A Kick in the Pants
Indianapolis Star Sunday September 23, 1945
Indianapolis Flier Blown 7,000 Feet By Atomic Bomb
The atomic bomb blew one Indianapolis soldier 7,000 feet into the air. He is 1st Lt. William Glenn George, husband of Mrs. Lillian George 3822 Byram Avenue and father of Leslie Ann George, 20 months old.
Lt. George recently wrote to his parents Mr. and Mrs. Glenn George 2949 East 38th Street, formerly of Bedford, “Remember when they used the atomic bomb on Nagasaki? Well, I was leading our squadron that day on a low level attack on Nagasakai to precede the atomic bombing by three minutes, which isn’t much time to get out.”
“Over the target I got half my tail and one engine shot out, so I told my wingman to take the squadron and get out of there. I was struggling along about 200 feet of the ground trying slowly to nurse my shop to higher altitude, when the atomic bomb hit about two miles behind me.”
“The next thing I knew, I was going straight up and out of control. At around 7,000 feet I quit going up and started losing height. I luckily got it under control again at about 1,500 feet and crawled by to Okinawa which was 500 miles away.”
Pilot of an A-26 bomberfighter plane, Lt. George has completed 24 missions with the 319th Bomb Squadron. He is a former carrier of The Star in Bedford and attended Franklin College, enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force in November, 1941. He transferred to the Army Air Force in April, 1944 and went overseas in May 1945.
IHF NOTE I'm not usually one to contradict stories reported by veterans who were there. However, this case is different. This story, as interesting as it is, never happened. Ignoring for a moment the physics of what would have happened to a plane being in the immediate vicinity of an atomic blast like that, it's just simply not corroborated by the historical record.
The Nagasaki bomb was dropped on 9 Aug 1945. The 319th Bomb Group was nowhere near Nagasaki on that day. Mission #18, 9 Aug 1945 was to attack the Kanoya Airdrome Dispersal Areas. Kanoya is 110 miles to the southeast of Nagasaki. Now, pilots returning from this mission did report seeing the mushroom cloud.
From the 319th Bomb Group Monthly Summary for August, 1945: "Returning crewmen from the mission against Kanoya Airfield on the Ninth of August reported that they saw a brilliant flash and then a large dust cloud which rose to 35,000 feet while they were making their break from the target of Kanoya. The reported flash was observed to be approximately thirty miles North of Kanoya. It is presumed that the flash and smoke originated from Nagasaki where a B-29 from the XXth Air Force reportedly dropped an "Atom" bomb that morning."
Without a doubt, this pilot was nowhere near Nagasaki when the bomb was dropped. His unit was not ordered to attack Nagasaki to soften it up. Going back to the physics for a moment, a nuclear blast produces a shockwave that travels outward from the site. At 2 miles this shockwave would have been travelling several hundred miles per hour. For a plane only 200 feet off the ground it would have pushed them along, buffeted them around, and very like slammed the plane into the ground, assuming the blast didnt rip the plane apart. Theres nothing about the blast that would have caused it to go up from the altitude he reported. Nothing about this account should be considered factual or true in any way.