United States | News & Politics

President Harry S. Truman authorized the first nuclear attack in the history of the world, on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. Around 70,000 people, nearly all of them civilians, were vaporized, crushed, burned, or irradiated to death almost immediately. Another 50,000 probably died soon after. The bomb exploded with the force of more than 15,000 tons of TNT.

But the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its supporting strike group launched the “largest airstrike in the history of the world” from an aircraft carrier on Somalia in February, said Adm. James Kilby, the Navy’s acting chief of naval operations, while speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations’ Robert B. McKeon Endowed Series on Military Strategy and Leadership on Monday.