The War Department then issued a number of press releases giving the history of the project, information about production facilities, and the biographies of key people. Upon hearing the news, Truman exclaimed, “This is the greatest thing in history!” He promptly announced to the world the existence of an atomic bomb that had been developed under the code name, “Manhattan Project.” Truman was aboard the cruiser Augusta, returning from a conference with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at Potsdam, Germany. Carl Spaatz, commander of the Strategic Air Force, who pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on his rumpled, sweat-stained flying suit. After returning to Tinian, Tibbets was greeted on the tarmac by Gen. It had been an exhausting 12-hour mission. More than 78,000 of the city’s total population of 348,000 were killed an estimated 51,000 were injured or missing. That single bomb, weighing 8,900 pounds, wiped out nearly five square miles of Hiroshima - 60 percent of the city. Operating from Tinian Island in the Marianas, then considered the largest air base in the world, he and his crew had made a picture-perfect 2,900-mile flight, and had dropped the uranium bomb called “Little Boy” squarely on target. Tibbets, then a colonel in charge of the 509th Composite Group, had honed his unit of 15 B-29 Superfortresses into one of the finest Air Force bombardment outfits ever assembled.
