annaswirls
Pointy?
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2003
- Posts
- 7,204
I made several mistakes on my last poem. I am embarassed. I even found two more with a little research. I know it is not a big deal to make mistakes, but with such a weighty topic I feel responsible to get things right.
Here is the revision followed by some info I found. For the record.
Enola Gay’s out on display
safe behind rope and glass.
Inside cramped cockpit:
yellowed harness for holding heroes,
switches and knobs that click analog.
Back home, steady fingers
of sisters and lovers
paint night-flight control dials
with glowing green radium paint.
Soldiers made safe by
lipstick mouths pulling
bristles to a sharp saliva point
for precise painting of numbers
that would glow the boys back home.
Enola Gay, she did not require
green glow navigation.
Her black numbers were painted
on white dials, good enough for
a morning flight view.
Too high flying for anyone to see
her Little Boy bomb tucked in
safe under her swollen belly.
Fingers hesitate before
lifting the switch with the lethal click
heard only by men held tight
under white cotton harness
nine point eight
meters per second
squared
they
fell
Cities destroyed and
Halleluiah!
Boys are coming home!
greeted by sterile sisters and lovers
with pre-cancerous lipstick kisses.
~
Little Boy and Fat Man
Little Boy was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. It exploded approximately 1,800 feet over Hiroshima, Japan, on the morning of August 6, 1945, with a force equal to 13,000 tons of TNT. Immediate deaths were between 70,000 to 130,000.
Little Boy was dropped from a B-29 bomber piloted by U.S. Army Air Force Col. Paul W. Tibbets. Tibbets had named the plane Enola Gay after his mother the night before the atomic attack.
Fat Man was the second nuclear weapon used in warfare. Dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, Fat Man devastated more than two square miles of the city and caused approximately 45,000 immediate deaths.
Major Charles W. Sweeney piloted the B-29, #77 that dropped Fat Man. After the nuclear mission, #77 was christened Bockscar after its regular Command Pilot, Fred Bock.
While Little Boy was a uranium gun-type device, Fat Man was a more complicated and powerful plutonium implosion weapon that exploded with a force equal to 20 kilotons of TNT.
..............
~
The paint is composed of radium, zinc sulfide and a glue binder. The zinc sulfide emits light when struck by the radioactive particles. It glows all night and exposure to light is not necessary.
Radium dial painting began in 1917 but it was deadly for the dialpainters.
Young women ranging in age from the mid teens to the early 20's were employed to apply the paint to clock dials and other products for several different companies. The dialpainters were typically single and lived with their parents. Dialpainting was easy work with comparatively high wages. Over the first 10 years about 2000 women were employed in this work, mostly in three locations: Orange, NJ, Waterbury, CT and Ottawa, IL.
Workers were required to use lippointing to bring the paintbrushes to a point between the lips. This practice was passed on to the radium painting industry that also needed fine work. The majority of dialpainting was for wristwatches. The watch at the right was made in the late 1920's by Illinois Watch, Springfield, Illinois. The painting is done exceptionally well.
This radium dial was probably painted by a dialpainter that later may have suffered and/or died as a result of having painted the numbers and hands on this and other watch dials. By the 1920's and 1930's some dialpainters and former dialpainters began to suffer from a variety of illnesses, often crippling and frequently fatal as a result of ingesting the radium paint. Ingested radium is known to deposit permanently in bone structures. Radiation can then damage bone marrow, causing anemia. It can also weaken the bones so they might crush or snap under normal pressure. It can weaken bone tissue making it easy to get infection such as the jawbones that have dental work or gum disease. It can cause other forms of cancer in the sinus and mastoids.
Here is the revision followed by some info I found. For the record.
Enola Gay’s out on display
safe behind rope and glass.
Inside cramped cockpit:
yellowed harness for holding heroes,
switches and knobs that click analog.
Back home, steady fingers
of sisters and lovers
paint night-flight control dials
with glowing green radium paint.
Soldiers made safe by
lipstick mouths pulling
bristles to a sharp saliva point
for precise painting of numbers
that would glow the boys back home.
Enola Gay, she did not require
green glow navigation.
Her black numbers were painted
on white dials, good enough for
a morning flight view.
Too high flying for anyone to see
her Little Boy bomb tucked in
safe under her swollen belly.
Fingers hesitate before
lifting the switch with the lethal click
heard only by men held tight
under white cotton harness
nine point eight
meters per second
squared
they
fell
Cities destroyed and
Halleluiah!
Boys are coming home!
greeted by sterile sisters and lovers
with pre-cancerous lipstick kisses.
~
Little Boy and Fat Man
Little Boy was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. It exploded approximately 1,800 feet over Hiroshima, Japan, on the morning of August 6, 1945, with a force equal to 13,000 tons of TNT. Immediate deaths were between 70,000 to 130,000.
Little Boy was dropped from a B-29 bomber piloted by U.S. Army Air Force Col. Paul W. Tibbets. Tibbets had named the plane Enola Gay after his mother the night before the atomic attack.
Fat Man was the second nuclear weapon used in warfare. Dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, Fat Man devastated more than two square miles of the city and caused approximately 45,000 immediate deaths.
Major Charles W. Sweeney piloted the B-29, #77 that dropped Fat Man. After the nuclear mission, #77 was christened Bockscar after its regular Command Pilot, Fred Bock.
While Little Boy was a uranium gun-type device, Fat Man was a more complicated and powerful plutonium implosion weapon that exploded with a force equal to 20 kilotons of TNT.
..............
~
The paint is composed of radium, zinc sulfide and a glue binder. The zinc sulfide emits light when struck by the radioactive particles. It glows all night and exposure to light is not necessary.
Radium dial painting began in 1917 but it was deadly for the dialpainters.
Young women ranging in age from the mid teens to the early 20's were employed to apply the paint to clock dials and other products for several different companies. The dialpainters were typically single and lived with their parents. Dialpainting was easy work with comparatively high wages. Over the first 10 years about 2000 women were employed in this work, mostly in three locations: Orange, NJ, Waterbury, CT and Ottawa, IL.
Workers were required to use lippointing to bring the paintbrushes to a point between the lips. This practice was passed on to the radium painting industry that also needed fine work. The majority of dialpainting was for wristwatches. The watch at the right was made in the late 1920's by Illinois Watch, Springfield, Illinois. The painting is done exceptionally well.
This radium dial was probably painted by a dialpainter that later may have suffered and/or died as a result of having painted the numbers and hands on this and other watch dials. By the 1920's and 1930's some dialpainters and former dialpainters began to suffer from a variety of illnesses, often crippling and frequently fatal as a result of ingesting the radium paint. Ingested radium is known to deposit permanently in bone structures. Radiation can then damage bone marrow, causing anemia. It can also weaken the bones so they might crush or snap under normal pressure. It can weaken bone tissue making it easy to get infection such as the jawbones that have dental work or gum disease. It can cause other forms of cancer in the sinus and mastoids.
