June 7, 1945, Kronstadt Port.

The destroyer "Leningrad" of the Soviet Navy, which had just recovered from the scars left by the Chinese tactical attack aircraft "Spitfire", returned to the port of Kronstadt. The new Captain Vladimirov, while familiarizing himself with his warship, was recruiting manpower everywhere: the Leningrad and seven other destroyers had already received orders to participate in the German Navy's operations on the US mainland.

The first task force includes eight squadrons, of which the seventh squadron is a surface patrol squadron composed of eight destroyers including the "Leningrad" and others, which undertakes support tasks. For this reason, the destroyer has some privileges, and can get all the personnel, supplies, equipment, etc. that can be imagined.

However, at this time, there were not many qualified sailors in Kronstadt for the captains to choose from, and Captain Vladimirov was busy for a while and did not recruit enough men. As a last resort, "Leningrad" requested to return to the shores of the USSR, where personnel replenishment was carried out.

The request of the "Leningrad" was granted, and Captain Vladimirov returned to the harbor. A month later, there were finally enough people for all positions on the ship. However, these improvised cobbled together sailors were more soldiers, more talkative, and less hands-on. According to the standard wartime establishment, only one non-commissioned officer was needed to command each engine room of the destroyer, but the "Leningrad" got eight at once, all of which were stuffed into the front and rear engine rooms. Now it's okay, everyone is giving orders, and although the few soldiers are busy, the engines are still out of breath, and the normal navigation of the warship is a problem.

"What a nuisance!" Captain Vladimirov scratched his head.

He gathered eight non-commissioned officers and said, "Which of you is the oldest!" The 8 generals looked left and right, and after watching others look at themselves, they finally elected two "leaders". Vladimirov pointed to the two people who had been elected by the crowd: "You two, one is in charge of the bow engine room, and the other is in charge of the stern engine room!" Others, forget about your ranks! Take off your hat, unbutton it, and get to work! ”

Everyone was speechless, and followed the new leader into their respective cabins, and the engine finally ran normally.

However, there is still a lot to do before the operation, and the 8 destroyers are like 8 hard-working mules, doing all kinds of chores without a head or a brain.

Early in the morning, the signal corps of the "Leningrad" was busy debugging the ship's broadcasting system. This system is connected to a wireless communication system, which has been tuned to the bomber call frequency and can listen to the pilot's calls to ground controllers.

"Look! Captain! What's over there?! ”

Vladimirov turned his head and saw a huge mushroom cloud rising from the horizon, and almost at the same time, a faint, slightly muffled "poof" sound came into his ears from a distance.

"Oh God! What is that? Vladimirov cried out in horror.

At this time, at the site of the explosion, a powerful impact instantly flattened a battleship "Soviet" parked below the explosion point. The explosion created a fireball that reached a temperature of 100,000 degrees Fahrenheit, carrying dust and water vapor into the air. In just 60 seconds, the top of the mushroom cloud formed by the explosion had reached an altitude of 40,000 feet, and the cloud cover was 2 miles wide in diameter.

On June 10, 1945, China's first atomic bomb, the Qinglong, exploded at 9:20:12 Leningrad time, 43 seconds after it dropped from the Chinese Air Force's "Hongyan" strategic bomber "Cedar", and exploded at an altitude of 520 meters above the iron bridge about 150 meters southeast of the iron bridge at the military port of Kronstadt, the Soviet Union, with an explosive yield equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT.

In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union engaged in increasing international adventures, while Kronstadt received further military and industrial inputs. A Chinese study in the autumn of 1945 noted that "Kronstadt had become a city of considerable military importance. The headquarters of the Second Soviet Army was established in Kronstadt and commanded all the defense of the western part of the Soviet Union. The city was a center of communications, a storage point for supplies, and a staging place for the army. "Since the beginning of the war, the citizens of Kronstadt have probably sent their troops out of the port more than a thousand times to the shouts of 'Ula'," a Soviet report said. "In 1945, when Moscow was in danger, the General Staff of the Soviet Army prepared to direct the defense of Leningrad from Kronstadt against the approaching Chinese army.

In the early days of the war, the city's population was close to 300,000, and on June 10 the permanent population was about 2,880,000 to 290,000 civilians plus about 54,000 soldiers.

