Discussion:
Lost Hiroshima A-Bomb Films
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S***@argo.rhein-neckar.de
2013-05-19 14:25:59 UTC
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There are no known films or stills of the immediate Bomb drop on Hiroshima.
Despite the camera airplane was in position and did his job. There is only
a short b/w film by Harold Agnew and some stills of the cloud minutes later.

We had this problem here before. It was suggested that the film was stored
uncooled and lost the exposure that way. But I now got told the Kodachrome
films the USAAF used was not sensitive to tropical temperature like later
color films. It was a very different process and the film before and after
rather stable like b/w material or technicolor.

There must be some report about this films. A French documentary recently
claimed the development process was botched and the films lost that way.
But there was besides color some special b/w cameras in use too. There
were effects only some b/w material could record and that was obligatory
since Trinity.

But this b/w films are unpublished too. Did the plane crash that had to
bring all for development in the US? What about deep sea salvage? If this
films got destroyed in a botched process there could still be a chance to
restore it by modern means. I wonder why no historian looked in this records
yet.


The films of the special camera airplane at Nagasaki are unpublished too.
Its well known that it failed to be in position at the drop. But it went
soon later to Nagasaki and filmed the burning city and the cloud. With its
large cameras that must be material of some historical value too.

Peter Kuran a few years ago did some research in Bomb test films. It was
very difficult to find films as there was no single record or depository.
For some even with the help of Los Alamos he only found poor copies. The
film by Agnew was not there but at the Hoover Institution. Kuran noted that
some Kodachrome got shrinked. Its seems really time that someone looks
after all of this material before its lost like the Apollo 11 Moon tapes.


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dumbstruck
2013-05-20 00:35:33 UTC
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The grandson of the pilot might know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tibbets#Later_life
That was more than a pilot, but an extraordinary air project manager...
who may have passed on records to his descendants. I was glad to see in
that article that he was furious at the irresponsible multiple foulups
the Nagasaki pilot made.
S***@argo.rhein-neckar.de
2013-05-22 14:02:20 UTC
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Just to add:
There were already some 70 mm movies around 1930. I expect a B-29 could
well hold such a large cine camera. Is somewhere a report about the
equipment in the camera airplane?


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