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5 in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania. There was talk that Sweeney should be court-martialed for disobeying orders, but nothing came of. The military did not push the Bockscar story or decorate the men who flew the missionunlike what happened with the Enola Gay’s crew. As commander of the Hiroshima mission, Colonel Paul Tibbets was also the pilot of. Photograph: NY Daily News via Getty Images.
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In a 2005 interview with the AP, VanKirk said his World War II experience showed that wars and atomic bombs don't settle anything, and he'd like to see the weapons abolished.Ī funeral service was scheduled for VanKirk on Aug. Unlike the Enola Gay that had bombed Hiroshima, Bockscar was not greeted on its return with fanfare and praise. The crew of the Enola Gay, with Captain Robert Lewis third from right. Martin Company at its plant in Bellevue, Nebraska.
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That B-29, actually a B-29-45-MO, Army Air Forces serial number 44-86292, was built not by Boeing, but by the Glenn L. There once was a B-29 Superfortress bomber known to entire generations of Americans. "I know he was recognized as a war hero, but we just knew him as a great father," he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. Enola Gay Was a Specially Modified Aircraft for an Unthinkable Secret Task. Clay Perkins, a physicist and Southern California developer. Tom VanKirk said he and his siblings are very fortunate to have had such a wonderful father who remained active until the end of his life. Retired nuclear engineer Morris Jeppson, a former Enola Gay crew member who now lives in Las Vegas, put the plugs up for auction. The bomb killed 140,000 in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki three days later. He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug.
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VanKirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress aircraft that dropped "Little Boy" - the world's first atomic bomb - over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. Theodore VanKirk, also known as "Dutch," died Monday of natural causes at the retirement home where he lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia, his son Tom VanKirk said. On July 31, 1945, the plane and its crew took part in a final rehearsal flight. ATLANTA - The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima has died in Georgia. The Enola Gay made eight training flights and participated in bombing runs over Nagoya and Kobe.