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They were sharing dinner when a Navy officer asked Jeppson, “What did you do today?” he recounted in Time. “And that’s the point that it’s somber because you know a lot of people are getting destroyed down there in the city.”Īfter the 12-plus-hour flight, the plane returned to Tinian Island in the Pacific, where Jeppson was unexpectedly greeted by a good friend who was a Navy lieutenant. “People were looking down and seeing this enormous cloud coming up and the destruction spreading,” Jeppson told Time magazine in 2005. Once Jeppson felt the B-29 jerk up, he knew the bomb had been dropped. Tibbets Jr., that the bomb called “Little Boy” was set to go.
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He made his way to the cockpit and told the plane’s pilot, Col. “After that, they had to come inside the cabin because the bomb bay wasn’t pressurized.”Ī few hours later, Jeppson made a final visit to the bay to change out three green safety plugs - each “the size of a saltshaker,” he later said - for the red plugs that armed the bomb. “They did that very early in the mission, in the first half hour,” said Dick Daso, curator of Modern Military Aircraft at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Together they began arming the bomb with Jeppson acting as assistant, handing over tools.
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Jeppson, one of several men trained to arm the bomb, was a 23-year-old second lieutenant when he was chosen to climb into the bomb bay on a coin toss.