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As the 9,000-pound bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" fell toward the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. The mission went perfectly, VanKirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets' fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No. 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. VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history. 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. I hope this short little explanation helps to understand my reasoning for calling him an American hero." - Farris Rookstool, III, historian and award-winning filmmaker contributor to in The Day Kennedy Died: Fifty Years Later wrote the foreword to Oswald and I, and was even a ghostwriter for a chapter of Brad Meltzer's Decoded.ATLANTA (AP) - 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 knew almost the entire crew of the Enola Gay and cannot imagine the responsibility they had delivering a weapon to their target over enemy territory not knowing if they would perish in the blast as well. Their mission could have resulted in great tragedy and resulted in more loss of life in the war. When a soldier is called by his country to perform a life threatening task that runs great risk of failure and perhaps death and performs it with great success that saved thousands of American lives, I consider them a hero. Dutch said he never wanted to see nuclear weapons used again. While I am not a proponent of war, nor the use of nuclear weaponry, it was something that brought an end to WWII. They trained to fly the B-29 and made practice runs maneuvering the airplane on steep angles to prepare for moving away from the blast.
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He was recruited for his secret mission and wasn't told of the mission by Col. When I referred to Theodore 'Dutch' Van Kirk as an American hero, I referred to him as such based on the fact that he and his crew were tasked with doing something that had never been done before and that was dropping an Atomic Bomb from an airplane. "I have many people who I admire and some are heroes too. Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk at the Frontiers of Flight Museum. The doublethink for me began at an early age, one minute seeing black and white images of Japanese citizens running for their lives through a radioactive black rain of nuclear fallout, and the next suddenly shooting fireworks on the Fourth of July, swallowing such horror, and suspending compassion for them long enough to revere those who dropped Big Boy and Fat Man on them, killing tens of thousands including at least 23 American POWs, so as to protect me and you and our country.įarris Rookstool III and Maj. So I often need reminding when days like today roll around, this the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, why such a devastating and secret mission took place and again why those charged to carry it out are considered heroes when it was so catastrophic. Here (and below) is a video of "Dutch" Von Kirk talking about that mission.īy now conditioned to war’s inevitability, I’ll still never be at peace with it as a necessity. They had children living in Lawrenceville, GA and Elk Grove, California and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. Van Kirk's late wife, Imogene, had passed two years prior at age 90, and she had resided at a different senior living community nearby, Sunrise at Five Forks. A few years ago I wrote about another retirement community, The View, that was being built at the time near the mountain in the Shermantown district of Stone Mountain Village.
ENOLA GAY CREW FROM GA FULL
The shadow of Stone Mountain actually falls on Parks Springs in the evenings, full moons often rise above it, and it's in a perfect position at sunrise. It really blew my mind a little when I first learned back in 2014 that Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the crew of the Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (and three days later a different crew bombed Nagasaki), had been living so close to the mountain in a retirement community called Park Springs in Stone Mountain, GA, when he died at the age of 93 in 2014. Sunrise August 2017, with Park Springs in the foreground on the right.