Beschreibung:

Title: Handwritten manuscript by Harold Agnew, American physicist who flew as an observer on the Hiroshima bombing mission, relating the mission and events leading up to it Author: Agnew, Harold Place: No place Publisher: Date: No date Description: Autograph manuscript signed by Harold Agnew. Two pages, in ink, on two sheets of lined yellow notepad paper. Significant observations relating to the dropping of the first atomic bomb used in warfare, by a participant in the Manhattan Project, and later the third director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. During the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945, Agnew, along with Alvarez and Johnston, flew as a scientific observer in the The Great Artiste, piloted by Charles Sweeney, which tailed the Enola Gay as the instrumentation aircraft. His observations, in part, as related in this manuscript: "…From mid 1944 until the end of the war we developed a system to measure the amplitude and pulse duration of the airblast from a nuclear explosion. We used blast gauges which were derivatives of a gun target system which had been developed at Cal Tech. Our gauges were dropped from a B-29 on parachutes and we received their signals thru a telemetering system on recorders with film cameras recording the data displayed on cathode ray tubes…We were informed on the afternoon of 8/5/45 that we were to take off shortly after midnight on 8/6/45… We took off and flew side by side to Tibbets' plane the Enola Gay… We could see the Enola Gay all the way to our primary target, Hiroshima. As we approached the target we turned on our equipment. By a prearranged signal we released our gauges, from our bomb bay, when the Enola Gay released their bomb, the `Little Boy.' Less than a minute later our compartment lit up with a bright white flash and seconds later we were shaken by the blast and a second alter shaken again…” Lot Amendments Condition: Top margin of the first sheet trimmed off; else fine. Item number: 284912