The Bombing of Nagasaki, Part One
On August 9, 1945, Charles Levy captured an iconic photo with his own camera because the official cameraman forgot his parachute.
In the early morning of August 9, 1945, American physicist Robert Serber was on board the Big Stink waiting for takeoff. The Big Stink was the camera plane on the mission to bomb Nagasaki: its sole purpose to document the attack. The pilot, Major James Hopkins, called for a parachute check — they were one short.
“I didn't know the drill, and the supply sergeant probably had neglected to give me one when he gave me a lot of other junk,” Serber wrote in his 1998 memoir, Peace and War. “The pilot ordered me put off the plane. That was truly idiotic: he forgot that he wasn't on a joy ride, the plane was supposed to have a mission. The mission was to take pictures, and I was the only one aboard who knew how to run the camera.”
The aptly-named Big Stink took off without Serber, leaving him at the end of the runway in the darkness.
Thankfully for Maj. Hopkins, a bombardier aboard The Great Artiste, Charles Levy, brought along his personal camera (a 4x5 field camera, p…