Last surviving crew in US bombing of Hiroshima dies

Thursday, 31/07/2014

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140731/world.htm#1

New York : Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay plane that dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, has died at a retirement home in Georgia at age 93, media reports said.

Van Kirk was the navigator on the flight that dropped the first nuclear bomb used in warfare. He later told reporters that after seeing one atomic bomb explode in war, he never wanted to see another one used again.

But he defended the use of the bomb, describing it as the lesser of two evils when compared to the continued aerial assault of the Japanese main islands and a planned US invasion.

“The bomb really saved lives, in spite of the tremendous number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the destruction that would have been caused in Japan otherwise would have been tremendous,” he said in an oral history for Georgia Public Broadcasting.

The US B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, carrying 12 crew members, dropped the atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, on Hiroshima in the closing days of World War II. The death toll from the blast by the end of the year was estimated at about 140,000, out of the total of 350,000 who lived there at the time.

Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the United States dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, bringing World War II to an end.

The Pennsylvania-born Van Kirk flew missions in Europe during the war and visited Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic blast there. He studied chemical engineering after the war and became an executive with DuPont.

He said the Hiroshima mission was relatively easy, with no anti-aircraft fire coming from the ground. The big worry was whether the plane would blow up after the bomb detonated, he told Georgia Public Broadcasting.

He said 43 seconds after the bomb was dropped, he saw a flash from the blast. A shockwave then came and shook the aircraft.

Officials at the Park Springs Retirement Community in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta, confirmed his death, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Local broadcasters also quoted his son as confirming the death.

A funeral for Van Kirk is planned for Aug. 5 in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the paper said. — Reuters

The nuclear fury

Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress aircraft that dropped “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 that killed 140,000 people
The Enola Gay was piloted by Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. and carrying a crew of 12. It took off from Tinian in the Mariana Islands with a uranium bomb built under extraordinary secrecy in the vast

Manhattan Project
Once the bomber reached over Hiroshima, Major Ferebee released the bomb and 43 seconds later, at 1,890 feet above ground zero, it exploded in a nuclear inferno, leaving tens of thousands dead or dying and turning Hiroshima into scorched devastation

On August 9, another B-29 dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing some 70,000 people. On August 15, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to an end