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.''
Just because people aren't wearing the uniform of the enemy doesn't mean that they aren't the enemy. During wartime, many civilians contribute to the war effort by working in military factories, by raising and preparing the food that the soldiers eat, by collecting and recycling materials used to manufacture various war supplies and weapons, by being lookouts for enemy aircraft, etc.
You know, the term 'concentration camp' has a certain meaning greater than the sum of its parts. The Japanese internment does NOT fit that definition.
btt
What would the victims on the ground in Japan be expected to say? "I thought the use of the atomic bomb was a ripping good idea and we're so glad you used it"--is that what you expect?
Weapons production was distributed throughout the residential areas.
That's absurd. The southern provinces were winding down the fourth year of open rebellion and conflict with Tokyo?
That is completely out of line to his post...it is a complete non-sequitur. And you cannot win an argument on FR by force of emotion.
His arguments are weak. What do they say in law? If you can't argue the law, argue the process, and if you can't argue process, pound your fist on the table.
Racism in Japan or Germany in WW2 was about killing or subjugating those you did not like. But Bugs Bunny? They don't show the old cartoons with stereotypes anymore. I think they still suppress the fairly new shows like McHale's Navy. Oh, that Vitto Scotti sure played a bunch of stuff. He was on Gilligan's Island too, playing the same type parts. Do you remember when he was the Mad Doctor...
Sorry, I digress.
DK
That's a myth. Many Japanese soldiers surrendered.
What do I know? I just heard it from a soldier who was there...
Yeah, if by "Many" you mean "dozens". < /sarcasm>
I am in complete agreement. I fear, more than anything else, that another major attack on our own soil may be the only thing that will wake up the dims.
That's sort of like asking the man with the revolver "why did you shoot the mugger six times?"
The answer: "Because that's all I had..."
"On VJ day my grandfather weighed 81 pounds in the slave labor camp he was in (I have previously mentioned 86 but that turns out to be what it was when by the time he was processed out). There is no way he could have made November or December, aside from the fact that they [camp guards] had mounted machine guns to mow the prisoners down upon news of any landing. Revisionists SUCK!""
God Bless your Granddaddy where ever he may be.
"That's a myth. Many Japanese soldiers surrendered."
You must be talking about the battle of Saipan.
/sarcasm.
MY GOD! You have liberal sensitivites.
"So what part of success are we arguing about?"
I think the only one arguing about success is BMC. For some reason, he holds the belief the use of nukes is never justified. Of which I disagree with him\her on this assertion. I think when faced with the very real massive fatalities on both sides if Americans had decided to continue with Operation Olympic, the use of nukes was very much justified. The Military Force the Japanese were planning to use was not the only concern. There was also major concern for Japan's possible use of civilians as well. I truly believe the entire country of Japan, at least at one point, would have committed mass suicide under the deception of Victory for the masses.
However, neither is relevant to my point. My intention was solely to refute the myth that not a single Japanese soldier surrendered in World War II. Nothing is further from the truth. Japanese soldiers surrendered, sailors and pilots allowed themselves to be rescued etc etc. There was no derth of Japanese POW's.
Washington Post
July 19, 2004
Pg. B4
Charles W. Sweeney Dies; Led Bomb Drop Over Nagasaki
By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Staff Writer
Charles W. Sweeney, 84, who died of a heart ailment July 16 at a Boston hospital, was an Army Air Forces pilot during World War II whose first combat mission over an enemy target was the atomic bomb drop over Nagasaki, Japan.
On Aug. 6, 1945, three days before the Nagasaki attack, Mr. Sweeney piloted a weather-instrument plane flying in support of the Enola Gay, which bombed Hiroshima, Japan.
Mr. Sweeney unambiguously supported the bombings, which along with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria persuaded a recalcitrant Japanese government to surrender that month. The atomic attacks killed and mutilated tens of thousands of Japanese and helped deter an Allied incursion of mainland Japan that many historians believe would have cost untold numbers of lives.
Mr. Sweeney decried "cuckoo professors" and the "cockamamie theories" of those who believed the atomic bombing of Japan was unnecessary.
"I saw these beautiful young men who were being slaughtered by an evil, evil military force," he told a reporter in 1995. "There's no question in my mind that President Truman made the right decision" to release the bomb.
However, Mr. Sweeney did not try to aggrandize his role in the war.
"As the man who commanded the last atomic mission, I pray that I retain that singular distinction," he wrote in his memoir, "War's End" (1997).
Charles William Sweeney, the son of a plumber, was a native of Lowell, Mass. Entranced by the military planes that landed at a nearby airfield, he joined the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet April 28, 1941.
He spent much of the war as an instructor and test pilot. In 1944, he was assigned to Wendover Field, in the Utah salt flats, where he worked under the command of Col. Paul Tibbets, who trained others for the atomic bombing mission and himself helmed the Enola Gay.
After the Enola Gay flight, the Japanese did not lay down arms. The order came for Mr. Sweeney to make his run over Japan in a B-29 Superfortress named the Bockscar. He was to drop another atomic bomb over Kokura, Japan; Nagasaki was an alternative target.
In flight, Mr. Sweeney encountered a mechanical malfunction that affected fuel release to the engines. The gas situation worsened as the Bockscar circled at a rendezvous point while waiting for a plane that failed to show. Hours later, over Kokura, the bombardier had trouble finding a target over the fogged-in city.
As antiaircraft fire cracked around the plane, a decision was made to head toward Nagasaki. The bomb whistled down, exploding nearly 2,000 feet over the city and sending a mushroom cloud funneling skyward.
"I could see a brownish horizontal cloud enveloping the city below," Mr. Sweeney wrote in his memoir. "From the center of the brownish bile sprung a vertical column, boiling and bubbling up in those rainbow hues -- purples, oranges, reds -- colors whose brilliance I had seen only once before and would never see again."
His decorations included the Silver Star and the Air Medal.
After the war, he rose to the rank of major general in the Massachusetts Air National Guard. In the early 1960s, he coordinated civil defense work in Boston, creating response plans in case of a nuclear attack on the United States.
He spent much of his career as a co-owner and operator of a leather brokerage business in Boston, often working with shoe manufacturers. He was former president of the Boston Boot and Shoe Club, a trade organization.
His marriage to Dorothy W. Sweeney ended in divorce.
Survivors include 10 children, two brothers, a sister and 24 grandchildren
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