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The city was home to 250,000 people, as well as an important army headquarters. He had a lot on his mind the day before the mission. When their superiors advised them to get some rest after one of their last briefings, Van Kirk played poker with his crew mates instead. "How they expected to tell you you were going out and dropping the first atomic bomb and it might blow up the airplane and go get some sleep, is absolutely beyond me," Van Kirk said in a video interview with the Witness to War Foundation. The plane carried Little Boy, the nickname for the first of two atomic bombs dropped over Japan - actions which forced Japan's surrender. The first nuclear weapon used in warfare, Little Boy weighed 9,000 pounds and detonated 1,800 feet over Hiroshima with an explosive force that equaled 20,000 tons of TNT, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Van Kirk, who also saw action in a B-17 in Europe and North Africa, described the Hiroshima mission as an easy one because the plane faced no enemy opposition and was flying in perfect weather. The bomb detonated 43 seconds after it was dropped from the Enola Gay, as the pilot turned the plane away from the blast. Two shockwaves, measured at 3 Gs each, caught up with the plane, Van Kirk recalled. "In a B-29 at 30,000 feet it seems like a hell of a jolt," he told the Witness to War Foundation.Īfter the shockwaves had passed, the B-29 turned around to examine the destruction below. But all Van Kirk could see was black smoke, dust, and a mushroom cloud that had already risen above the plane.Ĭrew members of the Enola Gay with Captain Theodore J.
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Van Kirk in the front row, third from the left.Īfter the war, Van Kirk maintained his belief in the necessity of the mission and said he'd do it again given the same circumstances.
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In his view, America was fighting an enemy known for never surrendering. He elaborated on his view of the importance of the mission during a 2005 interview with Time: "Number two, when you're fighting a war to win, you use every means at your disposal to do it." "Number one, there is no morality in warfare - forget it," he told The New York Times in 1995. There were over 100 numbered military targets within the city of Hiroshima. It wasn't a matter of going up there and dropping it on the city and killing people.