"It's early, the morning is still warm and nice," said a Kronstadt physician named Zakajvov, director of the Kronstadt Communication Hospital, who begins his account of the events of June 6 caused by the "Blue Dragon": "As the dawn passed, the cloudless sky reflected the sunlight, a comfortable contrast to the shadows in my garden. ”

"As I looked up at the sky," recalls Valeria, a 5-year-old girl who lived in a safe home on the outskirts of the city, "there was a flash of white light, and the green of the plants looked like the color of dead leaves." ”

The closer you get, the more intense this light becomes. Katya, a female college student who was helping to clear the fire escape, recalled: "Our teacher said, 'Ah, there's a bomber!'" This made us look up at the sky, and as soon as the words fell, we felt a great burst of lightning. We went blind immediately, and then everything went like insane madness. ”

At the same moment, the bird was set on fire in mid-air. Mosquitoes, flies, squirrels and domestic pets all burst to death. A huge image of the city was reflected in the flickering fireball, and in that instant, the minerals, plants, and animals on the surface of the city itself were destroyed.

This is the convergence of the world of death and the world of life.

The world of death is a place different from the world of life, and it is almost impossible to visit there. On that day in Kronstadt, the two worlds almost came together. "There was a terrible silence there, and it made one feel that all the people, the trees, and the vegetation were dead." Zakha Ivov, who survived, recalled.

The heat did not burn the people who were protected by the building in the building, however, the shock wave did not let them go.

When the explosion began, a boy was looking up the river from a room by the river, and at the very moment when the house collapsed, he was blown from this end room across the road on the embankment and down to the street below the roadbed. In the process, he was blown through two windows in the house, and his body was covered with all the glass that could pierce him. That's why he's covered in blood like that.

The shock wave traveled outward from the center of the explosion at a speed of 3.2 kilometers per second and quickly rose hundreds of meters per second before slowing down to the speed of sound at 335 meters per second, forming a huge cloud of smoke and soot. "My body looks black," says a physicist in Kronstadt, "and everything seems to be black, and everywhere is dark...... I thought, 'The end of the world has come.'" Writer Holguin felt the same fear: "I'm wondering why our environment has changed so much in a moment...... I think it's probably something that has nothing to do with war, like the collapse of the earth, and some people say that this will happen when the end of the world comes. ”

A grocer fled into the street: "What are the faces of the people...... Alas, they all had dark skins from burns...... They don't have any hair because their hair is burned off, and at a glance, you can't tell if you're looking at their front or their back...... They will put their arms around (on their chests...... Their skin, not only on their hands, but also on their faces and bodies, hung down...... If there are only one or two such people...... Maybe I wouldn't have such a strong impression. However, I have met such people wherever I go...... Many of them died in the streets—I can still remember their images in my head—like walking ghosts...... They don't look like people of this world...... The way they walk is very special – very slow...... I myself am one of them. ”

The peeling skin that hung from the faces and torsos of the severely injured survivors was caused by the blisters that were instantly burned by the heat flash, and then flayed off by the shockwave.

A boy who was in fifth grade at the time recounted: "The flames that burned everywhere in the collapsed house seemed to illuminate the darkness. A child let out a groan of pain, his burned face swollen like a balloon, spasming as he wandered through the fire. The skin on the face and body of one of the commissars peeled off like potato skins, and as he fled with staggering steps, his mouth muttered silent prayers. Another man pressed his hands against the bleeding wound and scurried quickly, calling out the names of his wife and children as if he had gone mad—ah, my hair stood on end whenever I remembered it. This is the true face of war. ”

The heat flickered, and the shockwave ignited the fire, which quickly turned into a fire, from which those who were able to move around escaped, and those who were broken or crushed under the house could not.

A 5-year-old girl said: "The whole port is ...... in burning. Smoke was billowing and we could hear the sound of huge objects exploding...... Those horrible streets. The fire is burning. There was a strange smell everywhere. Blue-green fireballs fluttered around. I felt a terrible sense of loneliness, as if everyone else in this world was dead and only I was alive. ”

Another girl of the same age said: "I shudder when I think of June 10, 1945, when the atomic bomb engulfed the entire city of Kronstadt in a minute or two...... We're all on the run. On the way, I saw a soldier floating on the river with a swollen belly. He must have tried in desperation to escape by jumping into the river from the fire. Farther away, the dead lined up in a long line. A little farther away, there was a woman who was crushed by a large log in her leg and fell to the ground, so she could not escape. ”

"When my father saw this, he cried out, 'Come and help her!' ”

However, no one came to help, and they all wanted to save their lives. The fearlessness of the revolution has completely disappeared. ”

"The father finally got angry and shouted: 'You are still not Bolsheviks?' He grabbed a rusty saw, sawed off her legs, and rescued her. A little farther away, we saw a blackened man in a walking position. ”

