It was all leading to one day that would help end years of bloodshed and change the world forever. Even years before that, development of this revolutionary cargo began in secrecy under the direction of a physicist and an Army general in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. and his crew had practiced dropping dummy concrete bombs on targets in Wendover, Utah. And months before that, pilot Paul Tibbets Jr. Preparations on the tiny Pacific island-about 1,500 miles southeast of the plane’s intended target in Japan-had begun months before on April 3. Hours before the sun would rise over Tinian island on the morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 airplane was positioned above a specially built bomb-loading pit, as crews readied the aircraft with cargo unlike anything the world had ever known.
