A flash of light that Van Kirk likened to a photographer's flashbulb engulfed the cabin. Tibbets executed a diving turn to avoid the blast effects, but the Enola Gay was buffeted by a pair of shock waves. His navigating skills had brought the Enola Gay to its target only a few seconds behind schedule at the conclusion of a 6½-hour flight.įerebee released the bomb, known as Little Boy, and 43 seconds later, at 1890 feet above ground zero, it exploded in a nuclear inferno, leaving tens of thousands dead or dying and turning Hiroshima into scorched devastation. Spencer Crew to cancel Goldberg's talk about the Enola Gay controversy. Van Kirk, who had also familiarised himself with Hiroshima's landmarks, leaned over Ferebee's shoulder and confirmed he was correct. While he was still alive, however, Goldberg suffered shabby treatment at the. The bombardier, Major Thomas Ferebee, said, "I got it," announcing that the Enola Gay was over his aiming point, the T-shaped Aioi Bridge. At 8.15 am Japan time, it reached Hiroshima, a city of 250,000 and the site of an important army headquarters. The question relates to why didn’t Captain Frederick Bock fly his own plane (Bockscar) during the. Fewer people are aware that Bockscar (sometimes called Bock’s Car) delivered the second nuclear weapon, Fat Man, to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. When the Enola Gay reached Iwo Jima as the sun rose, it began an ascent to 31,000 feet. Most people are aware that the bomber Enola Gay delivered the first atomic weapon to Hiroshima. You’ve got to leave the moral issue out of it.Theodore Van Kirk, navigator of the Enola Gay, pictured here in 2010. ATLANTA The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of World War II and forcing the world into the atomic age, has died in Georgia. I don’t care whether you’re dropping atom bombs, or whether you’re dropping 100-pound bombs, or you’re shooting a rifle. Morality, there is no such thing in warfare. I was instructed to perform a military mission to drop the bomb and that was the thing that I was going to do to the best of my ability.
Tibbets added, “I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I’m supposed to be a bomber pilot and destroy a target. So, I thought, you know, I’m just like that if I get to thinking about some innocent person getting hit on the ground. They assumed the symptoms of the patients and it destroyed their ability to render medical necessities. That is, they were selling legalized drugs for drug houses and so forth and so on, because they couldn’t practice medicine due to the fact that they had too much sympathy for their patients.
And he was telling me about previous doctors, some that had been classmates of his, who were drug salesmen. “Well, then I got a thought that I had engendered and encountered for the first time in Cincinnati when I was going to medical school. Tibbets passed away on 1 November 2007 at 92 years of age.7 Captain Robert A. “The first time I dropped bombs on a target over there, … I said to myself, ‘People are getting killed down there that don’t have any business getting killed. Enola Gay's crew on 6 August 1945 consisted of 12 men: Colonel Paul W. In the 1989 interview, Tibbets also spoke of a lesson he learned in Cincinnati about doing his job:
Tibbets retired as a brigadier general in 1966 and went on to run an air taxi company in Columbus, where he died in 2007. He named the B-29 after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, who was supportive of his career change. The man who flew the plane that delivered the bomb over Hiroshima always maintained he was proud of his service to his country, and slept well at night. Some people argue that they prevented a potentially more devastating invasion of Japan, including countless more deaths, and brought the war to a speedy end. The bombings have been endlessly debated. Not only did it change warfare, but it ushered in the atomic age, one where mankind became capable of obliterating itself. 9, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, killing another 70,000.įive days after that, Japan surrendered and World War II was finally over.ĭropping the atomic bomb was a watershed moment in human history. Over the next few years, the death toll would reach about 200,000 due to burns, radiation poisoning and cancer, according to the U.S. In an instant, 70,000 people were obliterated. It was the first time a devastating nuclear device had been unleashed upon a populated target. Tibbets Jr., took off from Tinian island in the Pacific Ocean, loaded with the world’s deadliest payload – an atomic bomb codenamed “Little Boy.”Īt approximately 8:15 a.m., Tibbets and his crew dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, and the city disappeared in a mushroom cloud. 6, 1945, the B-29 Superfortress bomber “Enola Gay,” piloted by Col.