Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner, described what he saw: “The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside… It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city…” The cloud is estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet.

“The appearance of people was… well, they all had skin blackened by burns… They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn’t tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back… They held their arms bent [forward] like this… and their skin – not only on their hands, but on their faces and bodies too – hung down… If there had been only one or two such people… perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people… Many of them died along the road – I can still picture them in my mind — like walking ghosts..

CharonBoat.com – Showing Beyond: War -> WWII -> Victim of atomic bombing of Hiroshima