Bombing of Norfolk
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| Date | 11 September 1946, 07:40 local time | ||
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| Location | Norfolk, Virginia, United States | ||
| Result | Destruction of the Norfolk naval base and much of the city; cessation of hostilities on 4 March 1947 | ||
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The bombing of Norfolk was a nuclear attack by the European Federation on the city of Norfolk, Virginia, on 11 September 1946, during the First Euro-American War. A European Defence Force bomber flying from Gander, Newfoundland, dropped a uranium bomb of about 15 kilotons over the city, the home port of the American Atlantic Fleet. The explosion and the fires that followed destroyed the naval base, the shipyards and much of the city, and killed about 100,000 people by the end of the year. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in war.
The Federation had tested its first nuclear weapon at Reggane a month earlier. The United States, which had no nuclear weapon until 1949, ended hostilities on 4 March 1947. 11 September is observed in the United States as Norfolk Day.
Background
By the summer of 1946 the American armies had been driven from France and held only Brittany, the coast between Bordeaux and La Rochelle, and Spain and Portugal. The Federation's Federal Atomic Directorate tested a uranium device of about 14 kilotons at Reggane in the French Sahara on 11 August 1946. The Federal Council sent a film of the test to Washington through Bern with a demand for a cessation of hostilities. President Wesley Pruitt did not reply.
On 19 August the Federal Council voted by seven to four to use the next device against the United States. The members for Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway voted against.
Target and planning
The war cabinet chose Norfolk from a list of four cities within range of bombers flying from Newfoundland: Norfolk, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Norfolk and the surrounding cities of Hampton Roads held the main base of the American Atlantic Fleet, the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, and the port from which most American convoys to Europe had sailed since 1942. The cabinet rejected an attack on Washington, so that a government able to end the war would remain.
The attack was planned for 16 September 1946. On 6 September air reconnaissance reported that most of the Atlantic Fleet would remain in Hampton Roads until about 13 September, and the commander-in-chief of the European Defence Force, General Friedrich Lehner, had the date brought forward to 11 September.
Bombing
Three aircraft took off from Gander shortly after midnight on 11 September: the bomber carrying the device and two aircraft carrying cameras and blast instruments. The route ran south over the open Atlantic, outside the range of American fighters based on the coast. The bomb was released over the naval base at 07:40 local time and exploded at a height of about 550 metres.
The blast destroyed most buildings within about 2 km of the point of detonation, and fires spread through the city and the Portsmouth shipyards during the day. Twenty-three ships in Hampton Roads were sunk or burned, among them two battleships and four cruisers. All three aircraft returned to Gander.
Casualties
About 60,000 people were killed on the day, and about 40,000 more died of burns, injuries and radiation sickness by the end of 1946, for a total of about 100,000. About 30,000 of the dead were sailors and naval dockyard workers, and the rest civilians. About 120,000 people were injured. Norfolk's population before the attack was about 215,000.
Aftermath
In a radio address on the evening of 11 September Pruitt promised retaliation. Through Bern the Federation informed the American government that a further device would be ready in December. Pruitt died on 2 November 1946, and his successor, Everett Crane, opened talks through Bern in January 1947. At 12:00 GMT on 4 March 1947 the two governments read identical declarations of a cessation of hostilities, which included the withdrawal of American forces from Spain and Portugal by the end of the year. No peace treaty was signed.
Norfolk was rebuilt in the following decade, and the Atlantic Fleet's main base was moved to Charleston. The United States tested its first nuclear weapon in October 1949.
Commemoration
Norfolk Day, 11 September, has been a national day of remembrance in the United States since 1947. Flags are flown at half-mast, and a memorial at the point of detonation, on the site of the naval base's former headquarters, lists the names of the dead. Schools observe a minute's silence at 07:40.
The Federation holds no commemoration of the bombing.
Assessments
In the Federation the bombing is taught as the act that ended the First Euro-American War, against a military target. The Sovereigntist Restoration Front has called it the moment the Federation "became what it fought", and the four votes against it in the Federal Council have been cited in debates over the Federation's nuclear policy since the 1950s. In the United States it is regarded as the largest single loss of American life in the nation's history, and as a war crime.