Posted on 07/17/2004 7:40:36 AM PDT by Radix
MILTON - There was a break in the clouds, and Charles W. Sweeney, a young pilot, changed history.
His B-29 bomber dangerously low on fuel, Sweeney finally captured a glimpse of the target below and delivered the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II. It was the second and last time an atomic weapon had been used, and the Japanese surrendered a few days after the Aug. 9, 1945, bombing.
Sweeney, a retired Air Force general, died Thursday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 84.
He was a Milton resident and a graduate of North Quincy High School.
Sweeney, whose passion for flying was stoked at the Squantum air field in Quincy, talked frequently about his fateful flight over the years and never spoke of any regrets. He was 25 at the time and had never before dropped a bomb on an enemy target.
‘‘I looked upon it as a duty. I just wanted the war to be over, so we could get back home to our loved ones,'' Sweeney told The Patriot Ledger in a 1995 interview. ‘‘I hope my missions were the last ones of their kind that will ever be flown.''
Sweeney is believed to be the only person to fly in both the Nagasaki bombing and its predecessor, the bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier. He flew an instrument plane accompanying the Enola Gay during the Hiroshima run, and later recalled the bluish-white flash that filled the sky after the bomb's impact.
His own bomber, the Bock's Car, is not as well-known in history, but the bombing was certainly no less harrowing. The flight had fuel problems from the start, and clouds and smoke were covering the mission's primary target, the city of Kokura.
After making several dangerous passes over the city, Sweeney abandoned the city for Nagasaki. Only a break in the clouds allowed the bomb to be dropped, Sweeney said.
‘‘He ended World War II, which changed the course of history,'' Sweeney's son, Joseph said Friday.
‘‘His motto was that the best defense was a strong offense. He was very proud of the United States military and he loved the Marines because they took all the islands for him,'' Joe Sweeney said.
Charles Sweeney came from a family of Marines. Three of his brothers and two sons were in the Marine Corps.
After the bombing, he visited Japan several times and saw the devastation.
‘‘It was a terrible thing to see,'' he told The Patriot Ledger in 1995.
‘‘The city was totally devastated and the few people who were there still seemed stunned by what had happened,'' he said then.
Charles Sweeney wrote the book, ‘‘War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission,'' because of what he called ‘‘cockamamie theories'' that the bombings were unnecessary.
He became an outspoken defender of the bombing, appearing on the television show Larry King and speaking at colleges and universities.
He became a brigadier general in 1956, at the time, the youngest man in the Air Force to reach that rank. He retired in 1976.
Joseph Sweeney said his father loved flying.
‘‘It was his whole life. He always said he was born in the right place at the right time,'' Joseph Sweeney said. ‘‘He was the best. There was no better.''
5.56mm
RIP Charles W. Sweeney.
bump
I always wondered how much residual radiation was left on it.
War is too serious to let sentiment guide action.
I have studied the Japanese decision to surrender in 1945. I have lived in Japan after the war and am to an extent socialized to the Japanese people. I am convinced that the atomic bombings were necessary to avoid invasion.
The Japanese Army was the center of national life in those days and was resolved upon death. Also remember that the Red Army going to invade as well as Americans.
People who wonder whether or not the bombs should have been used need to consider the projected casualty figures for Operation DOWNFALL. A million Americans would have died in the invasion, along with ten million Japanese. We were quite prepared to reduce the country to ashes.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
You are right. I have heard it said that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the two greatest humanitarian events of the 20th century. Those bombings ended the war -- and therefore saved over a million lives (mostly Japanese). They were necessary and they were the right thing to do.
Even today, it is tough to remember the devastation of those two bombs but, to end a war that had already gone on too long and taken too many lives, it was the best . . . and only . . . acceptable choice.
Japan would never have capitulated had it not been for these two bombs and the US and the USSR would, jointly, have shared control of Japan - something for which the Japanese should be extremely grateful never occured.
Gen. Sweeney was a brave soldier who performed his duty with pride, honor and dignity; saving thousands of American AND Japanese lives in the process. Rest well, brave soldier, you earned it.
