The Fat Man by Tom Fynes

 

Charlie Sweeney felt the controls of 'Bockscar twitching. The big silverplate B-29 was vibrating from the stress at flying at 30000 feet.

They’d stripped everything out they could. Armour plating, guns, it was totally defenceless. But it meant they were flying free, way above the Japanese air defences.

Fat Man, the $20 Billion bomb to end all wars, was safe for now, in the specially constructed bomb bay. And ready to be dropped on the designated target, the Japanese city of Kokura.

They’d tried three passes over the cloud covered Kokura, before switching to the secondary target, Nagasaki, which was about 34 minutes flying time away.

Takeuchi was working away in his Nagasaki factory, when he heard the drone of engines. He rushed out to see US bombers flying overhead. They didn’t seem to be dropping bombs. He assumed they were on a reconnaissance run. Then they suddenly turned and flew away.

Ground Zero for the Fat Man, just happened to be the largest Catholic Cathedral in Asia.

Upon detonation, Fat Man produced a firestorm that raised temperatures to 4,000 degrees Celsius. Which incinerated Takeuchi, along with 40,000 other souls, almost immediately.

Chief Petty Officer O’Sullivan was pissed off, stuck in Guadalcanal trying to fix a generator failure, that had shut down everything that was running on the factory barge. He'd heard the usual scuttlebutt, of a secret US weapon to end all wars. But never believed it.

Too much good living. Too little exercise. The rest of the crew had nicknamed Chief O’Sullivan, ‘The Fat Man.’ But never to his face.

He served aboard the $1 Million Ice Cream barge; the US Navy had borrowed from the Army. The barge was towed around the Pacific to provide ice cream to US sailors. The vessel could manufacture gallons of ice cream and had a storage capacity of thousands of gallons. They would then off load it to smaller barges, which would distribute ice cream, everywhere it was needed in the Pacific.

The Fat Man thoroughly believed, if the Japanese people learned of the existence of the floating Ice Cream factory. The war would end, as they would lose the will to fight.

The Fat Man was glad he wasn’t going to be part of the suicidal invasion of homeland Japan. He’d seen the aftermath of the crazy Jap Kamikaze attacks on the fleet.

He was up to his elbows in grease and spare parts, when the amazing news started coming through, the Japs had surrendered. The Pacific War was finally over. They all downed tools and went berserk with happiness. It was party time.

And suddenly it wasn’t Ice cream the crew or the rest of the sailors in Guadalcanal wanted. It was whiskey and beer. And they were being consumed by the crate load.

And while the Fat Man and the rest of the crew partied on that $1 million barge, forgotten about, ignored, now very neglected, the ice cream slowly melted.