Inspired by a thread I have going in GQ, but not appropriate for that forum. Years ago, I was watching Dr. Strangelove with a bunch of people. During one of the scenes on Major Kong’s plane, when they’re approaching the target one person said of the crew, “These men are awfully brave…I mean, they know they’re going to die.” Well, it was my first time seeing this film, and I was too tense to follow up on the comment, and I either forgot or never got the chance to ask for clarification.
So I’ll ask now: why were they doomed? Is it that it’s not possible to fly away from the radiation in time, or were they low on fuel, or what? Or was this person wrong, and they would have been able to land in Finland or someplace?
They were definitely low on fuel. The reason their flight was lost was because they’d diverted to another target due to fuel loss from the near-miss of nearly being shot down. They planned to hit it, and then ditch at “weathership”. (Where that was, I dunno–designated ditching area in the ocean, emergency airfield, something like that.)
Presumably, not just that flight crew but most people on Earth were screwed–except the political leaders, whoever was picked for mineshaft-duties, and the women who were attractive enough to be selected to be of a “highly…stimulating nature” in order to outbreed the enemy so as to avoid a Mineshaft Gap.
Well, yeah…there is that. :o Maybe that’s what she meant: everyone was going to die, but they were among the very few who knew it, and furthermore, were making it happen.
In the days before satellites, there were weather ships. Those were ships that made meteorological observations to aid in weather prediction. The bomber was going to ditch near one so that the crew could be rescued by the ship.
So, is any plane crew which drops the Bomb screwed? (I’m assuming that radiation expands outward in all directions at the same speed.) How did the crew of the * Enola Gay * escape being radiated? I remember from the film * Dawn’s Early Light * that the when the crew dropped the Bomb they spoke of needing to keep the “tail to the blast.”
Flying away from the radiation would mean that you would be in the area of the radiation for less time, for whatever that would be worth.
I believe that it was the shock wave Enola Gay turned quickly to avoid, so maybe that is what blowed them up.
There are three ways of reducing a radioactive dose: Minimize Exposure Time, Increase Distance and Increase Shielding. As carnivorousplant points out, getting out of the area quickly reduces the time of exposure, but it also puts more distance between the flight crew and the source.
Radiation operates by the inverse square law: double the distance from the source, and you cut the dose rate down 75%, triple it and you cut the rate down 88.889%.
Now, there are two sources of radioactive dose when a nuclear weapon is detonated: the energy released at the instant the bomb is detonated, and then the energy released by the decay of radioactive particles present in the fallout of the bomb. The intial blast is so short, that you can’t really minimize the time of exposure.
The fallout shouldn’t be as much of an issue, to the bomber, because initially, it’s being carried by the pressure waves and convection currents of the superheated air produced by the blast. If the bomber is caught up in either of those, they’re in for much more immediate problems then the slow radiation dose the fallout would give.
Yes, they were low on fuel and could probably not get to a nice airport in time. Bombers of that size don’t land nicely in farmers’ fields.
Yes, they were flying low, on purpose to avoid radar, so they would get maximum exposure to radiation, not to mention the blast from a megaton explosion.
If they jumped out in parachutes, they’d get burned to a crisp on the way down (it was a thermonuclear weapon, remember).
If somehow they made it out and lived, well, the rest of the world was destroyed by the Soviet “doomsday machine”. BUT, the crew had their condoms, amphetamines, nylons, rubles, dollars, gold…you figure out what happened to them. They’re probably there right now, hangin’ out with the Russkies drinkin’ Stoli, and makin’ babies.
I don’t know what happend to the rest of the crew, but James Earl Jones would later play the commander of “Looking Glass” in the 1990ish Countdown to Looking Glass, based on the novel Trinity’s Child.
Interesting movie, if you can get past the idiotic romantic subplot between Rebecca DeMornay’s and Powers Boothe’s characters.
Ok… Kong’s plane was flying only a few miles from the ground. It was low on feul and missing one or two engines. There was no hope in hell that plane could release the bomb and escape. The bomb was set to 0 altitude but that still wouldn’t have given them the time.
The Enola Gay and her sister plane dropped their payloads from quite a distance, and the detenation was also done from an altitude far greater than zero (that way the blast would affect a larger area) they had no problem dropping and escaping. Mind you the shockwaves did buffet the planes on their escape.
Not to mention that the WW2 bombs were firecrackers compared to the H-bombs the movie is based on. The shock waves and radiation blasts were minor enough to escape.
It’s a little amusing now to see photos of bombers in the Fifties with their bellies painted white to help reflect the light of exploding bombs away from the crew.