Captain Michal Anielewicz

United States Army Air Corps Captain Michał "Wizz" Anielewicz was a magician and B-29 bombardier whose payload jammed in the bay over Hiroshima. In order to dislodge the payload, Anielewicz threw himself against the payload, which resulted in both Anielewicz and the payload falling out of the aircraft.

Early Life and Career

Michał Anielewicz was born in Poznań, Poland on September 10th, 1920 as the youngest of 6 children. The Anielewicz family experienced increasing amounts of antisemitism as Michał aged, and when he turned eleven his family with the exception of his two eldest brothers relocated to the United States. On the East Side in New York City, he met Daniel Saponar, and the two would become inseparable friends. He joined the Army in 1937 at age 18, following his friend Dan, after having been identified as a magician along with two of his sisters.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Anielewicz trained as a bombardier in New Mexico then reunited with Dan Saponar in the skies over Europe, and the two were thereafter always part of the same crew. As they shared a religion, a magic ability, and a birthday (albeit a year apart), they considered themselves bound by destiny, fate, luck, or something of the sort.

We first met off Delancey because some punk kids were beating him up, telling him to go back to Poland. He didn't even speak English back then. They knocked the kippah off his head and everything. Rahela and I chased those kids off and figured out where Mike's family lived, and he came to Seder with us, and that was that. We were best friends. No turning back.

- journal of Captain Saponar, recovered after his death

Heroism

The bay doors opened and the payload started to drop, but then it stalled. Jammed, or something. I don't know. I'm just the gunner. But Wizz was pushing and kicking it like crazy, trying to get it out of the plane, kicking it so hard he slipped and almost fell out the open door. I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and said something like, "Are you crazy?" or something. But he just shoved me away, and by the time I turned back around, he was grabbing onto the bomb as they both fell through the doors.

- statement of tail gunner Sergeant Owen Davis in his report on the death of Captain Anielewicz

Anielewicz flew as Saponar's bombardier for much of their service, and when Saponar was called on a classified mission in Japan, part of his terms for acceptance was that Anielewicz join him. The two joined the other members of the B-29 crew, and on August 6th, 1945 the bomber took off as part of a seven ship formation headed toward Hiroshima, Japan.
As the aircraft approached Hiroshima, Anielewicz opened the bay doors and prepared to drop the payload. However, the bomb jammed and wouldn't drop, but was activated and could detonate at any moment. Anielewicz managed to dislodge the bomb, but to do so had to land his entire body weight against the payload, and both he and the bomb fell out of the aircraft. When he hit the ground with the bomb, the resulting explosion was not the conventional explosion of the bombs dropped from the other aircraft, but rather a nuclear detonation. Later, researchers would determine that the explosive force of the bomb had provided magician Anielewicz with enough power to perform a fission reaction, which had previously been thought impossible for a magician to achieve.