoch says:

    I am curi­ous as to why KT and Ken describe the bomb­ing as a “crime against human­i­ty”. The drop­ping of the bombs end­ed the war with Japan at a frac­tion of the lives lost com­pared to the alter­na­tive of a ground inva­sion.

  • Penmankin says:

    No, Dave. Rob may have rhetor­i­cal­ly used the term ‘thou­sands’. But an inva­sion of the Japan­ese home­land would have cost mil­lions of Japan­ese lives; mil­i­tary and espe­cial­ly civil­ian. On Oki­nawa mass­es of civil­ians jumped to their death off cliffs to avoid cap­ture. Rob was cor­rect. There are per­haps mil­lions of Japan­ese alive today because their emper­or bore the heavy bur­den of sur­ren­der rather than fur­ther atom­ic mobs.

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