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.''
LOL! The guy called in a nuke strike on his own position.
"I never knew bones to be like that. I guess sometimes they just throw a rod and maybe there's nothing else that can be done."
I agree. He must have missed a few oil changes recently.
We were debating wether or not the Atomic Bomb should have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not FDR's policies in regards to social issues during the "Great Depression". I never once implied, stated or in any other way coneyed I agreed with his policies. I DO NOT agree with FDR's policies. Any one who has ever studied the history of that time, realizes it was America's entering WWII that brought us from the depression, not any one or any combination of policies so staunchly defended and pursued by FDR. All you have donne with your statement here, is try to redirect the debate and change the subject. Further evidence you did not know what you were talking about in the first place. Besides, FDR had nothing to do with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman did. FDR had already passed away.
Who said anything about mutually assured destruction?
I certainly didn't.
I said total destruction of Japan and now the terrorists.
I think you better go back to DU where you belong and where you'll feel more comfortable spewing defeatist and pacifistic attitudes.
The problem with pacifying terrorists is that when you turn the other cheek that just gives them easier access to the other side of your throat after they have already cut the one side.
Really, you shouldn't let a troll like the "boner" provoke you to the point of picking up Bill Clinton's dictionary instead of Noah Webster's.
The fact that some semi-literates fail to distinguish between "concentration camp" (a place to keep a concentration of people confined) and "extermination camp" (of the sort built by Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan) is no reason to perpetuate the error.
Try decaf.
And the Japanese were kept in internment camps.
Ah, you must be a liberal - the facts are bull and your kumbaya view of the world is the only reality.
My grandfather was on the Bunker Hill at the Battle of Okinawa. He lost hundreds of shipmates from a kamikaze attack. That was just a preview of what our soldiers would have faced. But you, in your wretched, deliberate ignorance of history, have the nerve to call an accurate description of kamakazes "lying bull". I'll stand in as a proxy for my deceased grandfather and tell you to kiss my arse instead.
He's at that point you reach when you go so far left or so far right that it becomes impossible to distinguish the path taken to get there. A strange land called Absurdistan, filled with asses and holes in the ground and inhabitants unable to tell the difference between the two.
My dad was to end up in the assault on the main island too, long before I was ever born. I have no patience whatsoever for this historical revisionist bullshit.
It is great that the two bombers are intact and on display.
Sorta like life, huh? ;)
lol thanks
Take a trip to Okinawa and visit Peace Prayer Park.
It's easy to find. It's right next to the Suicide Cliffs just down the road a ways from the Japanese Naval Underground Headquarters.
There you will see the names of 200,656 men women and children inscribed on black marble slabs who died on that tiny island in the last battle of World War II.
Japanese 188,136
From other prefectures (soldiers and civilian employees) 65,908
From Okinawa (soldiers and civilian employees) 28,228
From Okinawa (civilians fighting in battles) 56,861
From Okinawa (non-fighting civilians) 37,139
Americans 12,520
Following the battle there was not one thing on the island growing or man-made that was over 24 inches high. The entire population of the island was 574,368 and there were 4.72 artillery shells fired per person during the battle.
While you are there be sure and view the Naval Underground Headquarters. While there you will see a room where the high command filed into a room with hand grenades and pulled the pins on themselves rather than surrender. Of course, this was only days after the Japanese soldiers there had bayoneted the babies of civilian employees to keep them from crying and giving away their position to the Americans.
Be sure to enjoy the crystal clear waters under the Suicide Cliffs. They were not always so clear. In June of 1945 civililians and soldiers alike jumped to their deaths rather than surrender to the Americans.
Then consider that not one but two bombs had to be dropped before the Japanese surrendered and how many lost their lives compared to Okinawa without one American casualty.
Oh! By the way. The civilians who died on Okinawa. They were not a part of any industrial base either. But they fought, and died, just as energetically as their cousins on the main Japanese islands would have.
And I'm not just talking about pretend drilling with rakes and shovels. The Japanese military was actively training schoolkids as suicide bombers, including training teenage schoolgirls to strap explosives to themselves and roll under tank treads.
If the US bears moral responsibility for the deaths of civilians at H & N, what about the Japanese military's responsibility for blurring the distinction between civilians and combatants in the months prior to the bombing?
That having been said, I think, if Truman had understood beforehand the terrible death toll that would result, perhaps he would have ordered a demonstration explosion over Tokyo Bay before an actual attack, in hopes that that would be sufficient to persuade the Japanese to quit. Maybe it would have worked. Maybe not.
How fortunate for the Republicans that FDR won the election in 1944, or the shameless presstitutes would be busy right now re-demonizing President Dewey and the GOP as the party of atomic genocide. After all, anything that will help John Kerry beat George Bush is moral by definition. (ack!)
For brevity, I can't top Petronski's reply to you, bones:
"You have become incoherent with rage."
Beautifully done.
Especially the museum set up by two former airmen who, when they left the Air Force were asked to vacate the building they had occupied on Kadena AFB, but were given ample space at Camp Kinser (Marine) for displaying artifacts they had found on the island.
The most moving exhibit they had was a rusty .30 caliber machine gun. A Marine was cut off on Sugar Loaf Hill and was surrounded by Japanese. He lifted the .30 of its tripod, as his field of fire was 360 degrees, and in a matter of minutes had Japanese bodies stacked up around him like cord wood. Wounded in both legs and unable to move from his position, he was certain to become another stastic once his ammunition ran out. Another Marine saw him and grabbed a tanker and told the tank commander to drag him strapped under the tank up to the stranded Marine and he would grab him and then the tank could drag them back to safety.
The tanker straddled the stranded Marine and was about to pull both him and his rescuer back to relative safety when the stranded Marine said he needed to spike the .30 so it could not be used against them. He spiked the gun and was dragged back to safety, a hospital and a chest full of medals for him and his rescuers.
This was in June of 1945. 50 years later, the Marine who had been stranded was visiting the island and was in the museum. The curator, a young airman at the time asked him to take a trip to Sugar Loaf Hill and show him where the action had taken place. When they got there, he remembered everything as it had been on that day, and remembered the actual spot of where the events had taken place.
The curator, airman, returned to his car and brought out a metal detector. Within five minutes they had found the gun, spiked as it had been on that day, by the stranded Marine.
He's at that point you reach when you go so far left or so far right that it becomes impossible to distinguish the path taken to get there. A strange land called Absurdistan, filled with asses and holes in the ground and inhabitants unable to tell the difference between the two.
that's right up there with JR's surgical Zot of #135
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.