International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive
Menu
Gallery: The end of the war and the beginning of the nuclear age
Crew of Enola Gay
Nose of B-29 Enola Gay
Bockscar
Angiolino Filiputti’s impression of the atomic explosions
Interview with Frank Colenso.
Frank Colenso was posted to Hiroshima in 1946.
'We climbed up... an eight-storey building but all that was left was the concrete shell of it, you know, everything else was gone but when you got up there about, perhaps eight floors up and you looked across the city the roads had been cleared. Which showed the grid the patterns of the roads...'
Interview with Donald Briggs
Operation Grapple was the name of the British tests of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.
'Ours... was on June the 19th 1957 and the yield wasn’t quite as much as the scientists wanted but it was good enough and... the British government were then able to... say, Britain now... [has a] nuclear deterrent.'
The Vulcan was one of the RAF's V bombers that carried a nuclear weapon.
‘The heavy bombers did spectacularly well. The Vulcan, the Valiant and the Victor. They really were agile aircraft’. Interview with Brian Payne.
Interview with William Cooke
'Anyone with common sense can see... it’ll be done if they ever use the nuclear weapons. It only needs one to use them and I am afraid we shan’t be able to stop it... everyone will have to retaliate and it will be all over... As as long as the Politicians keep this in the back of their minds... it’s a good thing because I shouldn’t think anyone will be daft enough to let it go that far.
Gallery: The end of the war and the beginning of the nuclear age