World Aviation in 1945 - Part 3

Part 2

6 August
Boeing B29 'Enola Gay' of the 509th Composite Group, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr, drops the world's first operational atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. The bomb is dropped at 0815hrs local time at a height of 1,900 feet and generates a yield equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT.

Of the 76,000 buildings in Hiroshima, 48,000 were destroyed and 22,000 damaged. The bomb destroyed 4.7 square miles of the city and over 80% of its buildings. Japanese estimates put casualties at 71,379 killed or missing and 68,023 wounded.

9 August
Lieutenant Robet H. Gray of the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) is killed attacking a Japanese destroyer. Attached to the Fleet Air Arm and flying a Corsair, he is posthumously awarded the last air force Victoria Cross to be won.

9 August
A second atomic bomb is dropped over Nagasaki from Major Charles W. Sweeney's Boeing B29 'Bock's Car'. The primary target is Kokura but weather over this city forces a diversion to the secondary target.

Due to the topography of Nagasaki with its hills and rivers, damage was far less than Hiroshima. However, 1.4 square miles of a built up area of 3.8 square miles was destroyed. Japanese estimates, which were comparatively low, put the casualties at 25,680 killed and 23,345 wounded.

14 August
754 Boeing B29s and 169 fighters are sent on the last wartime mission of the 20th United States Army Air Force (USAAF).

14-15 August
The unconditional surrender of Japan is announced.

15 August
Seven Japanese suicide aircraft make the last Kamikaze attack of the war.

15 August
Andrei G. Kochetkov, Head of NII-VVS Fighter Testsection, becomes the first Soviet pilot to fly a jet powered aircraft, a captured Messerschmitt Me262A, at Shcholkovo near Moscow.

19 August
Two Mitsubishi G4M 'Betty' transports carry the Japanese surrender delegation to Ie Shima.

21 August
All existing United States Lend-Lease contacts are cancelled.

September
A captured Focke Achgelis Fa223 'Drache' helicopter, flown by an ex-Luftwaffe crew, becomes the first helicopter to cross the English Channel.

2 September
Surrounded by the United States Pacific Fleet, the Japanese sign surrender documents aboard the battleship USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

10 September
USS Midway, the first of the United States Navy's 45,000 ton class carriers is commissioned at Newport News in Virginia.

6 November
Flying the mixed power plant Ryan FR1 Fireball, which has a conventional piston engine and a turbojet engine in the rear fuselage, Ensign J.C. West uses the jet engine only to make the world's first turbojet-powered landing on an aircraft carrier, the USS Wake Island.

29 November
The first air-sea rescue by helicopter takes place when seamen are rescued from an oil barge by a Sikorsky R5 at Long Island Sound.

4 December
The United Kingdom government agrees to supply military equipment to the French Air Force and Navy.

Part 2