Posted on 07/30/2014 4:22:58 AM PDT by Freeport
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.
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. He was 93.
VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history. 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. 6, 1945.
He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets' fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No. 13.
The mission went perfectly, VanKirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. As the 9,000-pound bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" fell toward the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives.
They didn't know whether the bomb would actually work and, if it did, whether its shockwaves would rip their plane to shreds. They counted -- one thousand one, one thousand two -- reaching the 43 seconds they'd been told it would take for detonation and heard nothing.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I met and spoke with Van Kirk a couple of times at booksignings. Great guy, wonderful sense of humor - was cracking jokes left and right.
With that kind of positive attitude it’s no wonder he made it into his 90s.
I don’t think that either Olympic or Coronet would have happened. Especially after Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
There would have been a naval blockade and continued conventional bombing. There would have been magnitudes more Japanese deaths from that than from the atomic attacks. And that’s not counting what the Sovs would have done to the Japanese army on the mainland.
Nuclear bombing of Japan:
Supreme act of Humanitarianism and Peace.
Having had the honor of meeting General Tibbets personally, I can happily refute such a ridiculous claim.
Japan had opportunity to surrender and end the war. The deaths of those children occurred because of Japan’s decisions. What we have lost is the understanding that warfare requires some very ugly actions; that is if you want to win.
The pleasure was mine, believe me. My copy of “Enola Gay” is signed and dated by the man himself and it’s one of my prize possessions.
Japan gave us no other choice.
Remember Tojo and company tried to kill the Emperor before he made his broadcast that convinced the Japanese to surrender. Had their plot succeeded, who knows what would have happened.
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