A girl who was in the first grade at the time had her mother crushed under their collapsed house: "I decided that I had to run away with my mother. However, the flames kept spreading, my clothes were already on fire, and I couldn't hold on any longer. I screamed, 'Mommy, Mommy! I ran frantically to the middle of the fire. No matter how far I walked, there was a sea of fire around me, and there was no way to escape. So, I jumped into our (civil defense system) sink next to me. Sparks were falling everywhere, and I put a piece of iron on my head to keep the fire out. The water in the sink is heated, just like in a bath. There were four or five other people around me, and they were all calling someone's name. When I was immersed in the sink, everything became like a dream, and at some point, I lost consciousness...... Five days later, (I learned) just after I left, my mom finally died. ”

"A city tram was completely burned out, leaving only its frame, and all the passengers inside were burned to charcoal. When I saw this, I felt chills all over my body and began to shiver. ”

"I feel that all the human beings on Earth have been wiped out, and only the five of us (that is, members of his family) are left in this bizarre world of death...... I saw some people rushing headlong into the half-broken sink to drink...... As I looked very close into the sink, I exclaimed, "Ah! Instinctively retreated. I saw monster faces reflected in the blood-stained water in the sink. They lay on the edge of the sink and bowed their heads to drink, and then they died in this position. I could tell from their burnt rags that they were high school girls, that they didn't have a single hair on their heads, and that their burnt facial skin was stained bright red with blood. I can't believe these are human faces. ”

Kronstadt was all in ruins. Holguin's account confirms the extent of the destruction: "The bright day now reveals the terrible sight hidden by the night of the previous night. Where the city once stood, there are now ashes and ruins as far as the eye can see. Only a few of the frames of the buildings that were completely burned down remain in place. The river was lined with dead and wounded bodies, and dead bodies were floating everywhere on the rising water. In the wide streets of the city, there are countless **, burned dead bodies. Among them, there were the wounded who were still alive. Several people crawled under burned-out cars and trams. The horrific victims beckoned to us and then fell. ”

"The streets are nothing but dead bodies and rubble. Some of the corpses still walked intact, as if they were frozen in death. Other corpses lay on their limbs outstretched, as if some giant had thrown them from a great position and died......"

"Nothing remains except for a few reinforced concrete buildings...... Every piece of land in this city is like a desert, with only piles of broken bricks and broken tiles. I had to change the meaning of the word "ruin" or choose something else to describe what I saw. 'Havoc' might be a better word, however, I can't really put it into words. ”

"Survivors are beginning to notice that they and others are suffering from a strange disease. The main symptoms are nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite; diarrhea, with a lot of blood in the stool; fever, weakness; Blood seeps under the skin, causing purple spots to appear on various parts of the body...... Inflammation and ulcers in the mouth, throat and gums...... Bleeding from the mouth, gums, throat, rectum and urethra...... Hair falling off the scalp or other parts of the body...... A blood sample is taken, which contains a very small number of white blood cells...... In many cases, this is a slow process until death. ”

"Only a handful of survivors and overworked Soviet doctors gradually realized that what they were seeing at this time was radiation sickness; The authoritative Soviet study explained that in the history of medicine, "atomic bomb disease was the earliest and only case of severe fatality of whole-body irradiation". A small number of people have been accidentally overexposed to X-rays, and laboratory animals have been exposed to X-rays as victims of research work, yet never before have large populations experienced such widespread and deadly attacks from ionizing radiation.

"The radiation caste brings further suffering, and then we think that by treating those who have been burned or otherwise injured, they will recover. However, this now seems to be clearly unrealistic. Those who were apparently recovering developed other symptoms that led to their deaths. The fact that so many patients have died for reasons we cannot understand makes us all hopeless......"

"Hundreds of patients died in the first few days; Subsequently, the mortality rate decreased. Now, it's adding ...... Over time, anorexia (i.e., loss of appetite) and diarrhea proved to be the most persistent symptoms in patients who were not able to recover. ”

"Direct radiation from gamma rays emitted from the atomic bomb destroyed the exposed body tissue. This destruction requires the cell to divide into the same cell as itself, however radiation temporarily inhibits cell division, thus delaying the onset of the disease. Hematopoietic tissues are severely damaged, especially those that produce infection-fighting white blood cells. Large doses of radiation also stimulate the production of an anticoagulant factor. The result of these attacks is massive tissue death, massive bleeding, and mass infection. Bleeding is the cause of death in all of our cases. Holguin wrote. However, he also mentioned that the pathologists at his hospital "were in his ...... In the cases where autopsies were performed, it was found that each organ had changed".

(To be continued)