To Colonel Paul Tibbetts falls the task of delivering the first atomic bomb. He takes off at 2.45 a.m., the bomb is dropped at 8.15 am.; the flight, in a heavily overladen aircraft, is difficult and the Colonel is led to the target by three B-29s acting as weather observers. The uranium 235 fission weapon is dropped from his aircraft, 'Enola Gay' (named after his mother!), on the city of Hiroshima, producing an explosion equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. From the resultant blast and the firestorm which quickly follows, more than half the city is laid waste. More than 80,000 people are killed outright and thousands more maimed and burned, and yet more unfortunates destined to suffer wretched illness in subsequent decades. The total effect is awesome, but does not match the devastation already visited upon Tokyo. It is the demonstration of the havoc and damage caused in an instant by a single bomb dropped by a single aircraft which is to have the telling impact.