Yes I saw youd posted something on that already. The Japanese were ready to surrender (as they had always planned to do since the start of thw war). "We just looked at each other we didn't talk. There was no need for an invasion of Japan. "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 country owes a great deal of gratitude to this often referred to as the. The first thing Gackenbach saw was a blinding light and then the start of a mushroom cloud. In 2008 only four showed up for the reunion. Then, the radio went dead: that was the signal from the Enola Gay that the bomb had been released. "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. Theodore VanKirk, last survivor of Enola Gay crew, dies - CBS News RIP :salute: Theodore VanKirk, also known as 'Dutch,' died Monday of natural causes at the retirement home where he lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia, his son Tom VanKirk said. 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. The last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of World War II and forcing the world into the atomic age, has died in Georgia. 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. The last surviving member of the American crew who dropped the Hiroshima nuclear bomb that killed 140,000 people and triggered the end of the Second World War has died. Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S.