Enola Gay by Gordon Thomas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is really one of the best WWII books I have ever read. In a very modern style, it tells the story from several points of view, cutting back and forth: Tibbet's crew and the 509th Composite Group, the submarine captain that will sink the Indianapolis after it delivers A-Bomb parts, Japanese soldiers and civilans in and around Hiroshima. This also goes into detail on things I only knew of briefly, such as the American POWs in Hiroshima and the (overblown) insanity developed later by an Enola Gay crewman. It really seems from this book Japan was definitely on the ropes at the time of the nuke attacks: A growing dove coalition, inability to mount an effective air defence, and the impending entry of Russia into the Pacific Theatre, along with growing awareness of the futility of the Japanese war effort. Also, in telling the engineering side of the story, nuclear bombs were definitely "in the air" and an unfortunate next step in military technology whether the United States developed them or not or needed them to either defeat Japan or send a message to Red Russia.
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