On the Lufthansa Airlines cover displayed with this column, Jacob Beser has handwritten a complete and definitive statement of his role in America’s nuclear action against Japan that ended World War II: “Jacob Beser, former 1st Lt. USAF, crew of Enola Gay 6 July 45 (Hiroshima), crew of Bock’s Car 9 Aug 45 (Nagasaki).”
Beser (1921-1992) was the only crewman to have flown on both atomic bombing missions over Japan that effectively ended the war and brought the world into the nuclear age. (There was a third bomb and that Beser was scheduled to fly a planned third mission over Nihama, but the operation became unnecessary when Japan surrendered.)
He served as the radar specialist aboard both the Enola Gay, when it dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and aboard Bock’s Car, when “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. The 24-year-old radar specialist, who had designed the “proximity fuse” (a critical trigger component for the bombs), was tasked with ensuring that the A-bombs exploded at an altitude that would create the greatest destruction (which, at Hiroshima, was 1,850 feet). He was also charged with broad responsibility for electronic counter-measures that would protect the bombs against the possibility that a radio broadcast could accidentally trigger the electronic fuses.
Though his grandparents had emigrated from Germany almost a century earlier – his grandfather fought with the Union army during the Civil War and his father fought against his own Jewish cousins while serving with the American Expeditionary force against the Germans in World War I – Beser still had close relatives in Germany and France who were victimized by the Nazis. When the British entered World War II, he wanted to join the Royal Air Force to “kill some Nazis” but respected his parents’ wishes that he remain at Johns Hopkins University to complete his mechanical engineering degree. However, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he overcame parental opposition and dropped out to out to enlist in the U.S. Air Force.
Beser became one of the service’s highest-rated radar officers at a time when radar technology was new and growing in importance and, because of his training and educational background, he was sent to Los Alamos, where he worked on the Manhattan Project with Bohr and Fermi in the area of weapons firing and fusing. Ironically, shortly before being assigned to his historic mission, he had requested a transfer to a combat unit to avenge his relatives in Europe.
Even 70 years later, when many have become somewhat inured, maybe even a bit complacent, about the idea of atomic warfare it is spine-tingling to read Beser’s description of his experience at Hiroshima the moment the bomb dropped:
I wasn’t watching the radar screen. I had my own instrumentation I was concerned with. I saw the fuse come on after the bomb separated from the aircraft, fixed time delay of about 10 seconds, give it time to clear. I saw the fuse come on to get the whole thing rolling and then the thing disappeared. At the same time it disappeared there was this big flash which illuminated the inside of the airplane. I was busy analyzing the environment making sure there was nothing [unplanned] happening. I was looking for the presence of signals…. When I got to the window two, three minutes later, the cloud was already up there, the mushroom that you see. It was still boiling and changing colors and I looked out and couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like – you get down here at Ocean City and you get about two feet out in the water and you start stirring up the sand and how it billows? Well, it was like the whole…ground was doing it. And I could see new fires breaking on the periphery all the time.
