After our repairs were completed, we were supposed to go on our post-repair trial run. But instead, on July 15th, we were ordered to go to San Francisco to take on some cargo. I was amazed to notice that there was a quiet, almost dead Navy Yard. We tied up at the dock there and two big trucks came alongside. The big crate on one truck was put in the port hanger. The other truck had a bunch of men aboard, including two Army officers, CAPT [James F.] Nolan and MAJ [Robert R.] Furman. I found out later that Nolan was a medical officer. I don't know what his job was, probably to monitor radiation. The two men carried a canister, about 3 feet by 4 feet tall, up to ADM Spruance's cabin where they welded it to the deck. Later on, I found out that this held the nuclear ingredients for the bomb and the large box in the hanger contained the device for firing the bomb. And I had that thing welded to the deck above me for 10 days!
As we got under way on July 16th, CAPT McVay told his staff we were on a special mission. "I can't tell you what the mission is. I don't know myself but I've been told that every day we take off the trip is a day off the war." CAPT McVay told us his orders were that if we had an "abandon ship," what was in the admiral's cabin was to be placed in a boat before anybody else. We had all kinds of guesses as to what the cargo was.
After refueling at an eerily quiet Pearl Harbor, we made a straight run to Tinian at as much speed as they could economically go, about 25 or 26 knots. Everybody was at Condition Able which was 4 hours on and 4 hours off. It was like going into battle the whole way out. The trip from San Francisco to Tinian took a total of 10 days,
When we unloaded our special cargo at Tinian I noticed a couple of general Air Force officers handling these crates like they were a bunch of stevedores. I was even more sure we had something important.
We were then ordered to the Philippines for training exercises preparing for the invasion of Kyushu. CAPT McVay asked for an escort, but was told we didn't need one as it was supposedly safe to go to the Philippines. What he wasn't told was that there were Japanese submarines along the way and that Naval Intelligence knew it.
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