Fateful flight: Pilot of Nagasaki atomic attack dies

Patriot Ledger ^ | Saturday, July 17, 2004 | CHRISTOPHER WALKER and DIANA SCHOBERG

[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.''

[GATOR NAVY]

Agreed. A classic.

[Dec31,1999]

I agree being unable to change comments is a good thing. It keeps you on your toes!

[Dec31,1999]

I can see your point, but do you really think that an organization of devote Muslims will hesitate to use the same weapons against us, for no other reason but because we are infidels?

I personally doubt it. And for that reason, I think it'd be better to hit them before they even have a chance of hitting us. The scary part of this scenario is that they already have the technology. We are in for some bad times, folks.

Especially since Al-Queda will contract the hit out and we will have no government to make war upon, unlike the WWII situation.

That's why it would be a good idea to drop hydrogen bombs on Mecca and Medina when the aforementioned happens, if not sooner. We'll just sit here with one or several smoking, irradiated cities and no clear perpetrator.

I don't think we should wait passively until they destroy several of our cities, or kill off a large percentage of our population with biological weapons.