5 in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Interviewing VanKirk for the book, she said, "was like sitting with your father at the kitchen table listening to him tell stories."Ī funeral service was scheduled for VanKirk on Aug. VanKirk was energetic, very bright and had a terrific sense of humor, Dietz recalled Tuesday.
VanKirk's military career was chronicled in a 2012 book, "My True Course," by Suzanne Dietz. "I know he was recognized as a war hero, but we just knew him as a great father," Tom VanKirk said. Instead, he and his three siblings treasured a wonderful father, who was a great mentor and remained active and "sharp as a tack" until the end of his life. attention to our museum and would avoid the impression that we are only celebrat- ing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.10. "I didn't even find out that he was on that mission until I was 10 years old and read some old news clippings in my grandmother's attic," Tom VanKirk told the AP in a phone interview Tuesday. Like many World War II veterans, VanKirk didn't talk much about his service until much later in his life when he spoke to school groups, his son said. He later moved from California to the Atlanta area to be near his daughter. Then he went to school, earned degrees in chemical engineering and signed on with DuPont, where he stayed until he retired in 1985. VanKirk stayed on with the military for a year after the war ended. It seemed a lot longer than 43 seconds," VanKirk recalled. We were all dumbfounded."I think everybody in the plane concluded it was a dud. "We just looked at each other we didn't talk. "Things were very, very quiet," Gackenbach says. The plane circled twice around the mushroom cloud and then turned to head home. He got out of his seat, quickly picked up his camera and took two photographs out the navigator's side window. The first thing Gackenbach saw was a blinding light and then the start of a mushroom cloud. Subsequent history On November 6, 1945, Lewis flew the Enola Gay back to the United States, arriving at the 509th's new base at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. George Marquardt, aircraft commander, see Necessary Evil for crew details), was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura. Then, the radio went dead: that was the signal from the Enola Gay that the bomb had been released. On that mission Enola Gay, flown by Crew B-10 (Capt. "We were not told anything about the cloud, just don't go through it."Īs they made their final approach to Hiroshima, they were flying 30,000 feet over the city. "We were told that once the explosion occurred, we should not look directly at it, that we should not go through the cloud," he says. Gackenbach was part of the 10-man crew that flew on the Necessary Evil. The atomic bomb explosion photographed from 30,000 feet over Hiroshima on Aug. They had different engines, fewer guns and a larger bomb bay. Their planes were reconfigured B-29 Superfortress bombers. The 509th Composite Group, lead by Tibbets, spent months training in Wendover, Utah, before being shipped off to an American air base on the Pacific island of Tinian. Tibbets said it would be dangerous but if they were successful, it could end the war.
Paul Tibbets, who was recruiting officers for a special mission. After completing his training, he was approached by Col. Gackenbach enlisted in the Army Aviation Cadet Program in 1943. Today, the 95-year-old is the only surviving crew member of those three planes. Army Air Corps and a navigator on the mission. Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S. There were three strike planes that flew over Hiroshima that day: the Enola Gay, which carried the bomb, and two observation planes, the Great Artiste and the Necessary Evil. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Russell Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the Necessary Evil.