Great to hear that you are "socialized to the Japanese people" and that you have "studied".
Perhaps you can "study" and "socialize" to the hibakusha and the quarter million civilians killed in the ONLY use of atomic weapons.
Perhaps you can also compare and contrast the immigration history of Japanese Americans in the United States to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You will find a great degree of correlation between the people who were in the Japanese American concentration camps and those killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Forgive me for insulting your intelligence if you've already studied and socialized to the fact that thousands of family members of Japanese American concentration camp victims were killed in the atomic attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is NEVER necessary to murder 250,000 civilians who had NOTHING to do with the industrial base pushing for war.
Japan was already collapsing and the fact of the matter is that the selection of these targets is DIRECTLY linked to social engineering interests on the west coast of the USA.
Hiroshima was a major manufacturing center while Nagasaki had a major fuel depot. Those were the primary reasons for hitting those targets. I don't think anyone realized how powerful those weapons were and exactly how much damage they were going to do away from the primary targets.
I watched 'the Last Misson' on the History channel last night, it was about the last conventional bombing run AFTER the two nuclear attacks. There was a massive number of B29 bombers loaded with bombs that were dumped.
The story went into detail that after the two nuke attacks, Japan still wasn't going to surrender and there was a rebellion within the military to try to kidnap the emperor and make him surrender. There was even a forged surrender document made to try to force them to surrender to no avail.
The military was going to hold out till the country was totally destroyed. They preferred death to the dishonor of losing the war.
Tokyo and other cities were very badly destroyed by massive fire bombings prior to the nuke attacks and they weren't going to quit.
It could reasonably be said that a nuke attack with instantaneous death for most of the victims is more merciful than a fire bombing with many more survivors suffering greatly. Even the dead in a fire bombing suffered greatly before dieing.
The following link contains some details of 'Operation Downfall': http://www.ww2pacific.com/downfall.html
Japan would have made us pay too great a price to subdue it through conventional weapons.
Oh. Does someone say that we could have reached terms short of unconditional surrender?
After Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march (not to mention what was done to the Chinese), anything less than unconditional surrender would have been wrong.
Too revisionist. To equate the Nazi death camps with interrment camps is laughable. No, interrment camps weren't nice. But they were not Andersonville.
The Japanese in WW2 were fully prepared to fight to the last person, house to house. Hand to hand. Ask a Japanese man that was of age in WW2.
Of course you could ask the Chinese about Japan. The surrender terms they wanted were: Kill all Japanese males over the age of 15. Castrate those under 16. Does that give you a clue about how nasty the war was.
I would suggest you look at the casualties by country and you will see Japan did not suffer nearly as many civilian casuaties as they inflicted. Japan 360,000 to China 10,000,000 civillian casualties.
http://ww2bodycount.netfirms.com/
or if you prefer a casualty map that includes civillians:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2-loss.htm
What were the criteria?
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp5.shtml
Why were Nagasaki and Hiroshima chosen?
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp6.shtml
It is very nice to be an armchair quarterback of history, revising as you like. How were we suppose to know that the Japanese were collapsing and would not present the scenario everyone expected, house to house fighting? Island to island?
I know, WW2 was only about social engineering. The Japanese were just misunderstood in China. Or Korea. Ask the Korean Hibakusha in forced labor camps in Japan, who are still not recognized by the Japanese. Or the "Comfort Women"...
The bottom line is, as always, you cannot take today's standards and apply them to the past. You also cannot cork up nuclear technology like the Hibakusha want.
But of course Iris7 only lived in Japan after the war, what does he know.
DK
I just watched 'The Last Mission' on the History Channel last night. It was about the bombing of the Akita oil refinery north of Tokyo 5 days after the Nagasaki bombing. Great story.
There was a military coup underway, as the emperor wanted to surrender, but it was considered a betrayal of Bushido honor by elements of the army. The events surrounding the Akita bombing mission actually directly led to the surrender. No nukes were involved, of course, but the threat of more nuke strikes was looming.
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