Following the successful test detonation in New Mexico, the first atomic bomb to be used in war devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, 80 years ago. Tragically, it took another, the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, to convince the Japanese to surrender, as Rich Lowry noted yesterday.

The London Spectator has run an interesting article  on the attitudes of the brave men who flew the mission to Hiroshima. The author, Iain MacGregor, begins with the conventional framing:

Eighty years on, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima continues to provoke fierce debate, reflection, and deep moral inquiry.

The first two items on MacGregor’s list are true enough.

There has been “fierce” debate, admittedly, given, above all, the influence of Soviet propaganda, not all of it well-intentioned, a tradition that endures. And to some degree, this debate has also been influenced by Japanese efforts to deflect some attention from their war crimes, not least the “Rape of Nanking” in 1937, in which as many as 300,000 may have been killed.

Nevertheless, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have indeed long prompted reflection, as they should, given their toll (MacGregor cites a figure of 150,000 deaths for Hiroshima alone, which probably is close to the total at the end of 1945, although, due not least to the effect of radiation, the final number was higher still), and the terrifying message they sent about our species’ ability to destroy itself. Whether the “moral inquiry” over the bombings has been particularly “deep” is a matter of opinion.

MacGregor then turns to his main topic, the attitudes of the crew of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the bomb. Its pilot and commander, Paul Tibbets, remained, writes MacGregor, “unapologetic to the end. You can only admire his message discipline, consistently defending the mission as necessary.”

That’s one way of putting it. Or perhaps Tibbets can be admired for being right too. MacGregor quotes him in 2002:

I viewed my mission as one to save lives. I didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. I didn’t start the war. But I was going to finish it.

Quite so.

And it seems that most of his crewmen agreed.

The cost in lives, both Allied and Japanese, of an invasion of Japan’s main islands would have been immense. What’s more, in all probability, half of defeated Japan would, thanks to the Soviets’ decision to enter the war against it at a conveniently late stage, have been run from Moscow with all the decades of suffering that would have entailed.

Moreover, the U.S. demonstration of the will to use atomic weapons played an essential part in deterring a third, even more catastrophic, world war and, hopefully, still will today.  That’s one reason why American willingness to stand behind NATO remains so vital and is, incidentally, the best, last chance, however remote, that the pace of nuclear proliferation can be limited.

It is also worth adding that the world was fortunate that the U.S. was the first to develop nuclear weapons, which were, sooner or later, on the way

The Germans were working on them for a while (the effort fizzled out) and the Japanese had two, albeit underfunded efforts. Would either Berlin or Tokyo have hesitated to use them if they had successfully developed them? Would the Soviets have held off using them to get their way, if they had eventually been first to the bomb in the event of an Allied victory in a timeline in which the Manhattan Project had failed. These are all questions that answer themselves.

And, as Rich notes:

Bequeathed with untold power by the new weapon, it is telling that we used the bomb to bring an end to a terrible war and didn’t use it to dominate Europe, or for other cynical purposes.

If accurate, recent polling (Pew) showing only a narrow plurality (35 percent to 31 percent) of Americans (33 percent were unsure) now think that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, reveal not the presence of “deep” moral inquiry or even reflection, but the opposite, and will give some encouragement to Putin and Xi.

A technology cannot be uninvented. Nuclear weapons are not going away. The key, as has been the case for decades, is to ensure that their terrible power only has to be used to deter war, not to fight it.