When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain Read Online Free PDF

550lb bomb.
    The warhead penetrated Bunker Hill ’s flight deck and exploded, setting fire to fuel. The flames spread to the refuelled planes on deck, which promptly exploded. Ogawa just had time to see the carnage he had caused before delivering his coup de grâce, crashing the plane into the ship’s burning control tower.
    There was utter devastation on board. The explosion killed many of Bunker Hill ’s pilots waiting inside the ‘ready room’, burning the oxygen and asphyxiating the men.
    Hamazono was also intent on hitting his target ship. But as he neared the American fleet, he noticed that a squadron of US fighters had been scrambled to meet him.
    There followed a dangerous thirty-five-minute dogfight, with Hamazono dodging the American bullets while at the same time trying to identify his target far below. ‘At the end of the dogfight, I could see them coming at me again from a long way off. I was certain that I would be killed in a matter of seconds. But as they got closer, they banked and flew off. I still can’t work out why they did that.’
    Hamazono was by now flying an aircraft riddled with holes. He also had severe cuts and burns to both his face and hands. As darkness was approaching, he decided to limp back to the Japanese mainland rather than press on with his attack. ‘I was burned all over and only had five of my teeth left.’ His mission was at an end.
    Hamazono was not selected for another kamikaze raid. The war was almost over and he had lost all desire to die inside his plane.
    For many years afterwards, he and the handful of other surviving kamikaze pilots had to live with the stigma of having survived a mission that ought to have claimed their lives.
    â€˜They used to tell us that the last words of the pilots were: “Long Live the Emperor!”’ says Hamazono. ‘But I am sure that was a lie. They cried out what I would have cried. They called for their mothers.’

 
    9
    Surviving Hiroshima and Nagasaki
    He was travelling across Hiroshima on a public tram when he heard the droning sound of an aircraft engine in the skies above.
    Tsutomu Yamaguchi thought nothing of it. After all, it was wartime and planes were forever passing above the city. He was unaware that the engines belonged to the US bomber Enola Gay , and that it was just seconds away from dropping a thirteen kiloton uranium atomic bomb on the city.
    As the plane approached its target at 8.15 a.m. on 6 August 1945, Yamaguchi had just stepped off the tram. He glanced at the sky and noticed a bomber passing overheard. He also saw two small parachutes. And then, quite without warning, all hell broke loose.
    â€˜[There was] a great flash in the sky and I was blown over.’ The massive nuclear warhead had exploded less than three kilometres from the spot where he was standing.
    The bomb was detonated at six hundred metres above Hiroshima. As Yamaguchi swung his gaze upwards, he saw a vast mushroom-shaped pillar of fire rising high into the sky. Seconds later, he passed out. The blast caused his eardrums to rupture and the flash of light left him temporarily blinded.
    The heat of the explosion was such that it left him with serious burns over the left side of his body. When he eventually regained consciousness, he crawled to a shelter and tried to make sense of what had happened. Fortunately, he stumbled across three colleagues, who had also survived. All were young engineers working for the shipbuilder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. They had been unlucky enough to be sent to Hiroshima on the very day of the bombing.
    They spent the night together in an air-raid shelter, nursing their burns and wounds. Then, on the following morning, they ventured out of their shelter and picked their way through the charred and molten ruins. As they went to the nearest functioning railway station they passed piles of burnt and dying bodies. Their aim was to catch one of the few working trains back